Consider Your Ways

There is always something that needs attention around a house.

Something needs to be repaired, cleaned, replaced, organized, paid for, or improved. Even when the house itself is in good shape, there are still meals to prepare, dishes to clean, laundry to fold, schedules to manage, work to finish, bills to pay, and non-stop plans for what comes next.

None of those things are wrong. In fact, many of them are good responsibilities God has entrusted to us.

The danger is that we can become so busy building our own lives that we barely notice what we have stopped building for God.

That is what can make the opening chapter of Haggai so uncomfortable.

God’s people had returned from exile and begun rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem, but the work had stalled. Years passed, and eventually unfinished work on God’s house had simply become part of the scenery. Meanwhile, the people had continued building lives for themselves.

Then God sent Haggai with a message:

“Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Now, therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways.” (Haggai 1:4-5, ESV)

Consider your ways.

In other words, take an honest look at what your life says matters most. That is a question worth considering.

We Rarely Consciously Decide to Neglect God

What strikes me about Haggai is that the people had not necessarily rejected God outright. They were not saying that the temple should never be rebuilt.

Their explanation sounded much more reasonable:

“The time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the LORD.” (Haggai 1:2, ESV)

They still believed it mattered. Just not yet.

That may be one of the more familiar forms of spiritual drift today as well.

We rarely wake up one morning and consciously decide that prayer no longer matters, that serving others can wait, that we are finished growing spiritually, or that God’s work should have no place in our lives. More often, other things simply become more urgent.

We tell ourselves we will become more intentional after work settles down, after the kids get through this stage, after the house project is finished, after finances improve, after the calendar clears, or after life feels less complicated.

The problem is that life has a remarkable ability to remain complicated in all seasons of life.

Eventually, something we always intended to return to can become something we simply learned to live without.

That seems to be what happened in Haggai’s day. God’s house still mattered in theory, but their calendars, energy, and priorities told a different story.

“Consider Your Ways” Requires an Honest Look

Haggai repeats the phrase twice in the chapter: “Consider your ways” (Haggai 1:5, 7).

The people were working hard. They were sowing, eating, drinking, earning wages, and trying to establish stable lives after years of upheaval. Yet God tells them to pay attention to the dissatisfaction underneath all of that activity. They were pouring enormous effort into their own lives while neglecting what He had asked them to do.

We should be careful to see the nuance here. Haggai is describing God’s specific discipline of Judah, not giving us a formula that every difficult season or frustrating year means we have neglected God.

But the question still reaches us: What are our ways revealing?

We can say God matters most while giving Him whatever energy remains after everything else is finished. We can care deeply about our families while becoming so consumed with giving them a comfortable life that we neglect the spiritual health of our families. We can work hard, build careers, improve homes, save money, plan vacations, pursue hobbies, and fill calendars with good things while barely noticing that our attention to God has become thin.

The issue is not whether those things are bad. The issue is what happens when good things receive our best while God repeatedly receives what is left.

Sometimes we need to stop looking at what we intend to value and consider what our actual patterns reveal.

Our Own House Can Mean More Than a House

The phrase that may confront me most in Haggai comes later, when God explains why His house remains unfinished:

“Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.” (Haggai 1:9, ESV)

That word busies feels particularly relevant to our lives today.

Most of us are very busy with our own houses, even if the house itself is not the issue.

Our “house” can be the life we are trying to construct for ourselves. It can include our career, financial security, reputation, children’s activities, comfort, hobbies, plans, possessions, or whatever future we are working hard to create.

Again, Scripture does not condemn responsible work, caring for our homes, providing for our families, or planning wisely. Haggai is not calling us to neglect what God has entrusted to us.

He is confronting the possibility that we can become intensely devoted to building our own personal kingdom while giving relatively little thought to God’s.

That does not mean the modern equivalent of Haggai is simply spending more time maintaining a church building. Under the new covenant, God’s work among His people is far bigger than a physical structure. We participate in what He is doing when we grow as disciples, love our neighbors, serve the church, raise children who know Him, care for people in need, share the gospel, practice hospitality, encourage struggling believers, and use what He has entrusted to us for purposes beyond ourselves.

So perhaps the better question is not simply, How much am I doing for God? It may be, What am I actually building with the life God has given me?

God’s People Responded by Getting to Work

The encouraging part of Haggai 1 is that the people listened.

Zerubbabel, Joshua, and the remnant “obeyed the voice of the LORD their God” (Haggai 1:12). They did not spend months discussing whether Haggai had made a compelling point. They did not admire the message and continue as before.

They responded.

Then God gave them a remarkably simple but powerful promise:

“I am with you, declares the LORD.” (Haggai 1:13, ESV)

God stirred their spirits, and they began working again.

There is something grace-filled about that sequence. God exposes their misplaced priorities, but His goal is not merely to make them feel guilty about the years they lost. He calls them back into faithful participation in what He is doing.

That is still how conviction works. When we realize something has moved out of order in our lives, we do not need to spend the next month condemning ourselves for it. We can simply respond.

Perhaps there is a relationship we need to invest in, a ministry we have been meaning to participate in, a spiritual habit we need to recover or build, someone we need to encourage, generosity we have been holding back, or an opportunity to serve that we keep assuming we will have time for later.

Sometimes “consider your ways” simply needs to become, “What is the next step God is asking me to take?”

Then we begin there.

So let me ask you…

As I ask myself these same questions:

• If someone looked only at my time, energy, attention, and spending, what would they conclude I am primarily trying to build?

• Is there something God has been calling me toward that I keep postponing because “the time has not yet come”?

• Have good responsibilities gradually crowded out my attention to God and His purposes?

• Am I giving God the first and best of my life, or mostly what remains after my own plans are handled?

• What part of God’s work around me have I grown accustomed to leaving unfinished?

• If I genuinely considered my ways today, what is one priority I might need to rearrange?

These questions are not meant to make us feel guilty for having homes, careers, plans, or responsibilities. They are meant to help us remember what all of those things are ultimately for.

A Closing Word for Fellow Pilgrims

The people in Haggai’s day had become busy building their own lives while God’s house remained unfinished. They did not necessarily stop believing in God. They simply allowed His priorities to keep sliding behind their own.

I suspect that is a much greater danger for most of us than outright rebellion.

We can love God and still become distracted. We can sincerely want to serve Him and still postpone obedience. We can fill our lives with good things and eventually discover that we have spent most of our strength building something that ends with us.

Haggai’s words invite us to stop long enough to notice.

Consider your ways.

Not so that we become afraid of enjoying the lives God has given us, but so that we remember whose lives they are.

The God who told His people, “I am with you,” has not abandoned us to build faithfully on our own. In Christ, He has drawn near, given us grace for what we have neglected, and invited us again into His work.

There is still time to reorder what has drifted. There is still work worth doing.

Perhaps faithfulness begins by looking honestly at what we have been building and asking whether it ultimately serves God’s Kingdom or merely our own.

Until the journey is complete,

Jonathan Pilgrim

P.S. Take a few minutes this week and look at your calendar and where your time, energy, and money are going. Do not begin with guilt - just consider your ways. Ask God to show you one area where your priorities may have drifted, and choose one concrete step that puts His work back in its proper place.