“Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? Now therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts; Consider your ways.” Haggai 1: 4-5
When you think of a house, you think of something that provides security, comfort, and protection. The house represents many things to many people. A cymbal of status, a place to raise our children, our kingdom, our prestige, our home. It can be a fortress or an embassy. A commodity or a necessity. It can be what we make it.
No doubt, many first-time home buyers walk into their house anxious to call it their own. This moment is as much a blessing as an opportunity for temptation. A blessing in that one has a certain dwelling that includes all the benefits therewith. An opportunity for temptation in that you can do with it as you pleased. It is your space to decide what comes in and what goes out. Whom you would let in and whom you would keep out. Your little corner of the world, to build what you choose to build. No doubt, the house and home are a blessing from God, but that is just the secret; it is from God. When you begin to think that you own it, that your house is for your benefit, your glory, and your promotion; then it becomes something else entirely. It has become a mentality based on inward focus. The doors are locked, the gates are barred, and the message is clear. This is for me. A ceiled house was only for the wealthy, and those who strived to be so. Kings build palaces as monuments to their glory and rich men build mansions as a testament to their achievements. Is it time for you to dwell in you cieled houses, and this house lie waste? The prophet posed this pointed question by direct instruction from God, it so effectively articulates the underlying cause of degradation to God’s kingdom. A question that echoes through the ages. Is it time to dwell in your ceiled houses? When the people perish around us? While the nation runs to wickedness? While the people flock to worldliness? Is it time to dwell in our walled off, sealed off, comfortable space? Do we seek to build our kingdom or His? When we seek our own will, our own wealth, and our own way; the cause of Christ suffers. When we separate ourselves from the needs of our fellow man, from the cries of a lost and dying world, God’s house falls into decay. God’s house and his kingdom, they are not built with brick and mortar, rather with sacrifice and commitment to His Spirit and His calling. The calling to further God’s kingdom must be greater than the want to establish our own. The threshold that divides us from the outside world must become a gateway of servitude. Consider your ways. We only have seventy years of profit on this earth and if by reason of strength (the Psalmist says) we get to eighty; then their strength is labor and sorrow. The scriptures exhort us to consider our ways. What are we seeking for, striving for, and building up? Are we working on our own sealed houses of privilege, prestige, and protection? How much greater an endeavor to put our labors to God’s house found in the hearts of sanctified men and women. His eternal kingdom that lives within the hearts of men.
The struggle rages on between our will and God’s will for us. If we allow it, the Word of God will tear down the timber of superfluity and direct us to spiritually profitable labors. It will burn out the wood, hay, and stubble; try each philosophy by fire until the truth stands before us proclaiming: “this is the way walk ye in it.” Lord help us to consider our ways, because the time is short and houses are built, either ours or His.
