Haggai 2:16-17

From that time when one came to a grain heap of twenty measures, there would be only ten; and when one came to the wine vat to draw fifty measures, there would be only twenty. ‘I smote you and every work of your hands with blasting wind, mildew and hail; yet you did not come back to Me,’ declares the Lord.^[1]

God expects faithful obedience to His Word and way. The consequences for disobedience, as set forth in Deuteronomy 28, is that one is blessed for obedience and cursed for disobedience. It would be easy for one to minimalize this judgment and subsequent discipline except that Haggai is absolutely emphatic; it was God Himself who ‘smote the Israelites.’ The expectation was, of course, that the people would repent of their ways and come back into the proper alignment of obedience, yet they did not.

Shocking as it is, some people just don’t ever seem to get the message. They continue to live their lives on the basis of their occasional successes and are willing to accept a certain amount of loss and failure as just the price of seeking fulfillment. But anyone who continues to do the same things repeatedly is considered insane. If everything one has been doing always ends in disaster, if everything to which they put their hands seems to suffer loss then perhaps it is time to consider that maybe, just maybe something is being missed.

Then there are others who justify their behavior by placing the blame for their failures on external forces. The crops failed because of the bad climate that season, or the marriage ended because of their former spouse’s behavior, or the ministry failed because there was just not enough money and the people were unreliable. Somewhere along the line one has to be willing to consider that the continued negative occurrences they experience have come because of their disobedience. Faithful obedience is what God requires of us all. He will do as He promised but we are expected to do our part. What decisions will you make today to walk in obedience to our Lord’s will? I pray you will choose the path of obedience.

Dear Heavenly Father, we confess our disobedience to You today. You are so faithful to us, fulfilling every promise You made and yet we continue to thumb our noses at You and pursue our own agenda. Help us today to consider all that has happened to us in the past and to be honest about those places where we walked in disobedience. We commit this day to change our fortunes, change our present and our future by walking in obedience to Your will for our lives. So strengthen us to that end that no one and nothing will be able to hinder us. This we ask in the precious name of Your Son Jesus. Amen.

^[1] New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Hag 2:16–17.