There are times when I read Scripture and a sentence seems to follow me off the page.
That happened recently while I was reading the little book of Haggai.
It is only two chapters long, tucked away near the end of the Old Testament, and I don’t know that I have ever lingered there very long. But this time I found myself thinking about a group of people who loved God, belonged to God, and had every intention of rebuilding His temple—and yet somehow, life had gotten in the way.
They had returned to Jerusalem after years of exile. The temple had been destroyed. Their lives had been disrupted. There was much to rebuild, much to recover, much to do.
And somewhere along the way, God’s house remained unfinished.
The people weren’t necessarily doing terrible things. They were building homes. Planting crops. Earning money. Eating and drinking. Taking care of life.
In other words, they were doing many of the same kinds of things we do.
And then God said something that stopped me:
“Give careful thought to your ways.”
—Haggai 1:5
I can almost hear the Lord saying, Look at your life for a moment. Look at where your energy is going. Look at what occupies your thoughts. Look at what receives your time. Look at what you keep postponing. Is the way you are living consistent with what you say matters most?
That is an uncomfortable question.
Because I can love God very much and still get distracted.
I can genuinely want Him to be first and still find myself spending an enormous amount of mental energy on things that, in the light of eternity, aren’t nearly as important as they feel at the moment.
There are responsibilities to handle. Problems to solve. Relationships to navigate. Decisions to make. Bills to pay. Houses to maintain. Work to do. Plans for the future. Things I want to accomplish. Things I am worried won’t work out.
None of those things is necessarily wrong.
That may be what makes Haggai so convicting.
The people weren’t being confronted because having a house was sinful. The problem was that while they were busy building their own lives, what mattered to God had quietly been left unfinished.
And that made me wonder:
Lord, is there anything like that in me?
Have I become very busy building things that matter to me while neglecting something that matters deeply to You?
Have I become so occupied with my own concerns that I have stopped asking what is on Your heart?
Have I spent so much time asking You to help me with my plans that I haven’t stopped long enough to ask what Your plans are?
That is when this little prayer came to me:
Lord, stir my spirit toward the things that matter to You.
Not merely toward the things that matter to me.
Not merely toward the things that frighten me, excite me, frustrate me, or demand my attention.
Toward the things that matter to You.
Because my heart doesn’t always naturally go there.
I think that is the humbling part.
I wish I could say that because I love God, my desires are automatically and perfectly aligned with His.
They aren’t.
Sometimes I care tremendously about something that may not matter nearly as much to God as it does to me.
Sometimes I become preoccupied with being understood.
Sometimes I want a situation resolved.
Sometimes I want something I am building to succeed.
Sometimes I want security.
Sometimes I want justice.
Sometimes I simply want things to turn out the way I think they should.
And none of those desires is automatically sinful. But they can become so large in my field of vision that I stop noticing what God is looking at.
That is why something else in Haggai caught my attention.
After God spoke, the people responded. They obeyed Him and began rebuilding.
But then Scripture says:
“So the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel… the spirit of Joshua… and the spirit of the whole remnant of the people.”
—Haggai 1:14
I love that.
God didn’t merely stand at a distance shouting:
“Try harder!”
He stirred their spirits.
He awakened something inside them.
He moved their hearts toward what mattered to Him.
And suddenly I realized that this is something I can ask God to do in me.
Lord, stir me.
When I am becoming spiritually sleepy, stir me.
When lesser things are becoming enormous in my mind, stir me.
When I am so busy managing life that I am barely noticing You, stir me.
When I know what You want but don’t particularly want it myself, stir me.
When fear makes me hesitate, stir me.
When disappointment makes me tired, stir me.
When my heart becomes consumed with myself, turn it outward.
When I am building something You never asked me to build, give me the humility to put down the hammer.
And when there is something You are asking me to build, give me the courage to pick it up.
Because I don’t merely want God to bless what matters to me.
I want to learn to care about what matters to God.
And I suspect there is an enormous difference between those two ways of living.
There is another part of Haggai that touches me deeply.
Once the people began rebuilding the temple, some of them remembered what the former temple had looked like.
Solomon’s temple had been magnificent.
What they were building now didn’t compare.
God asked them:
“Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing?”
—Haggai 2:3
I understand that feeling.
Maybe you do too.
Sometimes we look at where we are now and compare it with where we thought we would be.
We think about years that have passed.
Opportunities we missed.
Things we started and didn’t finish.
Decisions we might make differently if we could make them again.
We look at someone else’s life.
Or perhaps we look at an earlier version of our own life and wonder what happened to all those possibilities.
And what we are able to build today can suddenly seem terribly small.
But God did not tell His people to sit among the ruins grieving indefinitely over what used to be.
He said:
“Be strong… and work. For I am with you.”
—Haggai 2:4
That speaks to me.
God is not asking me to rebuild yesterday.
He is asking me to be faithful today.
I cannot go backward and rearrange my life.
I cannot recover every lost opportunity.
I cannot change every decision.
I cannot make myself twenty, thirty, or forty years younger and start again.
But I can wake up this morning and say:
“Lord, here I am. What matters to You today?”
And perhaps that is enough.
Because the significance of what I build is not ultimately determined by how impressive it looks.
It is determined by whether I am building with God.
The people looked at their little temple and saw inadequacy.
God looked at them and said:
“I am with you.”
Maybe that is what makes small obedience enormous.
God is in it.
And then comes another sentence I want to carry with me:
“My Spirit remains among you. Do not fear.”
—Haggai 2:5
There is so much I don’t know about what lies ahead.
Sometimes surrender to God sounds beautiful until I remember that surrender means I don’t get to control where He leads.
It is easy to say, “Lord, Your will be done,” when His will happens to resemble mine.
It becomes something much deeper when I say:
“Even if Your way is different from mine, I still want Yours.”
And I don’t think God expects me to manufacture that kind of surrender through sheer determination.
I can ask Him to produce it in me.
Stir my spirit, Lord.
Make me want what You want.
Teach me to love what You love.
Help me notice the people You notice.
Make me concerned about the things that concern You.
Show me what deserves my energy and what I can finally release.
If I am holding tightly to something You are asking me to surrender, loosen my fingers.
If I have neglected something You are asking me to tend, awaken me.
If I am afraid of where obedience might lead, remind me:
“I am with you.”
Because perhaps I don’t need to know the entire road ahead.
I need to know Who is walking it with me.
The older I get, the less interested I am in simply being busy.
I want my life to mean something.
And increasingly, I think a meaningful life may be much simpler than I have made it.
It is not necessarily doing something enormous.
It is not accomplishing everything I once imagined.
It is not impressing people.
It is not even successfully completing every good thing I could possibly do.
Maybe it is waking up again and again and placing my life before God:
You are God.
I am Yours.
What matters to You?
And then listening.
And yielding.
And following.
And when my heart doesn’t want to follow, asking Him to change my heart.
Because ultimately, I don’t want to spend my life carefully constructing something only to discover that I built the wrong thing.
I want the things that break God’s heart to increasingly break mine.
I want the things that delight Him to increasingly delight me.
I want His priorities to slowly become my priorities.
His compassion to become my compassion.
His purposes to become more important than my plans.
His glory to matter more than my recognition.
His approval to matter more than people’s.
And His presence to become more precious to me than the outcome I was hoping for.
I will not do that perfectly.
My attention will wander.
My priorities will get tangled.
I will become overly concerned about things that aren’t nearly as important as I think they are.
And I will probably need God to say to me many more times:
“Give careful thought to your ways.”
But maybe that isn’t condemnation.
Maybe it is invitation.
An invitation to stop.
To look again.
To remember Who my life belongs to.
And to let Him stir my heart again.
So this is my prayer today:
Lord, stir my spirit toward the things that matter to You.
Quiet the things in me that have become louder than Your voice. Show me where I have become distracted, and where I have been building my own little kingdom while neglecting Yours.
I don’t want to simply ask You to bless everything I have decided to do. I want to know what You want.
Stir my heart when it becomes sleepy. Redirect me when I wander. Give me courage when obedience frightens me. And when what I can offer seems small, help me offer it faithfully anyway.
I cannot rebuild yesterday, but today is still Yours.
My time is Yours.
My abilities are Yours.
My plans are Yours.
My future is Yours.
I am Yours.Teach me to care about what You care about.
And then help me build what You put before me, trusting Your beautiful promise:
“I am with you.”
Amen. ❤️
