Thursday 21 February 2013

Haggai Helps Us Refocus

Haggai Helps Us Refocus
The Book of Haggai is a horrible essay and one that is legitimate to us today. Haggai was a soothsayer and his writings consists of two simple, plump chapters.

His name avenue "festive" or "celebration." Normal guess the name was known factor for example Haggai was untutored on or keen a celebration day. Assured chew on that his name is related to the celebration of the prophetic reverie concerning the temple and the fame of God.

Once the cover thought is arrogant doable, it is enthralling to memo that Haggai's ministry began on a new moon celebration day and the book history the festivities, which will be enjoyed at any time Yahweh set of laws in the Day of the Lady.

Haggai is both the ceiling in detail not worth it book of the Bible, with the dates of each dressing-down known factor to the regard day. The exactness with which he history these dates suggests that he drive embrace set aside a journal.

HAGGAI'S PANELED Senate


One particular verse stood out for me today at any time reading Haggai.

"Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, what time this store deposit a ruin?" Haggai 1:4

Display is a urgent situation of noble proportions in the spiritual store of God today. The skillful mountain of our world has worn. Greed, idolatry, and delight are the gods of our day, and it is no unexpected in the Create of Christ.

The soothsayer Haggai wrote about a recruits who had lost woe for the plan to build God's store for example they were so courteous on their own worldly needs. It is a death-defying place to get with God. Like our world begins to unequivocal as regards getting bigger our delight, edifice better and best homes, and blemish to make what is vital to God vital in our own lives, this have got to be a spot to us.

Jesus entered the temple area and herd out all who were import and custom hand over. He upside down the tables of the money changers and the benches of persons custom doves. "It is on paper," He meant to them, " 'My store will be called a store of prayer,' but you are making it a hole of robbers'" (Matthew 21:12-13).

I'm moldy, but this is what I respect of at any time I see the mega-churches (the "vocabulary by way of problem" form of "Churchianity" that exists today) that embrace sprung up sideways our clout. These mini-cities commonly bear coffee shops and bookstores surrounded by other possessions on the premises. Why? Do we really plan persons possessions to fetch recruits to church each Sunday? And if they're solitary hand over to make possessions arrogant feasible for decide church-goers I embrace to ask, at any time did separation to make an effort God's Admonition each week become "annoying" to Christians?

I commonly wonder if the millions of dollars not here on constructing such a puzzling and the businesses within can embrace been best not here on the culminate and something like communities, which I'm assured has frequent impecunious families who can put that money to best use on possessions having the status of rations, clothing, and wellbeing.

Jesus came trendy Jerusalem and found the businesspeople import and custom in the temple. As far as they knew, this was an tolerable practice in their day. Their fathers did it, and now they were enactment it. It was concert party as ordinary.

Jesus got preposterous, turned by way of the tables, and meant that His store was a store of prayer. He found the businesspeople of the day seeing His store as a place for remuneration, not prayer. They had stepped trendy a place of conceit that was not tolerable to the Lady. Like we begin to mixture in with the skillful constraint of an cheeky world, we begin losing God's tilt on life.

It is easy to begin blending in with our culture and to abide by what is mortal modeled by the cheeky. God called us to be salt in a world that needs a long way away salt. "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made saline again? It is no longer good for anything, close off to be bewildered out and crushed by men" (Matthew 5:13).

Also of us call for ask ourselves if we embrace lost our salt. Are we having an clash on our world? Or is our world having an clash on us? Ask God to award you a daydream for how you can be salt to your world, your trade of vigor, today.

A Excellent Cape FOR THE Book OF HAGGAI


Once the second notion is an vital one for us to storeroom, I guess hand over is so a long way away arrogant we can refine from a study of this very shrewd, but very vital book.

The uncontrollable phone call seems to be this: We can do it the easy way or the corporation way, but either way, God will get His way. That's why it is vital for me to embrace my priorities recompense and put educate to God cover.

How do you know if you embrace your priorities straight? And if you don't, So do you do about it? I respect Haggai can award us some help in seminal the answers to these questions.

If I was separation to meet a Situation Expansion for the Book of Haggai I would reasonably put out something having the status of this: "Lost priorities in our lives can be diagnosed and treated."

Haggai preached 4 sermons to the recruits which we can interest as follows...

In a pierce, you can say that Haggai is our spiritual doctor and that he gives us an understanding of our spiritual high temperature or our spiritual gain as it exists today. He does this by identifying our "symptoms" and then goes about "prescribing" the antidote.

Strength of mind WE Spot OUR Liquid remedy Be on a par with BIG BOYS AND GIRLS?

In Haggai 1:5 he says, "Accompany your ways!" So is Haggai strenuous to wrongdoer them of? Lost priorities! That was the complicatedness. They were not putting God cover. They were solitary complex with their own comforts a long way away having the status of the world is today.

So was the clarification of the not there priorities? So were the symptoms?

the cover poster was bitterness (verse 6). They were experiencing very proving nothing lives. Accompany what he wrote...

You eat but are not bursting. You glug but don't become smashed - Maybe this refers to recruits who try to transaction with life's troubles by intake too a long way away. It doesn't work. All you do is be given too a long way away weight. I respect this is an view of seeking life and happiness put away delight.

You put on clothing, but no one is indulgent sufficient - Maybe we can repeal this for our culture to say, "You buy new clothes, but the styles repeal." Maybe this is indicative of seeking life put away good opinion.

You earn money and put it in a wallet with holes - I respect ceiling of us can narrate with this. Do you run out of money next to you run out of month? To make up for this do you work so a long way away that you don't embrace time for God or family? Seeking life put away resources.

Haggai condemned them for living in their paneled houses. We can see that they had become vanished with mortal possessions. The refuse to accept we plan to ask is - embrace we?

Flat even if this book was on paper 2,500 years ago, it is very legitimate for today. Haggai says, "Accompany your ways." We plan to storeroom our ways. We plan to undertake our lives and see if we are substandard of these possessions. We plan to ask ourselves, Am I disillusioned with my life? Do I buy lotto tickets theory that doing well the lotto would make sure of all my problems? Do I wish for a best paying job? Do I wish I lived in a better and nicer house? Do I wish I had a new car? Something having the status of a new car or store appeals to all three categories we mentioned times of yore - resources, delight and good opinion (or arrogant personally - aptness). It is wonderful how a long way away misfortune we put trendy these areas theory that they will resolve us, but they never do.

The close poster was drill (1:9-11). Haggai 1:9 says, "You bring it home and God blows it to one side." This is God's operator segment in preventative our attempts to find life deficient Him. How drive God do this to us? Educate us to embrace car troubles or health check bills that claim to one side our money? Why is He enactment this to them? For instance His temple is lying desolate. The old set of laws about blessing and cursing are lazy in effect, and for instance they had their priorities all wrong, God was beginning to bring down curses on them. They were strenuous to find happiness in possessions and God was not separation to let them. You drive compare Hosea 2:5-7.

Their answer was to obey God's phone call and revive the work on the temple. Their educate (repentance/confession) cleared their principles (we drive say) so that they can hold in the highest regard God and brought the Spirit's enablement on them so they can do the work of God.

Their resolve and forward motion was to come from the promise of God's manifestation and His contract. This is the contract of incentive that comes from experienced that God is in limit.

Haggai both dealt with the issues of living clean and godly lives so they would not soil their work and sacrifices. He both urged them to depend on God for life.

And up till now, Haggai gave them reverie for the return by indicative that God was separation to overwhelm their enemies and initiate His land with them, His future recruits.

As a result, the lessons we can claim from Haggai and habit to our own lives today includes...

1. The work of the Lady have got to never be procrastinated (1:3)

2. Lost priorities stop the work of God (1:4,9)

3. The put an end to of God's work is His fame and delight. (1:8)

4. God sometimes uses natural disasters for spiritual drill (1:6,10,11)

5. Compliance and veneration are nuts and bolts for spiritual blessing (1:12-14)

6. It is never too overdue to start obeying God (1:12-15)

7. Nerve comes from experienced that God is highlight (2:1-4)

8. The healing for a discouraged position is to see the divine tilt (2:6-7)

9. Something belongs to and is under the limit of the Lady (2:7-8)

10. Mysticism is not movable (2:11-12)

11. Sin contaminates everything one does (2:13-14)

12. Unruliness brings drill, what time educate guarantees blessing (2:15-19)

13. God is emperor by way of the nations and kingdoms of this world. (2:20-22)

14. The covenants of the Lady are guaranteed to be thorough (2:23)

We would be thorough to prayerfully storeroom what God is strenuous to say to us put away the Book of Haggai for example it's about our own attract to our spiritual well-being.

Don't grieve for what matters ceiling - your connection with your Lady and Savior Jesus Christ.

Optional READING:


A Substantial Study ON HAGGAI

HAGGAI: Less significant Psychic Subsequent to A Solemn Example

Source: practicing-wicca.blogspot.com