Broken-Down House January 28, 2010

I love word pictures – it’s how the Lord oftentimes speaks to me.  I compare it to a child’s love of picture books without words – I guess I’m elementary enough to need such communication, but the pictures offer so much more than books with only words  can provide.  This is why the Lord spoke so often in parables, He wanted to be sure we got the picture, so to speak!

I suppose this is why I am gleaning so much from Paul Tripp’s new book, Broken-Down House, Living Productively In A World Gone Bad.

He uses the metaphor of a broken, dilapidated old house in need of serious work.  But the restoration needed requires us to live in the midst of the mess.  We would much rather leave the work to someone else and come back when it’s all finished to enjoy.  But God has ordained, even commanded us to stay and dwell in a dangerous place where rusty nails, splinters and broken glass abound.  No matter how careful we are, we are sure to get hurt at some point in the restoration process.  Tripp shares in his Introduction:

“The bad news is that you and I are living right in the middle of the restoration.  We live each day in a house that is terribly broken, where nothing works exactly as intended.  But we do not live in the house by ourselves.  Emmanuel lives here as well, and He is at work returning His house to its former beauty.  Often it doesn’t look like any real restoration is goin on at all.  Things seem to get messier, uglier, and less functional all the time.  But that’s the way it is with restoration; things generally get worse before they get better.

So in the pages that follow, I invite you to consider one simple thing.  What does it look like to live productively in a world — a “house” — that is broken down?  Someday you will live forever in a fully restored house.  But right now you are called to live with peace, joy, and productivity in a place that has been sadly damaged by sin.  How can you live above4 the damage?  Even better, how can you be an active part of the restoration that is at the heart of God’s plan of redemption?

May God help you to be fruitful in all you do, even though you live in a broken-down house!”