Make A U-Turn In The Road Of Life

Make a U-Turn in the Road of Life

By Pastor Jim May

Making your life into what it should be can be compared to building a house in many ways. Each day is another building block; each hour another board; and everything we do becomes another nail in the life we build. Has the life you’ve been building become what you wanted it to be? Does your reality match you dreams? Most of us had great dreams and goals in life that just seem so elusive and we wonder what life has in store around the next corner.

If you are building it alone, it’s easy to get off track or to be drawn aside because you don’t have a good blueprint to follow. There’s only one blueprint that we can use to build a life that is rewarding and fulfilled. That Blueprint is the Word of God, the Holy Bible.

If I was going to try to build a car, would I check out the instruction manual for someone who is a carpenter? If you are going to build a life then you need to check out the instruction manual from the One who created life in the beginning.

We didn’t come from a big bang, or from a monkey, or from some slime that somehow crawled out of the pit and evolved into a man. No, you were created in the very image of God. He looks a lot like you do. He has a body in the form of the Lord Jesus Christ; a spirit in the form of the Holy Spirit, and an eternal soul or existence. He didn’t evolve – He was Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.

I want to draw your attention to the Book of Haggai this morning. Let’s look at what the prophet had to say to Israel and learn from it.

Building a life means that we have to walk some rough roads sometimes. All of us have seen the hard times. We have hit a few potholes in life’s highway. We gave tried building a better life for ourselves by using our wits, through hard labor and a lot of trial and error. Sadly the errors seem to outweigh the right and we find ourselves facing more trials than we expected.

The good new is that God has promised us in John 10:10, "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

Darius, the King of the Persians, was ruling over the people whom God had chosen as His own. Israel was created as a nation, chosen as a people and God was trying to mold them into His own image to the be nation that would bring the gospel message to the whole world.

In the same fashion, Satan rules and reigns over man who was created in God’s image. All of mankind is a slave, conquered by sin, and held in chains of guilt and shame by the enemy of his soul.

Israel, and the temple in Jerusalem, lay in ruins. Nearly 70 years had passed since Nebuchadnezzar had led the Babylonian army into Israel and destroyed the temple. Because of Israel’s sin of rebellion, they would pay 10-fold for their sin. If 7 is God’s number of completeness, then they would sever 10 times more than that for what they did.

Have you been taken captive by the devil? Did he, or does he, have a strangled hold on your life right now? Were you bound in chains while the life that God wanted you to have lay in ruins and wreck? Were your dreams shattered by sin? Were you torn away from the “good life” that you thought would be yours only to be bound and imprisoned in a life that you really didn’t want?

That’s what the condition of Israel was at this time. The God asked a question of his people.

Haggai 1:2-5, "Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the LORD’S house should be built. Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying, Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie waste? Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways."

We can run though life blindly, running as fast as we can, but if we don’t stop and take account of where we came from, where we are and where we are going, then we will probably end up where we don’t want to be. Most people go from day to day with not much thought for tomorrow. What will life be life for me next year, in 5 years, later on, if Jesus tarries? And most of all, where will I be a thousand, or a million years from now. Your soul and your spirit will live forever somewhere. We need to make sure that we are headed for the right place.