When Discouragement Sets In, Trust The Process

Pre Intro: Good Morning Church! ( whats up Guys) If you have your Bibles, Go ahead and turn to the book of Haggai. Now you may have never heard a sermon out of the book of Haggai, and if not, you’ve been missing out because Haggai, is a small but powerful book. In this book, the prophet Haggai is preaching to a group of very discouraged Israelites, who have let their discouragement pull them off track.

So Haggai starting in verse one it reads:

Haggai 1:1–5 “In the second year of King Darius, on the first day of the sixth month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, the governor of Judah, and to Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest: “The Lord of Armies says this: These people say: The time has not come for the house of the Lord to be rebuilt.” The word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: “Is it a time for you yourselves to live in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?” Now, the Lord of Armies says this: “Think carefully about your ways:”

Intro: So growing up, my parents, being good parents, would assign me and my siblings specific chores to do around the house. And my task for the longest time was taking out the trash. Now this task has two parts, first, when the trash can in the house gets full, tie the bag and throw it into the big can outside. Second, every Wednesday roll the big garbage cans outside, to the end of road for the big garbage truck which came every Wednesday to pick up. Very simple right? Well somehow I would many times find a way to mess it up. I remember one time on this summer Wednesday morning, my Dad came into my room and said “Seth, don’t forget to take the trash to the side of the road”, and what did I do? I shrugged him off and went back to what I was doing. Later that day, my Dad came back and asked, “Did you take the trash to the road yet?” I said “no, I will get to it though” and he said “Go ahead and do it now so you don’t forget”, and what did I do? I shrugged him off and went back to what I was doing. Eventually I was just chillin in my room playing video games, and I heard a terrifying noise, I heard the loud garbage truck and when I looked through my window, I saw it drive right by my house because I hadn’t taken the trash to the side of the road. I’ll tell you my Dad was livid, and for the next week I had to deal with the consequences of A) My Dad was very mad at me and i’m pretty sure grounded my for it and B) My family and I had to deal with trash overflowing in our house for the next week because I had not taken care of last weeks trash

Transition: And often times we do this, we have important stuff we MUST do, but because we are blinded by our other little priorities, we face the consequences of not doing what we should’ve done. This was the problem of the Israelites in the book of Haggai, when returning to the ruins of jerusalem, they spent more time and effort rebuilding their own homes instead of rebuilding Gods temple, and because of this, they faced the consequences

When Discouragement Sets In, Trust The Process Main Idea: Trust The Process

What is the Process?

Stop Making Excuses (1-2)

Set God as the Priority in Your Life (3-6)

Get Involved in His Mission (7-15)