"Not Yet---Consider Your Ways" Haggai 1-2; Revelation 17

A church without doors.

Well, you can't get in!

Lots of people feel this way.

The truth is that we want what is outside the doors

more than what is inside.

"The unexamined life is simply not worth living." So says Socrates.  

Do I own up to examining, not as though doing penance, but taking a good hard look at what stirs within.  Why am I jealous? 

What about my sorrow over not being used by God?  

What's with this hidden anger that no one sees but I harbor and hold and hate?  

What about the rotten pride of not wanting to be a part of certain things, people, events?  

What's up with this distance I am trying to honor from my family?  

Why are other things more important than God?  

How can I spend ten times the amount of time on stuff that only matters on earth?

Two little words in this first chapter.  Not yet!  Haggai 1:2 - 

The time has "not yet" come to do God's work.  Well, when will I do it?  

 

Haggai 1:5 Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Consider your ways! You have sown much, but harvest little; you eat, but there is not enough to be satisfied; you drink, but there is not enough to become drunk; you put on clothing, but no one is warm enough; and he who earns, earns wages to put into a purse with holes.”

Haggai 1:14 - Oh God, stir us all up! They knew the exact day. May we know the very moment.
The Lord is with you! Take courage. My Spirit is abiding in your midst. Haggai 2:4-5. O God, open the doors of heaven.  Shake the heavens and the earth.  Open the church doors. 

PRAYER FROM PSALMS
Psalm 24:7 O God, fling wide the Gates, open the Ancient Doors, and let the King come in and invade every one of us this day.  Amen. 

Photo Credit:  Flickr, the Commons.  Van Gogh

12/26