Consider Your Ways (in the New Year)

Haggai 1:3-7 - Then the Lord sent this message through the prophet Haggai: “Why are you living in luxurious houses while my house lies in ruins? This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: Look at what’s happening to you! You have planted much but harvest little. You eat but are not satisfied. You drink but are still thirsty. You put on clothes but cannot keep warm. Your wages disappear as though you were putting them in pockets filled with holes! Thus says the LORD of Armies; Consider your ways.

This message is bang on target to all of us today. We live a life and are never satisfied. We may be happy for the moment but we have no joy. We struggle to let ends meet, we struggle to satisfy our needs and our pleasures, we struggle to satisfy our desires, we struggle to satisfy our security, but yet things just take a U turn all of a sudden!

The reason is the same. We are not taking care of the Temple of God. We as believers of Jesus Christ become priest to God. We also become substitute Head priest to a Temple: which is our body. Our hearts (our minds, our will, our nature, our conscience & our throne) is the inner Temple where God dwells. We all are more concern of our bodies and fulfilling its desires but ignore our inner Temple. Since we do this we fail to have the joy and satisfaction in our whole being.

Let us not give so much concentration to our bodily needs but more to strengthen, purify and decorate our inner Temple. This we can do by building ourselves in God’s Word, by sanctifying ourselves and by increase in the fruit of the Holy Spirit (which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control).

[ Prayer ]

Lord, You dwell in me. I am your Temple. I am sorry that I did not take care to cleanse this place. Lord I make my mind from today that I will start this process. For this I would still need your help, without which I will fail. I ask this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

[ Reference Scriptures ]

Galatians 5:22-23a

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

23 gentleness, self-control; …..

Acts 20:32

32 And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.