Sunday, November 3, 10:00 am worship Five frogs are sitting on a log. Four decide to jump off. How many are left? Five, because deciding is different than doing.
God sends the prophet Haggai to call the people of God to jump off the log. Stop talking about doing it, stop saying you are going to do it. Do it. God brought Israel back from exile. They were to restore the city of Jerusalem and rebuild the temple again. What started with great energy in their return from exile in 538 BC, slowed and stopped by 520 BC. Other priorities took center stage. God sent Haggai to get the people moving again, to call the people of God to put him and his mission at the center again. This is not a call to make God a priority again, but to recognize that life only makes sense and only works when God is at the center of our life together. God is not just one of our priorities, not even just the top priority, Haggai is calling the people of God, then and now, us and them, to recognize that God is at the center of everything. Any other approach to life, in the words of Haggai, is like putting your salary, day after day, week after week, month after month, into a bag with holes. Empty. Worthless.
Haggai is a short book. In preparation to hear God speak to us this Sunday, read and pray through the book of Haggai. God loves us. We can trust him. He has much to teach us through Haggai.
Pastor David