Carol Chen’s Reviews > Broken-Down House: Living Productively in a World Gone Bad > Status Update

This means that I have been brought into relationship with God not only so that I could be rescued from myself, but that I may be part of God's rescue of others. My life exists for his purposes. I was given life and breath to help maximize the glory of Another This is why life is ministry.

The writer wants to depress you... temporarily. He wants you to respond, "No-there is, there must be, there has to be more to life than this!" He wants you to cry out for the one thing that can give meaning back to life, the one place to ground your worldview: God, his story, and what his purpose means for your purpose.

The whole point of the book is to demonstrate all the ways in which life is meaningless when you leave God out of the picture, as if this world were self-contained and self-created.

When you lose your sense of gratitude for your acceptance into God's Kingdom, you will lose your zeal for the work of that Kingdom. And you will live in daily pursuit and daily celebration of the purposes of some other kingdom.

This is true no matter what it is we worship: career or wealth or comfort or entertainment or reputation or rela tionships or self-protection. .. or Christ. Whatever it is, we celebrate it.

You see, life always involves worship. Our lives revolve around the thing that has captured our attention and desire We make continual offerings to it, sacrifices of time and energy and focus and resources, celebrating and holding up this thing to which we have ascribed such life-dominarine value.

Subtly, desire for these things begins to shape the way l invest my time, energy, and money. Subtly, these things become my reason for making the decisions I make. Subtly, these things become the lens through which I evaluate my life. Subtly, I begin to look to these things for my happiness and my inner sense of well-being.

Of course, pop music is popular because it so powerfully captures the reigning philosophy of the culture.

Third, God is sovereien and has placed you exactly where he intends for you to he (see Acts 17:24-281. Fourth, you have been lit by God's grace and called to radiate his character in the darkness that sur rounds where he has placed you (see Matthew 5:14-16, quoted previously).

The Call

The point of this chapter is simple but absolutely vital: yo cannot think biblically and adopt a passivity lifestyle. To begin with, the world you live in is terribly broken (see Romans 8:18-22). Second, God's agenda is the complete renewal of everything (see Revelation 21:1-S).