Haggai 1:14

So the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of the whole remnant of the people. They came and began to work on the house of the LORD Almighty, their God,

From Background Notes [BN] for September 22^nd & 23^rd written by Pastor Bob Brown:

And so, when the text of Haggai 1:14 tells us that Yahweh stirred the spirit of the returned exiles, it thereby announced the act of relinquishing the old reality so that the new one might arrive in its place, the fruit of an inspired undertaking that dared to imagine life in the holy city afterward.

 

Walter Brueggemann reminds us: “The poets teach us how to embrace ‘afterward’ — by loss and grief and hope, eventually to act.”I suggest such an embrace belongs to the dynamic of God’s stirring the spirit of His people. For such an awakening of the human spirit:

God stirs up both leaders and the followers. Sometimes a leader is excited about a project but the followers are not. But the best situation is when everybody is excited about what God is doing. This is another mark of a Goddriven project — God rallies the troops.

The remnant became convinced through the preaching of Haggai that God was in both the leaders and in the project. When God’s presence is in the life and ministry of the leaders and also in the ministry project, there exists one of the most powerful motivators for a ministry task. Around such endeavors, the faithful remnant freely and willingly gathers to serve.  [BN, 9]

Join us this week in Study, Worship, Praise and Celebration at Chicago First Church of the Nazarene:

* Saturday 6:00pm
* Sunday 8:30am & 11:00am, 5:30pm