Consider your ways

Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the LORD'S house should be built. Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying, Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. – Haggai 1.2-5

As the book of Haggai opens we see a nation that had fallen into complacency and spiritual lethargy. God had told them to go back to Jerusalem and build a temple for God. They laid the foundation, but opposition had risen and they had given into fear and eventually quit the work. Fourteen years had passed, and the work still lay undone.

The problem they had was, and the problem we can have as well, is one of mixed up priorities. God’s work needed to be done but fear had won the day. Then, as time passed, I am sure it got easier and easier to just leave it. ‘Ah sure, we get back to that next week. It’s not really time to do God’s work. We have more important things to do.

All the while they were taking care of themselves and improving their homes and panelling their walls. All this happened and the ruins of the foundations of the Temple ‘lie waste.’

So God said to them ‘consider your ways.’ Think about what you are doing. Look at your priorities. What is really important to you?

God may very well ask the same of you and me today. What are we doing? Where are our priorities? What matters to us? Is it us or is it God? Are you and I willing to stop and honestly consider our own ways or are content to just let things carry on as they are?