Simon Cox Blog: One-on-One with Tom Holladay on “Putting It All Together Again When It’s All Fallen Apart”

Tuesday 20 March 2018

One-on-One with Tom Holladay on “Putting It All Together Again When It’s All Fallen Apart”

Nehemiah mourned, fasted, and prayed; that's where you start.

Ed: Tell us what led you to write your new book.

Tom: This book grows out of one of my life messages. For me, a life message is something I’ve been learning for decades, and is usually something learned out of pain. Thirty years ago, my wife Chaundel and I suffered a devastating loss when a flood hit the town we were pastoring in. Our own home was under nine feet of water, and many of our members’ homes and our church were also flooded.

So we needed to rebuild, and as a young pastor I needed to lead a whole church that needed to put things together again. My mind went to the Book of Nehemiah. Since I knew he’d needed to rebuild a wall in Jerusalem, I thought he might have some things to teach us about rebuilding.

I’ll never forget the joy I felt when I came across the promise in Nehemiah 2:20: “The God of heaven will give us success, we his servants will start rebuilding.” I knew it was his promise for us. I first taught the seven principles in the book to that small church, and we were able to rebuild.

Ed:You talk in the book about the promise of putting it together again being not just for a natural disaster, but also for many of the other struggles we face.

Tom: I start each chapter of the book with the story of someone who needed to rebuild a marriage, business, country, or life. Because we live in a fallen world, things tend to fall apart. It’s important to remember that we worship a God who has the power to put things together again. I love the prayer of Psalm 119:107 in the Message paraphrase: “Everything’s falling apart on me, GOD; put me together again with your Word.”

Ed:I was interested in what you learned from Nehemiah about where the process begins. We often ...