"God’s Care and Judgement XVIII"
Did you know God cares what you do with your resources? I'm sure you already know this truth, but I'm asking about more than information. I'm asking: Did you know God's concern with how you manage your resources includes how you use them in relationship with him? Haggai 1:5 says, "Now therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: 'Consider your ways!'" (NKJV).
Speaking through the prophet Haggai in about the year 520 B.C., God points out that his people live in luxurious homes while the temple is in ruins (verses 3-4). In fact, the reference to "paneled houses" in verse 4 is not merely a reference to the Israelites having dwellings, but rather indicates a level of wealth suggestive of extreme affluence. Basically, God's people in the 520s B.C. were surrounded by wealth - which makes their disregard for rebuilding the temple all the more glaring and shocking. God even points out that their preference for themselves in material wealth and disregard for taking care of God's temple has resulted in the people of Israel experiencing a lack in food and drinking water, bad harvests, worn out clothing, and meager earnings (verse 5).
Given this context, Haggai 1:5 easily looks like God's statement on stewardship: God's "thus says the Lord" is meant to help us recognize that we need to give money and resources to "God's work." But a closer look at Haggai 1:5 reveals God is more concerned with how you steward your heart than with how you steward your money.
When God says, "Consider your ways," what he literally says in Hebrew is, "Place your ways on your heart." In Haggai 1:5, God isn't insisting that he get his fair share of Israel's material goods. Instead, God is using his "thus says the Lord" to give them an invitation - to gently get their attention and say, "All I'm asking is that you consider what you're doing. You're paying attention to your house and your crops and your business and your stomach, but you're really not paying any attention to me." Israel's problem was not that they were handling their resources poorly, it's that they weren't paying attention to their relationship with God - which caused them to handle their resources poorly!
Friends, God says the same thing to us today: Thus says the Lord, place your ways on your heart. Maybe God is convicting you that you spend more time thinking and planning for your house, hobbies, wealth, retirement, cars and boats, vacation, kids and family, or any other really good thing, but that God gets very little (if any) of your attention or prioritization. If this is the case, I encourage you to reconsider your priorities and values - to place your ways on your heart - because "thus says the Lord."
God bless,
Pastor Nathaniel Gamble
