“I can’t. I’m busy!” These piercing words stopped me as they spilled out of my 2-year-old’s mouth. He was happily building a fire station with his beloved Duplo blocks, but the train tracks, which I’d asked him several times to pick up, remained scattered across the living room.
His response revealed not only a disobedient spirit (he did eventually clean them up) but also his priorities: play over picking up.
Yet the reason I stopped wasn’t my son’s disobedience or misplaced priorities; it was because those words were an echo of my heart. My son had heard me say those words aloud, and God had heard me whisper them in my spirit: “But God, I can’t, I’m already doing so much.”
By his grace, God used the prophet Haggai to convict me and help me reorder my day to prioritize his purposes over my plans.
Misplaced Priorities
In Haggai’s first chapter, we read that although the temple had been destroyed, God’s people didn’t think the time had come to rebuild it (v. 2). Instead, they prioritized building their homes and chasing personal success.
But in verses 5–6, the Lord says to them,
Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.
The Israelites were planting, eating, drinking, dressing, and earning wages, but ultimately, it was all fleeting and futile. They were busy with the wrong things.
The Israelites were busy with the wrong things.
So often, we’re like the Israelites. We pursue productivity, job success, endless pleasures, do-it-all parenting, and even ministry opportunities over God’s commands and will. Like the Israelites, we need to consider our ways.
Consider Your Ways
Reading on in verses 7–8, we find the command repeated: “Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD.”
The command is twofold: “Consider your ways” and “Go.”
Twice, God commanded the Israelites to consider their ways. The idea communicated here is to give thought to, to examine carefully, or to keep a close watch over. For us, this may involve asking questions like these:
- How am I spending the time God has given me?
- Are there things in my life I should lay down for the sake of pursuing the Lord?
- What do I need to say no to today?
- Am I seeking the Lord by spending time in prayer and in his Word?
- Do I listen and obey quickly when the Spirit directs me?
Next, we “go” and do the work. For the Israelites, this meant gathering wood and building the Lord’s temple. What does it mean for you? What work has God laid before you that you need to step into today?
Here’s where we need the Spirit’s guidance. Harvesting, eating, and earning wages weren’t inherently evil, but they weren’t what God had asked the Israelites to do. Playing with his blocks was a fun and good activity for my son, but it wasn’t what I’d asked him to do. Though God is sovereign and in control over our days, we must readily surrender to his will, laying down our plans along the way.
This will look different for each of us, but ultimately, it involves walking obediently and keeping our eyes on eternity. So at work, we don’t let the project deadline become more important than the spiritual conversation in the hallway with a lost coworker. At home, we don’t let the laundry piles take priority over intentional time in the Word. Yes, there’s work to be done, but we hold it openly, asking God in each moment what he’d have us do.
For His Glory
There’s a final lesson we see from these few verses in Haggai. In verse 8, God shares why the Israelites are to build the temple: “That I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the LORD.” Everything God has done, is doing, and will do is for his glory.
But what does this mean? To glorify God is to exalt his character and attributes, praise him for what he has done and will do, trust him with everything, revere him, obey his Word, and seek to honor him as Lord in every area of our lives. It means we take the opportunities he gives us to make him known in our speech and actions.
God is sovereign and in control over our days, but we must readily surrender to his will, laying down our plans along the way.
This is why our priorities matter. When we surrender our plans to God’s purposes, we center our days around his glory, not our own. Do our days revolve around God and his purposes? Or are we so busy that we forget and, intentionally or not, allow our schedules to blind us to the work of eternity?
That day, I had the opportunity to sit down with my son and share a simple truth: God values our obedience. We cleaned up the train tracks together, and then I sat with him playing with Duplo blocks, knowing in that moment that grace for my son and simple spiritual conversations took priority over my mile-long to-do list. In these day-to-day moments, we can consider our ways, do the work God has called us to do, and, ultimately, glorify him.