Obedience: it’s your key to victory and blessing

In Haggai chapter one, we see a group of people whom God told eighteen years previously to rebuild His house. They still had not obeyed Him, yet they didn’t understand why their lives were a mess. They wondered why God was not blessing them. So He said to them, “Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, and this temple to lie in ruins?…Consider your ways! You have sown much, and bring in little; you eat, but do not have enough; you drink, but you are not filled…you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and he who earns wages, earns wages to put into a bag with holes.…Go up to the mountains and bring wood and build the temple, that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified” (vv. 4-8 NKJV). When God says, “Consider your ways,” He’s asking you to stop and examine your life. If you are not satisfied with the way things are going, is it because you have not done what He told you to do? James wrote, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17 NKJV). The words “no variation or shadow of turning” mean that God is intrinsically good, and He longs to shower your life with His goodness. But to experience it, you must walk in obedience. “No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11 NKJV). Obedience is your key to victory and blessing.