{"id":7767,"date":"2021-08-31T06:38:37","date_gmt":"2021-08-31T11:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/?p=7767"},"modified":"2021-08-20T11:19:34","modified_gmt":"2021-08-20T16:19:34","slug":"devotional-on-haggai-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-haggai-12\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Haggai"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_15516\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15516\" style=\"width: 960px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_1749.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-15516 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_1749-1024x765.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"717\" srcset=\"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_1749-1024x765.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_1749-300x224.jpg 300w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_1749-768x574.jpg 768w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_1749-1536x1148.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_1749-1568x1171.jpg 1568w, http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/IMG_1749.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-15516\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">2013 &#8211; Along Natchez Trace &#8211; David Crockett State Park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The secret to satisfaction<br \/>\nHaggai 1: Take a good, hard look at your life.<br \/>\nThe work of the Temple was put on hold years earlier because people felt they needed to concentrate on the necessities of life. They built homes and cleared land for planting crops. They built walls to protect them in what had become a dangerous land. Meanwhile, the Temple was left in ruins. Now, as they face a devastating drought, God\u2019s man tells them it\u2019s time to take a hard look at their lives. All their building and planting is meaningless without God. Even with plates full of food and warm clothing to wear they\u2019ve faced an inner dissatisfaction with life. Their neglect of the Temple is a symptom of something even more important. Beyond the building, they\u2019ve left the God of the building out on the periphery of their lives. Without him life is empty and meaningless. Their mistake is both colossal and common. The worship of God is not a luxury to be put on hold till \u201cimportant\u201d things are cared for. In fact, worship is a core necessity and without God, nothing ever satisfies. We can\u2019t be too hard on the people of Haggai\u2019s day because we too tend to view worship as something that can be pushed aside as we pursue things we deem to be more important. The issue isn\u2019t that God&#8217;s unhappy with us and will find a way to get back at us for ignoring him. Instead, it\u2019s that when we leave God out, we\u2019re ignoring the central need of our lives. In the case before us, that&#8217;s evidenced by their failure to rebuild the Temple. In our case, it might be that we don\u2019t show a proper interest in the worship of God. When we fail here, we find that all other successes in life taste like failures. When we succeed here, we find that everything else in life finds its proper place.<br \/>\nTake Away: Without the Lord life is empty and meaningless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The secret to satisfaction Haggai 1: Take a good, hard look at your life. The work of the Temple was put on hold years earlier because people felt they needed to concentrate on the necessities of life. They built homes and cleared land for planting crops. They built walls to protect them in what had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1499,6,7],"tags":[129,863,948,1048,1169],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7767"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7767"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15518,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7767\/revisions\/15518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}