Lastly, we get to the key verses and the final lesson from the Prophet Haggai. When God stirs our Spirit, we need to respond. The whole remnant was stirred by the prophetic Word of the Lord and they all came to work on the temple. If only we would respond accordingly as well to the promptings of God in our own lives. The truth is we often do not listen to the promptings from God. We do not listen to the promptings from the Holy Spirit unless it fits into some pre-conceived narrative we are seeking "confirmation" for. I fear sometimes that the Lord Himself can come into our house at night and proclaim to us that He wants us to read the Bible every day and we would respond that we need to pray about it first!
A great deal of the problem is that we can fall into the trap of rarely attributing negative things in our life as spiritual. If something happens that is positive it is - Praise God Hallelujah! But if something negative happens we find a worldly excuse for it so we do not have to examine ourselves and see what shape our temple is in. The danger of course is that this approach means we will never feel the chastening of the Lord. We will never feel when God wants us to correct something. In American Christianity the reasons for this approach can be found within the story from Haggai:
Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the whole remnant of the people obeyed the voice of the Lord their God and the message of the prophet Haggai, because the Lord their God had sent him. And the people feared the Lord. -- Haggai 1: 12 (NIV)
And the people feared the Lord. Let me say that again -- and the people feared the Lord. The bottom line fact in this country is we rarely fear the Lord anymore. We rarely hear sermons preached about the absolute necessity to fear God in our lives. Modern seeker-friendly theology teaches us that God is our buddy instead of our Lord. Why did they fear God here? They had just been allowed to go home after 70 years in captivity in Babylon. They knew the Torah where God had threatened them with captivity. They were able to put one and one together and realized that if God wants the temple rebuilt -- they better get to rebuilding. They were stirred in their spirit.
We however do not always respond to the stirring of our Spirit. With the promises of love and prosperity blanketing the Christian airwaves we see only one side of God. We no longer see the wrathful God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. We no longer see God as our King, who according to the Bible chastens us because He loves us. When something bad happens in our lives we reflect to human logic and worldly excuses so that we do not have to take a spiritual inventory and see the ruins of our temple lying all around us. When something good happens we use it to pretend we are more spiritual than we really are.
But if we were honest with ourselves we would admit to a nagging sense of emptiness in our lives. We would admit to a sense of unease and dissatisfaction in our lives. We would take a good look around and realize that our temple needs some work. We need to at least start paying as much attention to our God as we do to our coffee. I pray that when God stirs our spirit that we understand what it means and that we respond accordingly. The paneled house we have built will not withstand the test of time but the temple I take into eternity.
Reverend Anthony Wade -- June 14, 2012
