For the Christian man or woman too, unlimited liability is a goal of faith: to aspire to let nothing stop us in the pursuit of our calling to grow closer to God, love our neighbours and in that love to make disciples in Jesus' name, however that calling may manifest itself in work and play.
Fear of death is natural. The power of God to save is supernatural. For the Christian the limit of exploitation is beyond the grave. In an attack, this is the line beyond which a fighting force, for whatever reason may it be casualties or supplies or risk of over-extension, will not advance. The limit to life is not the end of life as we know it. But similar to the end of life as the pagan knows it, so too the limit of death as we know it is not simply death. There is a terror worse than death just as there is a life beyond life–this is part of the meaning of the eternal power of God.
We as Christian people serve a God who is bigger than our natural imaginations and more righteous than our fantasies of righteousness, and more terrifying than anything we could ever dream of. What He expects from us is the same in eternal power as what He gives us in Christ. The excuses of the unbeliever will not make the "cut" any more than the life found in Christ ever end.
It is not that there should be no hope or fear, it is a question of where the fear and hope is laid. Is it laid in the eternal, or the carnal, the natural, the man-made artificial?
Sample the prayer of Habakkuk (Habakkuk 3) found in the Bible and you get a quick picture of a man who was fearing and hoping in the right way.
Put it in perspective in one sentence: Habakkuk is a prophet who is receiving a message that his nation's wickedness is going to be obliterated by a Babylonian invasion. God, in a word, is irate. Habakkuk knows Israel needs this judgement for it's evil and it is coming. So in light of an imminent apocalypse of biblical proportions, Habakkuk does the only reasonable thing; he prays.
So your homeland is about to be raped, pillaged, destroyed and sold into slavery for its evil, what might you say? I really don't know what I'd say but you can bet it would be something along the lines of "God please don't do this I'd like to continue living in peace with my family, not get torn limb from limb, have my wife raped and my infant tossed against a stone wall." God has a habit of sparing his children from disaster (check out Noah & the Flood for but one example), but the thought of a "Chaldean horde", a "fierce, impetuous, dreaded and feared" people (Hab 1:6-7) running through town doesn't exactly inspire great confidence that everything's going to be peachy keen.
right fear
But Habakkuk prays a strange prayer, it actually runs more like a hymn of remembrance; there is no explicit request or supplication through the entire chapter which comprises it. Who prays a prayer without asking for anything? Habakkuk says he "heard of your (God's) fame" (v.2) and he recalls God's awesome power in battle, His unstoppable power over the forces of nature, over humankind and the events of human history. Did somebody forget to mention to Habakkuk that his nation is about to receive the beat down of the millennium? This isn't a 'panic prayer' over the Chaldean horde. But make no mistake, Habakkuk is afraid, he is terrified, "I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound, decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled."
Habakkuk wasn't afraid of the fierce warriors or the incumbent orgy of death and destruction: he was afraid of Almighty God. The thought of the wrath of the Lord God was enough to make him admit to posterity that he would have wet himself at the sight. His attention was on the terror of eternal death rather than physical death.
right hope
There's an antithesis though, another side to the story. The nation coming against Israel is a natural army, it is a tool of God and nothing more, "They mock kings and scoff at rulers. They laugh at all fortified cities...Then they sweep past like the wind and go on; guilty people, whose own strength is their god." (1:10-11) The mounds unbelievers use to bury their fear of judgment and death, these vicious killers come to bring reckoning from the Almighty and demolish these pitiful piles with ease, laying bare the sins of nations.
The Babylonians idolize their own strength, and Habakkuk knows it, "Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us." They do not know that there is a terror worse than death, a death deeper than the earth can bury and hide; the awesome and all-consuming power of God in His wrath.
Make no mistake, Habakkuk is in no state of delusion about his unlimited liability; but Habakkuk knows his limit of exploitation is only as far as the natural. There is, because of God's mercy as Saviour to those who call Him Lord and Master, to those who are not his enemies, peace and absolution from the wrath which is worse than death.
real confidence, boldness, joy and peace
Habakkuk's bold hope and confidence extends entirely beyond the simple avoidance of natural death,
"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights." (Hab 3:17-19)
Habakkuk's bold trust is reminiscent of Job who said "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." (Job 13:15) Or the heroes of the faith who looked beyond the grave for their hope in the letter to the Hebrews. This is real faith, real hope, real joy and real confidence. Habakkuk did not ask for God to be a powerful Saviour, to rescue him from the worst fate possible (eternal death), to arrange the course of events and planets alike and to annihilate the hordes; Habakkuk knew it. It was no supplication, it was a proclamation.
