Currently reading this book - excellent pastoral insight in a very readable format. A few quotes that may inspire you to order for yourself....The world you live in is a lot like a broken down house. Every room has been dirtied and damaged by sin. Not one part of it shines with anything like the pure glory that was so evident when it was first made. Sin has left this world in a sorry condition. You see it evereywhere you look. (p17)
Sometimes you get tired of the effort it takes to live in a broken down house, and you just want to quit. At every point and every moment, your life is messier and more complicated than it really ought to be because everything is so much more difficult in such a terribly broken world. (p17)
You often find yourself dreaming of what it would be like to live in house that needed no restoration, and you wonder if the job will ever be completed. You want to hold onto the promise of everthing eventually being fixed, but it's hard. You want to rest, but there's work to do. You want to escape, but you can't - this is your house and you have to live in it. (p18)
God is not satisfied with the state of this house, and he calls us to share his holy dissatisfaction. In our hearts he wants dissatisfaction and hope to kiss... He wants us to face how bad things really are, not as survivalists, but as restorers. (p20)
Do you wish you didn't have so many problems on your plate? Does it bug you that even the easy things in life don't turn out to be nearly as easy as you thought they would be? Are there problems in your past that still haunt you? Do you regularly face difficulties you sought to solve, but which still lie open and festering? Have you ever envied someone else's life? Have you ever wished you could start over in some area of life, but you know you can't? Have you ever felt too weak and unqualified to deal with what is confronting you? Does your life seem to move too fast for you ever to be able to catch up? Has there ever been a day in your life that was fundamentally problem free? (p24)
...the Bible is a book about this world. It is a gritty, honest book. When we read Scripture, we face the world as it actually is, in big screen high-def detail. God doesn't pull any punches. He doesn't paint over any cracks. He doesn't flatter or avoid. There is no denial of what is real and true.
The sights and soundas of the Bible are familiar. They are the sights and sounds of the very same broken world you and I wake up to everyday. (p26)
Last week your boss gave you your walking papers, or your teenager rebelled in your face, or you were diagnosed with a disease, or a tree fell on your garage, or your best friend gossiped about something you said in confidence, or your aging body ached, or your church disappointed you again, or you pulled your back out, or your vacation proved to be more work than retreat... you learned that someone stole your identity, or you felt drawn to something you knew was wrong.
Last week you encountered the world as it really is: broken. How did you do? (p31)
More quotes to follow...
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