Consider Your Ways!

"Thus says the LORD of Hosts: "Consider your ways! Go up to the mountains and bring wood and build the temple, that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified," says the LORD." -Haggai 1:7-8


God's people returned from captivity in Babylon. The rebuilding process had begun. Yet for sixteen years since returning and starting the work of rebuilding the temple, the people have not completed the work. They let their own personal problems and projects get in the way of what was really important. God raised up Haggai to preach to these lackadaisical people.

"Consider your ways!" said the Lord to these lazy people. Evaluate what your are doing. Look at the way you live. Is that acceptable? Is it pleasing to God? These people were sixteen years working on a project that should have been completed in a matter of a just a couple years. They had lost sight of the important and focused on the secondary. So God commanded these people, through Haggai, to go get the necessary materials and to start building the temple. The motivation? So that God might take pleasure in it and be glorified.

These verses remind us to consider our own ways. It motivates us to evaluate the course of our lives. Do our lives reveal that pleasing God is of utmost importance to us or do our lives show that our own purposes and projects have gotten in the way of what is really important? Believer, consider your ways! Build a life that is pleasing to the Lord and brings Him glory. This ought to be the aim of life. All other matters are secondary to bringing God glory.