Articles
A Time to Consider
Human beings are really good at doing the things they decide they want to do. However, we are really good at not doing the things that we don’t want to do. “I didn’t have the time” is a common way for us to hide the fact that we did the things we wanted with our time instead of the things that we didn’t want to do. The truth is better represented as “I didn’t make the time.”
God’s people have often struggled to “find the time” to do the things that God has commanded while still making sure they did what they wanted to do. Haggai was sent to God’s nation of Israel who had failed to build the temple of YHWH, but had actively spent the time building their own houses. “This people says, ‘The time has not come, even the time for the house of the LORD to be rebuilt.’” (Haggai 1:2) There had been many setbacks, which had brought about discouragement (Ezra 3-4), but even with those the people had found time to do what they wanted. “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house [lies] desolate?” (Haggai 1:4)
Haggai encourages the people to “Consider your ways!” The prophet reminds the people of how so much of their hard work wasn’t producing. They were obsessed with taking care of themselves, but weren’t succeeding. It was God Himself who was frustrating their plans because they were failing to obey Him in faith in building for His house instead of their own. (Haggai 1:5-11)
God made promises to the people, and invited them to “consider from this day onward.” (Haggai 2:15) He told them to look at their incomes and look at their productivity and then measure it next to how things would be after they showed faithfulness. He reminded them to look at the fact that “the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate and the olive tree, it has not borne [fruit].” All of the failure they had seen would not be able to compare with the good He was going to do because when they people obeyed, “Yet from this day on I will bless [you].” (Haggai 2:19) By reading Ezra 5-6, we can see that it was accomplished exactly as Haggai prophesied, and was completely funded by Cyrus, and Darius after him.
We need to often “consider our ways” and determine if we are failing to make the time to do God’s word because we are busy with our own projects. Once we begin to be truly faithful, we can “consider from that day forward” how we will have many more successes on spiritual, and many times, physical fronts. God’s faithfulness is reliable and sure, but we will never know the whole of it until we decide to lean on Him while being obedient ourselves.
