Ancient Thoughts...

I was reading Haggai this morning as part of my quiet time and in Chapter 1, God basically says, "You are living it up while there's no temple. So I've been making things hard on you. Build a temple and things will be better."

And at first I thought that was kind of...selfish maybe? I don't know. It just seems like God doesn't NEED a temple (a House, as Haggai calls it), right?

But then I had two thoughts. First, the repeated phrase, "Give careful thought to your ways." Not to your ACTIONS or to your INTENTIONS but to your WAYS. Ways are habits. Ways are personality traits. Ways are the deeply entrenched things in our lives. Give careful thought to that which you do out of the very center of who you are.

And that opened up realization number two - God doesn't need a house/temple/church - but WE do - we need a place to worship God. Yes, we can worship God in the living room or in the woods or driving or whatever - but we won't. We will be too distracted by everything else. Oh, we'll have moments of worship, and we'll have good intentions. But there needs to be a space - an actual, physical place - where we can say, "I worship God HERE." And that place has to become ingrained in us - part of our WAYS.

So it's not God saying I need a house, but God saying YOU need a house for me to be worshiped in. Otherwise, you won't do it. How do I know? Because they WEREN'T worshiping God. They were living selfishly with no real thoughts toward God.

"Give careful thought to your ways."