Blog life, Power, Rebuilding Ashley098 April 25, 2025 0 Comments

The Power of Rebuilding Your Life

We’ve all been there, trying to hold things together by a thread, hoping the cracks don’t show. Maybe it’s a strained relationship, a crumbling sense of purpose, or a habit quietly ruining your life. You tell yourself it’s fine. You’ve patched it. You’ve moved on. But deep down, you know the truth: it’s not fixed. It’s just hidden.

Rebuilding isn’t optional. It’s necessary.

In Rebuild! Don’t Repair: Why Fixing Things Doesn’t Fix Things in Life, Jon Harper invites us to stop pretending the thread will hold and start confronting what’s broken. This isn’t about tweaking a few habits or pretending you’re okay. It’s about tearing down what no longer serves you and building something real, strong, and lasting.

Why You Can’t Just “Fix” Your Life

You can’t fix what’s fundamentally flawed. That’s the core message of Harper’s book—and it’s hard to swallow.

We’re used to quick solutions. Say a prayer. Read a book. Watch a TED Talk. Feel better for a few days and move on. But nothing truly changes.

“God isn’t in the business of repairing people. He rebuilds them from the inside out.” —Jon Harper.

You can’t build a healthy life on a cracked foundation. You can’t build peace on denial. You can’t build joy on shame. And you can’t build a future while clinging to what’s already broken.

The Haggai Wake-Up Call

Harper draws from the book of Haggai. It is a short, often overlooked book in the Bible where God gives His people a direct message: stop building your own lives while letting My house sit in ruins.

But what if we are God’s house?

That insight changed everything for Harper. If we are the temple, rebuilding isn’t about religion or routine. It’s about restoring your mind, body, and spirit to reflect the God who lives in you.

Rebuilding Starts with Breaking

This is where most people turn back.

Before building something new, you must break down the old. That means confronting lies you’ve told yourself. Owning up to mistakes. Releasing identities you’ve wrapped yourself in for comfort.

Harper shares the moment he had to sell the car, which defined his sense of success. It was an expensive Escalade he bought, but he was too young, too proud, and had no plan to pay for it.

We all have our “Escalade” moments—where we realize the thing we used to feel whole is keeping us broken.

So, How Do You Rebuild?

Harper offers a roadmap. The process is hard, but it’s not complicated. It comes down to four key evaluations:

Habits: Are your routines helping you heal or keeping you stuck?
Associations: Are the people around you building you up or quietly pulling you back?
Thoughts: Are you rehearsing shame or rewriting your story with grace?
Words: Are you speaking life over yourself or repeating what your past taught you to believe?

The goal? Not to fix what’s broken but to become something entirely new. As 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old has gone; the new is here.”

Why Rebuilding Is Worth the Pain

There’s a reason most people don’t rebuild. It’s slow. It’s uncomfortable. It reveals things you’d rather avoid. However, it also brings freedom.

When you rebuild:

You stop fearing collapse because you’ve laid the foundation yourself.
You stop hiding your struggles because you know healing requires honesty.
You start living intentionally because every brick you lay is a decision to grow.

Harper puts it this way: “Yes, rebuilding takes more time than repairing. But it takes less time than staying stuck.”