The Minstrel's Wife

Haggai 1 vs 8 “Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honoured.”

God was talking to His people about getting on with building a house for Him to dwell in, with His people around Him. They had got distracted by their own affairs and had neglected the work that had been started on the house for God to dwell in. They were acting selfishly and were disobedient to what God had told them to do. To make it even worse, they tried to tell God that He was wrong and made up their own prophesies to compensate!

Haggai 1 vs 2 “The people are saying,’The time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.'”

God wanted the people to see that the house of God was needed. To see that the place to worship God was necessary. It had to be part of their lives and they needed somewhere to honour the God of Israel.

Haggai came back from captivity in Babylon with those who were rebuilding the Temple. He was there and could see how difficult and almost impossible it was for the people of Israel to rebuild the beautiful Temple Of Solomon. Even when they all decided to build a much smaller Temple, it seemed an impossible task to them. They managed to get the foundations and low walls built but then stopped all building for 14 years! This is when God spoke to Haggai with 26 words over 5 days. He told them that they were suffering loss of crops, money and food because they had stopped working on the House of God.

God is not worried about the size of the house. He is worried about your heart in the house that is built for Him. God fills His house with His glory, and He dwells in the house with His people worshipping Him. We are not more “godly” because we build a house for God. We put our lives right in the sight of God as we build His house, and then we become more and more Christlike, more”godly”. We try to make ourselves look better by how big our churches are, or how much they do on a Sunday. We have to put God first, get our hearts in the right place first with God, and then we will see blessing upon blessing in what we do for Him.

Haggai’s message comes through all these years later. If we are trying to make our lives more comfortable, and forget building the church of Christ, we will hit problems and difficulties. If we put God first and make sure our hearts and minds are fixed on Him, He can use us in amazing ways. Life is not about what is in it for us, it is about living for God, and living right.

Building the Church of Christ is not easy. Reaching the lost is hard work sometimes, and can feel we are not really getting anywhere. God never said it would be easy, but that we don’t give up. The finished product is a house He loves and takes pleasure in. A house that He can call His own, and that He dwells in. Since Christ, we are the church. We are the building. God dwells in us and through us. We honour God by our lives, and keep going up the mountain and working on the timber of peoples lives to bring more and more into a right relationship with Him. This is how we now “build church.”