Most household habits are invisible to the people who have them. The takeaway on the way home every Friday. The phone upgrade taken because the offer came through. The bills left in the drawer until the red letter arrives. The unused room that slowly fills with things nobody wants to sort. None of it feels like a decision. It is just how the house runs.
The prophet Haggai spoke to people with very similar blind spots. They had returned from exile and started to rebuild their lives. They were putting up their own houses, some of them fine ones with panelled walls, while the house of God lay in ruins. And they could not understand why, for all their effort, they never seemed to get ahead.
“Consider your ways”
God’s message through Haggai begins with a plain instruction, repeated for emphasis. In the King James wording: “Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways” (Haggai 1:5). Then comes a description anyone with a tight budget will recognise. They had sown much and harvested little. They ate and were not satisfied. They put on clothes and were still cold. And the one who earned wages earned them only to put them into a bag with holes (Haggai 1:6).
A purse with holes. Money goes in on payday and somehow is gone by the middle of the month. You cannot point to any single extravagance. It just leaks.
Haggai’s point was spiritual first: the people had put their own comfort ahead of God. But the instruction he gave is also deeply practical. Consider. Stop. Look carefully at what you are doing and where it is leading.
Repentance is a change of mind
When John the Baptist called people to repent (Matthew 3:2), the word carried the sense of a change of mind that leads to a change of direction. It is not only feeling sorry. It is seeing differently and then walking differently.
Paul makes a similar point in Romans 12:2, urging believers not to be conformed to the pattern of this world but to be transformed by the renewing of their minds. Habits are patterns. Many of our household patterns were absorbed from advertising, from what the neighbours have, or from how we were raised. Changing them starts with seeing them clearly, and that can be uncomfortable.
Considering our ways at home
What might it look like to take Haggai’s instruction seriously in a household today? Perhaps something like this:
- Sit down together with the last three months of bank statements and simply read them, without blame. Where are the holes?
- Walk through the house and ask which rooms are working for the family and which have become storage for things you do not need.
- Notice the conversations that happen at home. Are there habits of speech, sarcasm, silence or shouting, that have become normal?
- Ask honestly where God fits into the household’s priorities, in time and in money, and whether He has been getting what is left over.
The goal is not to feel guilty. It is to see. Most people are surprised by what they find, and most find at least one leak that can be fixed quickly.
What happened next
The encouraging part of Haggai is how quickly the people responded. Their leaders and the whole remnant obeyed and began to work on God’s house. And the message that came back to them was short and warm: “I am with you,” says the Lord (Haggai 1:13). God did not wait for them to have everything in order. He met them at the point of turning.
That is true for us as well. Breaking a habit is rarely a single heroic act. It is a turning, followed by many small steps in the new direction: cancelling one subscription, cooking one more meal at home, opening the bills on the day they arrive, praying together once a week. God is with us in the turning, not only once we have arrived.
For reflection
- Where does your household’s money, time or attention seem to leak away without anyone deciding it should?
- What is one habit you could begin to turn from this week, and who could help you keep at it?
Lord, help us to consider our ways with honesty and without fear. Show us where our home has drifted from You, and give us the grace to turn. Thank You that You are with us as we change. Amen.
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