Gordon MacDonald - Rebuilding Your Broken World

REBUILDING YOUR
BROKEN WORLD

Other Books by Gordon MacDonald

The Life God Blesses

Ordering Your Private World

Renewing Your Spiritual Passion

When Men Think Private Thoughts

REBUILDING YOUR
BROKEN WORLD

GORDON MACDONALD

Copyright 1988, 1990 by Gordon MacDonald
Repackaged edition 2003

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations noted NKJV are from THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers.

Scripture quotations noted TLB are from The Living Bible, copyright 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.,Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

The Road Not Taken is copyright 1916, 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1944 by Robert Frost. Reprinted from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST edited by Edward Connery Lathem, by permission of Henry Holt and Company, Inc, the estate of Robert Frost, and Jonathan Cape, Ltd.

Excerpts of Daniel Goldens June 3, 1984, article on the drowning death of Chris Dilullo reprinted courtesy of The Boston Globe.

Excerpts from SONG OF ASCENTS by Stanley Jones. Copyright 1968 by Abingdon Press. Used by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

MacDonald, Gordon.
Rebuilding your broken world / Gordon MacDonald.Expanded with study guide.
p.cm
ISBN 0-7852-6120-6
1. Christian life1960 I. Title.
BV4501.2.M2273 1990
248.4dc20 90-31390
CIP

Printed in the United States

03 04 05 06 07 PHX 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

TO GAIL
AND
THE ANGELS

the inner core

of many who have

helped me rebuild my broken world

CONTENTS

Bottom Line: Think of me as a fellow-patient in the same hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier, could give some advice. C. S. Lewis

Bottom Line #1: Broken worlds are not uncommon, they can happen to any of us. And if they do, we may not be able to control the damage. Dont let anyone tell you differently.

Bottom Line #2: The pain of a broken-world experience is universal; the ancients knew it as well as any of us.

Bottom Line #3: An unguarded strength and an unprepared heart are double weaknesses.

Bottom Line #4: Personal insight is not only momentary; it is a healthy way of living. Insight is the first step in rebuilding.

Bottom Line #5: Almost no one bears a heavier load than the carrier of personal secrets of the past or the present.

Bottom Line #6: The person who carries a secret has sentenced himself to a dungeon.

Bottom Line #7: The one spiritual disease is thinking that one [is] quite well. G. K. Chesterton

Bottom Line #8: Influences and moods, people and atmospheres, pressures and weariness: some or all of these, like a smoke screen, can distort what might otherwise be good thinking.

Bottom Line #9:Wise people need to know how their spiritual and mental systems are apt to operate in the various environments.

Bottom Line #10: When the body and the emotions and the mind are stretched to the limit, the risk of sinful choices climbs out of sight.

Bottom Line #11: Misbehavior may often be rooted in the undisclosed things of our pasts.

Bottom Line #12: A disrespect for the power of evil is a major step toward a broken personal world.

Bottom Line #13: The freest person in the world is one with an open heart, a broken spirit, and a new direction in which to travel.

Bottom Line #14: The process of rebuilding requires some temporary operating principles by which to navigate through the dark times.

Bottom Line #15: Listen; receive; give; and then anticipate. No time in the wilderness is ever wasted for the one who intends to return what grace has given.

Bottom Line #16: The granting of restorative grace is among the greatest and most unique gifts one Christian can give another.

Bottom Line #17: We must assume the inevitability of attacks by an enemy hostile to our spiritual interests and build our defenses in the places he is most likely to attack.

Bottom Line #18: The grace that helps to rebuild a broken world is something given: never deserved, never demanded, never self-induced.

Bottom Line:When you have been pushed or have fallen to the ground, there can be only one useful resolve: Get up and finish the race!

A s a young pastor, I read a very moving and reassuring sermon by that eloquent Scottish preacher-scholar, Arthur Gossip. After the agonizing death of his wife, he asked himself and his congregation, When Life Tumbles In,What Then?When for whatever reasons your personal world goes to pieces, is it possible to do more than simply manage to survive? If the whole structure of your existence is shattered, like a precious vase dropped on a hardwood floor, can those sherds be gathered up and by some recreative miracle be put together again into an object of beauty and usefulness? Once Humpty Dumpty has had his great fall are all the kings horses and all the kings men incapable of doing anything except lamenting as they consign his fragments into rubble?

That is precisely the problem God deals with in the book of Jeremiah. He issued a directive to his servant: Go down to the potters house, and there I will give you my message. So I went down to the potters house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands... Let me break off the narrative at that point. When the recalcitrant clay resists the moulding hands of the potter, is the marred vessel thrown aside? By no means! Jeremiahs narrative continues: So the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as it seemed best to him (Jer. 18:24). Gods message to Jeremiah is centuries later Gods message to ourselves through Gordon MacDonald, a message of recreative grace that inspires praise, humility, and hope.

A few years ago if I had been asked to name ten outstanding leaders in America evangelicalism, I would have unhesitatingly included my friend Gordon MacDonald. I had known him intimately since his childhood. I had followed his development with as much pride as if he had been my own family member, a legitimate pride springing from gratitude to God for the fruitful giftedness of a choice and, I felt and still feel, a chosen servant. As the director of an outstanding campus ministry, a visionary churchman, a best-selling author, a lecturer in constant demand, and a devoted husband and father, he was a spiritual model, a dynamic spokesperson for the Gospel. Then overnight his world tumbled in. His career ground to a screeching halt. He became one more conspicuous casualty in the never-ending battle all of us carry on against evil within and without. But that, I rejoice to add, is not the end to the story. And that is why this book is such an inspiring message of hope.