Chapter one begins the prophetic journey of Haggai's message. Haggai has received this message from the Lord now being delivered to the governour of Judah and unto the high priest. We clearly see in verses two through twelve this message the state of apathy, aloofness, and misjudgement in priorities that had caused the temple to be incomplete. We have done the same things in our lives at one time. We have stated that we will get back to our daily prayers and Bible studies when we get time. We, like the children of God in Haggai's time, need to reestablish our priorities and put first things first in order to place God at the center of your commitments.

It is possible to be finacially prosperous while being Spiritually bankrupt. We see the kingdom mandates become almost exinct while we have expensive houses. The state of the holy temple lays in ruins while we enjoy our ivory towers. It's not the ivory tower that is wrong in and of itself, it's the excessive energies and idolistic mentalities we give ourselves in the name of the ivory tower while we let the holy temple, the church of God, and our Spiritual lives decay. The material gain is not wrong in itself, but acquiring those possessions at too great a cost to the point where you can not maintain your Spiritual nourishment is. Jesus asked the question in Mark 8:36 "What would you gain, if you own the whole world but destroy yourself?" This first chapter almost sounds like a parallel to the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes where Solomon question the use of gaining the whole world but losing your soul.

In verse seven of Chapter one, we see God tell Haggai to think about what God had said concerning rebuilding the temple while they gathered wood to rebuild the temple. In other words, it's time to tend to unfinished business. This temple that Haggai spoke of rebuilding, much like our own lives, is unfinished business. Where Gods children stopped building a temple on a firm foundation, many of us at some point of our life quit building our lives on the firm foundation of the Rock of Ages. We see God telling Haggai to get the Israelites to get back on track and finished the work of the temple. God is speaking to many of us today (I included) to get back on track and allow God to guide us in the rebuilding of the holy temple to where His presence can once again dwell within. Whether it's a lack of prayer, study of the Word, or loss of accountability with fellow believers, God is ready, willing and able to reestablish your priorities. But there is one catch! We must be the ones who choose to finish the journey. Where it took a prophet, governor, and a high priest to be obedient and allow God to lead them in this endeavor, It takes you allowing God to lead you in this endeavor called life to rebuild your temple.

Where the first eleven verses of chapter one established a status report of what has happened, a root cause of why it happened, and a status of the damaged caused by the neglect, apathy, disobedience, and the pursuit of ivory towers over holy temples, the rest of the book of Haggai shows the progress of God's corrective / preventive actions in place to rectify the situation at hand. The rest of chapter one shows the leadership of God's people getting behind a vision and doing whatever it takes to implement it. When a person of noble respect gives leadership a mandated mission to accomplish a spiritual task, it takes the full support of leadership and the authority vested in leadership to make things easier and establish the necessary commitment to accomplish the task at hand. Even though this project was short-term in completion, the rammifcations were long-term. When the leadership of Zerubbabel and Joshua reaffirmed the Lord's commitment brought forth by Haggai, the construction was restarted and the mission was in order. Priorities became aligned to the will of God. Instead of an ivory tower, the people built a holy temple.

When you stress your need to get your priorities right with God and your local Church leadership reaffirms God spoken word to you and gets behind your quest, you will see the reconstruction of your life take place. As the ruins of poor choices are cleared out in search of firm foundations, the refocusing of your life will be redirected from building an ivory tower composed of your wealth and humanistically inspired ideologies to building an indwelling of a holy temple for the Holy Spirit to live in. Apathy will be replaced with dilligence, laziness will be replaced by industriousness, and "me" will be replaced by the deisres of "He (Jesus Christ)". Many of you right now are seeing the light in what is being read, I will pray for you at the end of this article. Some of you have restarted this building process and you feel like you are seeing none or little results. I want to encourage you to keep pressing on towards the goal and continue allowing God to build a holy temple through you. Some have started and got so frustrated that you have quit, the struggle and pain got too difficult to bear. The Lord says to you "Get back up. I am not finished with you yet!!!"

Instead of building holy temples of people geared towards Great Commission kingdom mandates, the churches have instead adopted a corporate mentality of building ivory towers of irrevalent architecture we call home while the Holy Spirit grieves because the home the Holy Spirit desires to live in is too busy building ivory towers of agendas. Once powerful churches that were located in the hustle and bustle of urban life and became powerful through the Great Commission mandate of reaching the lost in these areas have now retreated to the suburbs in the name of "demographics" and "high crime". While some churches continued to migrate into the urban streets to continue their care ministries via a church van, many churches adopted the "out of sight, out of mind" mentality and turned their backs on the people who need Jesus the most. Power and glory was replaced by numbers and money. Fighting spiritual battles was replaced by "I refuse to receive it". While the people had plenty, they believed they were lacking and wanted more. The corporate ivory tower churches chose to build well oiled machines of fulfilling agendas rather than allowing God to build holy temples firmly on His Word. The problem is that we think the ivory tower is the holy temple and to not have the ivory tower called holy temple is living short of the blessings of God and unacceptable for 'King's Kids'!! "It must be our lack of faith." No, there is no lack of faith in your desire. However, there is a true lack of faith by not accepting the truth of infallable scriptures telling men and women to be the temple of the Holy Spirit offering pure and holy praises to God.

Click here for part three of "Ivory Towers or Holy Temples".