Help Wanted - Haggai Type Needed

It has been awhile since I have really interacted with this blog. I look at it as a reflection on my life. I have been tired - physically, mentally, and spiritually. I have lost my focus.

If you were to read the book of Haggai, you would find that the Israelites were going about their business taking care of their own needs and ignoring God. A little context for this story. Israel had returned to Jerusalem and had begun to rebuild the temple and the walls around the city (see Ezra 1-4). While they were doing this the people living in the area where causing them some problems. At the end of chapter 4 we read that the "work on the house of the Lord had come to a standstill." Now they had received word from the king to stop work, and I think they had become weary of the problems of the world around them and may have even been relieved to stop work. This is the picture we get in Haggai. The people weren't moping around, they were living their lives in paneled houses, planting, harvesting, going on with life. They justified their lack of work on the temple by saying that "the time has not yet come to build the house of the Lord" (Haggai 1).However, this life seems to have been one of futility.

For me there has been opposition, business of life, lost focus on the building of my walk with the Lord. This temple of God has been left uncompleted. I am looking for a Haggai to come along and stir up my heart (I don't know if this is a figurative or literal Haggai). I need to regain clarity and focus in my walk. I think that acknowledgment of this is the first step in the restoration process. I been here before, we have all been here before. It is part of our maturing process.

Here is an interesting side note to this story. As you may or may not know, on Wednesdays I meet with a group of men in Lino Lakes prison as we work through some Heart of a Warrior material. I always begin the night with a random question to get the men engaged and then I share a little bit of what I have been thinking, reading, or blogging. Last Wednesday I was going to share my Haggai thoughts, but didn't have a question. One of the offenders offered up the question, "Where is your faith today?" It fit with where I was going with my thoughts, so I opened it up to the men. The first interactions were the "fluff" answers. You know, those that you don't really put a lot of thought into. I then shared about my lost focus and spiritual drifting which then in turn led a couple of the other (one was the one that ask the question) to express their own lost focus. I was interesting that they all thought that they were alone in this "lost state." We were then able to have some great follow-up conversations.

My question to you is, "How is your focus?" Are you in need of a Haggai or can you play the role of Haggai in someone's life? Read Haggai and Ezra for the job description and see if you qualify.