HABAKKUK 3
“To the chief singer on my stringed instruments” (verse 19). Compare Psalm 4: 1 with margin ‘Neginoth’. In verse 1 it is Shigionoth, signifying variableness. He uses the word on going into the presence of the Lord, but Neginoth expresses the state of the soul - stability - when leaving the sanctuary.
Habakkuk is aware of the confusion everything is in, for in chapter 2 he is on the watch-tower. Then in chapter 3 he prays. He leaves the scene of confusion and learns to rejoice in the Lord; the Lord makes him to know that he can have a stringed instrument in the midst of his sorrow.
There can be no service without sacrifice. In one form or another, when one chooses to suffer affliction with the people of God, the advantages of Egypt must be surrendered. The first act of Elisha on entering on or beginning service was to lay hold of his own cloak and rend it in two parts. The old order of things was at an end. The need of the saints must provoke you as it did Moses.
There are trials which everyone can see and sympathise with, while there are others which no one can see, and consequently cannot sympathise with. The latter must be borne in secret with the Lord. What it is to cross over Jordan - alone with Him, enjoying Him in the scene where He is, in the power of eternal life!