We can probably easily identify with Habakkuk when he says (Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4):
How long, O LORD? I cry for help but you do not listen!
I cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not intervene.
Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?
Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord.
Unfortunately the response isn’t very comforting – pretty much it says “just be patient”.
Jesus is similarly unsympathetic to the request from the apostles to increase their faith (Luke 17:5-10). Not an unreasonable request one might think. But Jesus just tells them they are basically inadequate. Luke then follows with another story which is also totally lacking in sympathy. You are like servants moaning about doing what they are required to do. Quit complaining and get on with it.
So not a lot of the touchy-feely, I’m with you, God loves you, stuff here.
But where is the issue? With God or with us? What these sayings have in common is the challenge to stop trying to get God to work on our terms, to comply with our intents and expectations, and to accept Him on his own terms – in other words to recognize and accept that we don’t understand what he’s up to, we can’t understand what he’s up to, and to live with that – knowing that regardless of how it may seem to us he has a plan and that he loves us.
This is what lies behind Jesus’s uncompromising response to the apostles. We tend to think of faith as something we have or do, and of course having more would be good, and would make things better for us. But faith isn’t like fitness, we can’t work at it or get more of it. It’s a gift. God gives it to us. All we can do is accept it and get on with it – just like the servants getting on and doing their job.
Sometimes Scripture tries to lead us gently to understand how God is, sometimes it uses shock and awe to wake us or get our attention. Sometimes it does just give us a clip around the ear and tell us we know perfectly well what the truth is, just accept it and live it. As Paul tells Timothy (2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14), while imprisoned and shortly to be executed, what we have been given is “power and love and self-control”. So “bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God”.