Whose House Is This?

I had a cool little game as a kid that I remember playing at my Grandparent’s house. I’m sure they have some updated version of this game with flashing lights and sound effects but I guess I was on the cutting edge of awesome games since my blocks weren’t black and white. Anywho…this game was a simple one. The game consisted of a box with different shaped holes and inside the box there were shapes that would fit inside each hole. The object of the game was to be able to figure out which block went inside which hole. It was rather complicated. From time to time I’ll still drag it out and see if I can finish it.

I remember my old youth minister talking about how there is a “God shaped hole in your heart that can only be filled by God.” It always reminded me of that game I used to play with the blocks. Every once in a while I’d see if I could fit the round block into the star hole just to see if the tables had turned…you never know about those things…but it never worked. We spend so much time trying to fill ourselves with things that are not God and no matter how much we push, the blocks just don’t fit.

I think C.S. Lewis said it best in Mere Christianity, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” We are constantly chasing desire after looking for things that do not measure up to God only to find out that He is what we need. God wants to be seated on the Throne of Your Heart but the problem is when He gets there He usually finds it already occupied.

I decided this week to pick a Minor Prophet and camp out there for a while. Haggai has been my focus in my reading this week and has spoken so loudly things I needed to hear. The LORD spoke in 1:5-6, “Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it."

Israel has been trying to put the wrong blocks in the wrong holes for a while now. They can’t figure out why things won’t add up so God goes on to explain it to them in verses 7-9, “Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored. You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why? Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.”

God used to meet His people in His house, the Temple. Now His house is inside of us through the Holy Spirit. The challenge question is when you break down your day to day activities, how much time is spent building God’s house?