Title: Broken-Down House: Living Productively in a World Gone Bad
Author: Paul David Tripp
Publisher: Shepherd Press
ISBN: 978-0-9815400-6-1
Pages: 250
Reviewer: Tim Lovegrove
About Broken-Down House
You may recognize Paul David Tripp’s name from books such as Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands or Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens. He is currently on the staff at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. His name is also familiar (and easily confused) because his brother Tedd has authored Shepherding a Child’s Heart and Instructing a Child’s Heart.
Using the illustration of a run-down house in need of restoration, Tripp suggests that “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 above 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?”
Summary of the Book
Chapter 1 expands on the illustration of the broken-down house, explaining that “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.” But there is hope, because the great Restorer is working in the middle of the mess, and He will not rest until His work is perfectly completed.
The remaining fifteen chapters provide fifteen imperatives for living productively in this messed up world and participating in the restoration God is accomplishing. The first nine imperatives (chs. 2-10) have to do with “knowing,” and the final six with “doing” (chs. 11-16).
Highlights
In the opening chapters, Tripp uncovers our tendency to ignore the realities of this broken-down house and develop a damaging case of “location amnesia” and “identity amnesia.” To live productively, we have to stop ignoring the reality of the devastation that sin has caused in our world and in us. Tripp goes on in the following chapters to provide very practical helps for facing the devastation with hope and joy and peace. One of my favorite chapters is entitled “Admit Your Limits,” in which Tripp uncovers our tendency to vastly overestimate our own power and wisdom (and vastly underestimate our need for God). Another is called “Learn to Wait,” which gives God-centered helps for handling those times when you do not understand what God is doing and you have no power to change your circumstances.
Recommendation
Though Tripp doesn’t spend very much time interacting directly with Bible passages, this is a deeply biblical book because it summarizes large portions of biblical truth and brings them right down to everyday life. This book will help you maintain a truly biblical worldview in the midst of the normal struggles of everyday life. In that sense the book meets a very important need. There are many good books on suffering, yet each day we face struggles and frustrations and limitations that we probably wouldn’t describe as “suffering” because they seem so minor compared to the suffering of others. Yet Christian homes can be places of anger, bitterness, depression, and conflict if we are not equipped with the God-centered principles for handling the everyday frustrations of life in a messed-up world. I encourage you to let Paul Tripp teach you a biblical framework for living with peace and joy for God’s glory in the midst of the mess. As one person in our church said recently: “This book is beating me up – and I love it.”
Purchase Broken-Down House.
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Tim Lovegrove is the Pastor of Grace Bible Church of Menifee, CA, the first self-sustaining Heritage church plant outside Upstate SC. Tim’s vision is not merely to plant one church in Southern California, but to start a church planting movement in the region. Grace Menifee is preparing to send out its first church planter, Eric True, to start Grace Bible Church of Rancho Cucamonga, CA.
