• Consider this: “Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?” Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but 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” (Haggai 1:3-6).
• I find fascinating the suspension of the ordinary “laws” of daily human life, including those of economics and physiology.
What’s clear is that above the rules that govern daily life there is another order. The result is you may obey the ordinary law (working hard to get ahead; eating to be satisfied), only to find that God has overruled the application of that law in your life. Things don’t seem to work anymore.
• He does this to teach us. The fundamental teaching is that God is sovereign over the world he has made and is free to violate its usual principles of operation. More specifically, he intends for us to live in this world not according to, or accountable to, its now fallen order and value system, but according to the order and values of the Kingdom of God. This is what we mean when we pray, “…thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
• The result is an “odd” economics (“one man gives freely and has all the more,” Pr 11:24); an odd biology (“dying and yet we live,” 2 Cor 6:9); an odd psychology (“for when I am weak, then I am strong,” 2 Cor 12:10). Much of the absence of the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church is due to Christians thinking the principles of the Kingdom of God are only concepts for the life of the mind: we should “believe” them but not act on them. This idea is from hell.
• To live out “… on earth as it is in heaven” is the life of faith to which you are most definitely called. Many of us are very committed to conserving our money, our energy, our lives — thinking we will gain in all three categories. But the purse has holes in it. We have forgotten the first principle of the practical life in Christ: “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Mt. 6:32). Yes, you can rest when you are weary. But the purpose of even that rest is to gain strength to pour yourself out for Christ. Let the time that is past suffice for doing as the gentiles do: now is the time to pursue God.