"Give Careful Thought To Your Ways"

The Spirit calls me today. It's Sunday. He speaks to the constant challenge so many of us face to get to church and participate with other believers in the celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord.

We have a multitude of excuses and the enemy is a master at posing the exact one that will win the battle and justify our refusal to get to our chosen place of fellowship and worship. Apathy is a great enemy of faith.

The Lord spoke through the Prophet Haggai, to the Jews who were living in a spiritual place not unlike many believers find themselves today. The shocking reality is that our lives are being affected in the same ways for the same sin that God revealed through Haggai 1:5-12: "Now this is what the Lord Almighty says, "Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much but have harvested little. You eat but never have enough. You drink but never have your fill. You put on clothes but are not warm. You earn wages only to put them in a purse with holes in it."

How many of us can say, "amen" to this as a representation of our lives? He goes on to say, "this is what the Lord Almighty says, "Give careful though to your ways. Go up to the mountains and bring down timber and build this house so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored."

In the Old Testament, the Temple was a physical building made to the exact specifications the Lord gave to His people. Since Christ came, paid our sin debt, and was risen on the 3rd day, the "temple" of His Holy Habitation is our heart, our body. The indwelling Presence of His Holy Spirit has taken us to the new understanding that we, the "saved" are indeed the Temple, the Holy place, the building not made by human hands, where He has come to dwell. I Corinth 3:16, 6:19, and 2 Corinth 6:16.

The Lord, through Haggai, continues His indictment of His people, "You expected much but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?" declares the Lord Almighty, "because of my House (Temple) that remains a ruin, while each one of you is busy with his own house. Therefore, because of you, the heavens have have withheld their dew and the earth, its crops. I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine and the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle and on the labor of your hands."

Could this be the answer from Heaven as to why we are in such a horrible state? Could our apathy toward the Lord's Presence in our lives and the twisted priorities we have established be the cause of what we see as our failed personal economy, government debt, and oppressive circumstances in our lives?

Even if the passage was written and meant for the people of God in ancient times, the warning and truth of this Word could not be more clear to me today. The Temple's location and configuration may have changed since Jesus Christ came, but the apathy of the human heart remains the same.

The indictment is true and work must be done to rebuild the "temple" and make it a place of Honor fit for our King. Because the "Temple" is now the human body, great care must be taken by each one of us individually to keep ourselves free from anything that contaminates or puts us in apathy toward the things important to our God.

But the Almighty Lover of our souls has not left us without hope or the "power" to accomplish all He has required of us. Through our repentance (acknowledgement of our sin) and turning our lives over to the Holy One within, we can rebuild what has been left to "ruin" Haggai 1:13, "I am with you, declares the Lord. So He stirred up the spirit......of the whole remnant of the people and they came and began to work on the House of the Lord Almighty, their God".

What work must I do to make my Heart fit for the King? What unbelief must be evicted or idol destroyed that represents the "Temple" ruin? Apathy halts the building. May each one of us "give careful thought to our ways" so that the Lord will be Glorified in His Temple and we may be eligible to represent the truly abundant life promised those who obey.

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?