Broken House, Skilled Builder.

Understanding and practicing prepared spontaneity can indeed enable you to live productively for God, but I’m not for a minute suggesting life will never be hard again. Every situation, location, and relationship of our everyday lives is in some way broken. As fallen creatures, the best we can ever do in this life is to know how to live in this broken-down house that’s our current address; nothing and no one but God himself, in the fullness of his time, can change where we live. So as we experience the reality of life in this house, sometimes it will leave us confused and overwhelmed. Sometimes it will leave us hurt and angry. Sometimes we’ll give way to envy because the house of someone living nearby seems far less broken. Sometimes we’ll just get weary of the stress of it all and long for a house in perfect repair.

In those moments, those days, those seasons, remember that you are never on your own. The Builder has given you a copy of his repair manual, the Bible. It will help you understand why things are as broken as they are. It will teach you how to live well even in the midst of the brokenness. And it will explain the only way in which repair can ever happen. More than that, the Builder himself has moved into the house with you. You’ve not been left alone. You can rest assured of his presence and his wisdom. His grace has gifted you with both of these.

He who offers you such grace and guidance will never ask you to do what you are not fully capable of doing by God’s grace and indwelling Spirit. He will not demand things of you that are beyond your abilities. Your Lord is tender and kind. He knows who you are and he knows where you’re living. He knows how hard it is to live in this broken-down house because in the flesh he lived here himself. He invites you to walk away from trying to figure it out on your own and he welcomes you to sit at his feet and learn the mysteries of the universe; things so profound that you will see your world in a radically new way; things so practical that you will never live the same way again.

You’re never in a better place than when you give up on you and begin to trust what is sure: the life-shaping wisdom of the One who built the house in the first place.