Haggai 1:14b-15

They came and began to work on the house of the LORD Almighty, their God, on the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month.

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

Anxiety belongs to the spirit of our time, and its eroding and corrosive force filters into the life of the Christian community. Faced with economic distress, persons or whole communities react with skepticism, anger, depression, and fear. What we learn from general studies is this: fearful people do not have much energy to attempt anything bold that would put them at further risk.

Overcoming that kind of fear is the task of faithful proclamation, of the sort we find in the person of Haggai (and his peer, Zechariah). But such preaching does not ignore or deny the reality of anxiety in human experience.15 As we have already seen in Haggai 1:1-11, the prophet confronts the Judah’s withdrawal into self-absorption by honestly lining out the causes. This week’s study underscores the power such confrontational preaching had on fearful Judah who had retreated behind flimsy make-shift houses, shutting out the temple ruins.[BN, 10]

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