A review of Broken-Down House: Living Productively in a World Gone Bad by Paul David Tripp. We challenged member Connie Lierly to read and review this book as a blessing to our church, and the following is her record.
In Genesis God creates the world from nothing. God looked at creation and saw it was very good. Adam and Eve were in charge the garden and everything in it. They were to eat freely of every tree EXCEPT the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Once that fruit was eaten, man would surely die.
It is important to know God has us in this broken world to be saved by Jesus as He planned before the world. Following God, we will accomplish God’s purpose for us. We are to guide people to God and help with the restoration of this world until God calls us to our eternal home.
We are sinners saved by God’s grace. After salvation, we see the amazing nature of God’s grace. After we progress in our Christian life, we often lose sight of God’s amazing grace.
Tripp suggests character qualities God calls us to so we will be effective in the restoration process:
We must be HONEST. Jesus died for our sins past, present and future. After salvation, we become a child of grace. We face many struggles as our sin nature wars with the child of grace.
We must TRUST and REST in God’s sovereignty. God is God, and we are not. God created us with limits. This way people see God and not us. We must trust what is sure. God promised He changes. We must resist spirituality but live in the fruit of the Spirit.
We must live listening to ETERNITY. Forget what we see and what the world says. Instead see streets of gold, many rooms, no tears, no pain, and no death.
PATIENCE is a fruit of the Spirit. We live in a world of instant gratification. He asks us to follow Him and trust His perfect timing.
God sees what sin has done in our world. He wants us to be good and angry at sins control in our world, just as He was angry with the money changers in the temple. We need to refuse to sit by idly. We are to shine the light he has given us in our world of darkness.
God created us for fellowship with Him and those around us. (family, church, friends, neighbors, and strangers around us.) We are where we are for such a time as this. As we work in our communities, others we share other’s lives and burdens. We also accomplish His plan faster.
To be effective, we must see ministry everywhere with everyone. We can not divide our lives into separate parts (work, family, church, ministry and my time). We must commit to being ready to minister all of the time. We must be training by reading the word, praying reading books and taking classes to take us deeper in His word.
The world encourages us to prepare for everything except eternity. After we die will others see a life of ministry or the toys we leave behind?
