Many experts say America has been suffering the worst drought since the infamous Dust Bowl of the ‘30s.
“The heat and the drought are so bad in this southwest corner of Georgia,” wrote the New York Times last summer, “that hogs can barely eat. Corn, a lucrative crop with a notorious thirst, is burning up in fields. Cotton plants are too weak to punch through soil so dry it might as well be pavement….
“The pain has spread across 14 states, from Florida, where severe water restrictions are in place, to Arizona, where ranchers could be forced to sell off entire herds of cattle because they simply cannot feed them…. The question, of course, becomes why.”
The Jews asked the same question back in the sixth century b.c. after their return to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile.
They had begun to rebuild the Temple that was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar about 70 years earlier. But the locals opposed them, and they stopped building God’s house and turned their attention to building their own.
“The time has not yet come for the Lord’s house to be built,” they said.
Then God sent a drought.
In 720 b.c., through a prophet named Haggai, God suggested that the people “Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have 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….because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops. I called for a drought on the fields and the mountains, on the grain, the new wine, the oil and whatever the ground produces, on men and cattle, and on the labor of your hands.”
Then, God said, “You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?” declares the Lord Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.”
The Bible teaches us that what we see in the natural is often a reflection of what is happening in the spiritual realm.
Just as there is a physical drought in our land, the Church has been experiencing a spiritual drought.
In Israel, when God dried the fields and withered the vines, there was not enough for grain and wine offerings. Because the sheep and cattle could find little to eat, Levitical worship and sacrifice were impeded.
So too, the Church has dried out. Living water no longer flows from us to the nations. Our worship is dry and shallow. Our prayers are rote. Instead of being the counter-culture God has called us to be—salt and light, a city on a hill—we have become little more than a subculture, an annoyance, a joke. Powerless and empty.
Why? Because we have left off building God’s house, his kingdom, and poured all our efforts into building our own lives. A glance at most Christian bookstore reveals shelf after shelf of self-help books. Our resources are pumped into mega-building projects and social programs for church-goers. We’ve exchanged discipleship for development.
You can read the result in the headlines. Just as the absence of light is the direct cause of darkness, the abdication of the Church is the direct cause of an increasingly dysfunctional world.
We were created by God to be fruitful and increase in number, not just through procreation but by making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything God has commanded us. We are to fill the earth and subdue it, not as tyrants, not by force or politics, but by revealing the goodness of our Father and reflecting the love of his Son.
“Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house,” the Lord told Israel, “so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored. I am with you.”
Those last four words are the one thing that sets Christians apart from anyone else on earth. Not our Bible, worship, teaching, purity, or anything else. Our only distinctive is the manifest presence of God.
In the day of Haggai, the Lord Almighty said, “In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory. The silver is mine and the gold is mine. The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house. And in this place I will grant peace.”
Have you noticed? Everything that can be shaken in the world—and in your life—is being shaken, so that what cannot be shaken will remain.
The Lord is calling us to take our eyes off ourselves—off our circumstances and needs and faults and mistakes—and put them on him. He is urging us to stop trying to help ourselves, stop trying to build ourselves up, and begin again to build his kingdom.
When we apply ourselves to discipleship, to building his kingdom, God will see to the rest. And we will have all the resources we need, for all the silver and gold on the planet belongs to our Father.
And the glory of the Church in these latter days will be greater than the glory of the early Church.
