Shattered Dreams Read online

  Advance Praise for

  Shattered Dreams

  “It has been a delight to watch Larry Crabb continue his journey down the path toward a mature and honest spirituality. I look on him as an advance scout in places I have yet to venture.”

  —PHILIP YANCEY

  author of Reaching for the Invisible God and What’s So Amazing About Grace?

  “I’ve lost count of how many times God has used Larry Crabb to tinker with my interior world. Five pages into this book I muttered to myself, ‘Here we go again.’ ”

  —BILL HYBELS

  senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church

  “Believing that true human joy is ultimately ‘the discovery of who and what we were each created to be, and that the One who made us is committed to our fruitfulness and fulfillment in being and becoming that,’ I am pleased to recommend Larry Crabb’s work. His commitment to bringing practical guidance and personal passion to the table, enabling others to find and grow in God’s best purposes for their lives, makes me thankful for his writings and work.”

  —JACK W. HAYFORD

  founding pastor of The Church on the Way and chancellor of The King’s College and Seminary

  “Anyone who knows Larry Crabb knows he’s on an extraordinary journey, deep into the soul. And through his recent books—especially this one—we readers are privileged to tag along as Larry brings us to yet another level. He shows us a place where we are sure to encounter the core of our being. And it’s here that he teaches us to connect with each other and with God more meaningfully than we ever imagined possible. Through Shattered Dreams, Larry skillfully guides us on a transforming journey toward joy—a journey you surely do not want to miss.”

  —LES PARROTT, PH.D.

  author of When Bad Things Happen to Good Marriages

  “With typical clarity, Dr. Larry Crabb has again tackled a thorny issue of Christian doctrine that others have either passed by or addressed with vocabulary and theology that doesn’t match human experience. In Shattered Dreams, Dr. Crabb gently removes the broken pieces of our human dreams until at last he uncovers a loving, wise, and infinitely compassionate God whose ways we may not understand but whose heart we can always trust.”

  —DAVE DRAVECKY

  president of Dave Dravecky’s Outreach of Hope National Cancer Ministry

  SHATTERED DREAMS

  PUBLISHED BY WATERBROOK PRESS

  12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200

  Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921

  All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. Scripture quotations marked (MSG) are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

  Italics in Scripture quotations reflect the author’s added emphasis.

  ISBN 9780307459503

  Ebook ISBN 9780307822666

  Copyright © 2001 by Lawrence J. Crabb, Jr., PhD, PA

  Workbook copyright © 2001 by Lawrence J. Crabb, Jr., PhD, PA

  Published in association with Yates & Yates, LLP, Literary Agent, Orange, California.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York.

  WATERBROOK and its deer colophon are registered trademarks of Random House Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Crabb, Lawrence J.

  Shattered dreams : God’s unexpected pathway to joy / by Larry Crabb.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Spiritual life—Christianity. 2. Christian life. I. Title.

  BV4501.3 .C73 2001

  248.8’6—dc21

  00-054084

  v3.1_r1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  INTRODUCTION: A New Way

  THE PARABLE

  1 My Problem with God

  2 We Need a Good Story

  3 Jesus Speaks

  4 When Both Shoes Drop

  5 The Rhythm of Hope

  6 Breaking the Rules

  7 Hidden Hope

  8 Everything Helps Me to God

  9 Desire or Addiction?

  10 The Elusive God

  11 Abandonment and Confidence

  12 His Passion Restrained

  13 A Hell of Mercy

  14 A Strange Wedding Toast

  15 But Life Ought to Work

  16 It Isn’t Always Good to Feel Good

  17 The Three Lessons of Brokenness

  18 Our Highest Dream—If We Only Knew It

  19 A Dream Come True

  20 There’s a New Way to Live—and It’s Possible

  21 The Journey to Joy

  WORKBOOK

  Questions You May Have About This Workbook

  Week One: Our Problem with God

  Week Two: Trusting God Is Dangerous Business

  Week Three: The Path of Hope

  Week Four: God Is Moving

  Week Five: Discovering God’s Passion

  Week Six: Wanting Something Better

  Week Seven: The Best Dream

  Week Eight: Truly Experiencing God

  EPILOGUE: Introducing NewWay Ministries

  NOTES

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THOUGHTS FROM TEN YEARS LATER

  I wrote this book in 2000. A year earlier, in the church that was my church home at the time, I spent eight consecutive Sunday school hours teaching the book of Ruth to about sixty adults. On a few Sundays, the number swelled to nearly one hundred. Something was happening in that class. The thoughts that were later organized into Shattered Dreams came to life in my mind and soul during those eight weeks.

  The publishing house that had contracted to print my next book turned down the manuscript. “Too negative,” they said. “Nobody would buy a book titled Shattered Dreams. People want to be happy.” I’m grateful to the folks at WaterBrook Press for taking a risk on what many might see as an unnecessarily negative message.

  I was in my midfifties when the book first released. The road I’m walking seems narrower now, and strangely more appealing. A deeper, muffled, more subtle dream is in the process of being shattered. And a new kind of happiness is slowly releasing, a kind that the sort of shattered dreams I had in mind when I wrote the book cannot destroy. That seems clearer now.

  At the time, I was a two-year cancer survivor, a cancer that came within hours of claiming my life. Now, the cancer is back—a very slow-growing kind, I’m told, and nonmetastasizing. By the time you read this, that assurance may have been proven false or it might be confirming the hope that I won’t need surgery until I’m pushing one hundred.

  I’d prefer to get a phone call today telling me that the radiologist misread my scan, that the concerning spot is no longer concerning. That preference has been a prayer, one of many not answered according to my preferences. And I have no biblical guarantee that my dream of symptom-free living till I’m one hundred will not be shattered. The cracks are already visible.

  The dre
am of good health is an obvious one; it’s visible and measurable, like dreams of a great marriage, fulfilling vocation, or sufficient income. And obvious difficulties call for obvious responses to manage the problem, to make it go away or to keep your sanity if it doesn’t. Get a second opinion, find a good counselor, train for a new job. Obvious shattered dreams keep alive the hope that there are ways to manage the crisis and get through without falling apart with something that will help you feel better, at least for a season.

  Perhaps this is a dream only those of advancing years have, but in my midsixties I’m aware of a deeper dream than good health, relationships, employment, and finances. I think it’s a core dream that’s at the center of every human being, subtle, and so imbedded in our makeup that we experience it as an entitlement, a given of how things should be. It’s a dream we don’t believe might come true, but one that we think should if there really is a God.

  It’s the dream to be truly happy, to feel excited about life, to wake up every morning full of energy to tackle the adventure and seize the opportunity that lies before us, and ultimately, to encounter God’s palpable presence in every dark night.

  Since I wrote Shattered Dreams, that common human dream has spawned new Christian approaches (I use the term Christian loosely here) that are designed to pursue it coming true. Health-and-wealth gospel has devolved into a gospel of wish-fulfillment. The true gospel that repairs brokenness and heals wounds has morphed into a pop spirituality that offers feel-good transcendent experiences in any circumstance of life. Morning quiet times have developed into turnkey disciplines for more deeply “sensing” God. And kingdom theology has forgotten the promise of future glory in heaven for the here-and-right-now kingdom we can bring fast through social and political activism.

  As I see it, one unintended effect of all this is the de-emphasizing and even denial of the ongoing battle against sin that self-aware believers face. As a result, our ability to wait is weakened, our self-discipline is reduced, and our longing for the coming world is all but destroyed. And the loss of our longing is especially damaging.

  Paul made it crystal clear that Christians who won’t wait for the satisfaction they want are worthy of pity: “And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world” (1 Corinthians 15:19, NLT). When Jesus’ followers dream of feeling here and now what no one will completely or enduringly feel until heaven, the result can be heresy and addiction. Whatever seems to provide spiritual fulfillment in this life seems both right (risk of heresy) and necessary (risk of addiction).

  And what I’m seeing more clearly now than when I wrote this book is that the mother of all shattered dreams is the pursuit of shatterproof hope in the here and now. Listen to Paul again, speaking to the Colossian Christians. “For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all of God’s people, which come from your confident hope of what God has reserved for you in heaven” (Colossians 1:5, NLT).

  Our job as spiritually forming Christians is to believe God when He promises to work both everything that happens in our lives and everything that happens in our souls for the good of people who love God and who surrender to however He wants to use them in this life (see Romans 8:28). That’s faith. Spiritually forming Christians neither use other people to make them feel better nor isolate themselves from people who might hurt them, but instead give whatever is alive and good within them for the sake of the other’s blessing, even when the personal cost is high. That’s love.

  Faith and love, Paul tells us, come from hope, and that hope is not for full satisfaction now but rather for what God promises to provide when we get home. Until what’s coming sustains us in what’s currently going on—death, disease, starvation, all kinds of discouragement and evil—we will cling to the false hope that the happiness we were created to enjoy is available here and now. And that hope can become a demand, a narcissistic, obsessive quest for the spiritual fulfillment we assume we’re entitled to. We will deny the truth that our deepest desires remain unsatisfied every day, and that our greatest dream of fully felt union with God lies shattered and unfulfilled every moment of this life.

  Yet when the hope of what God has reserved for us in heaven sustains us, our dream of energetic passion and complete satisfaction in life shifts from a demand to a surrendered, patient longing. And our confidence in God’s promise of what lies ahead frees us to share in the kind of happiness Jesus knew while He lived in this difficult world, the kind that comes from serving God’s purposes in any circumstance, that kept Him anchored in His calling and passionate for God’s vision, even during Gethsemane and on Golgotha.

  Jesus believed God with absolute trust in His Father’s goodness. Jesus loved God (and us) at any cost to Himself. His faith and love were sustained by His hope in what He knew lay ahead. The happiness that anchors our soul and keeps alive our passion for God’s vision comes from the faith and love that spring from that hope. And this is why in Jesus, spiritual fruit was always ripe—“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23).

  Imagine yourself

  • loving a rejecting spouse, a prodigal child, a critical or pushy friend.

  • radiating joy in a cancer ward, as a patient.

  • knowing peace during a financial catastrophe.

  • exhibiting patience in the most trying circumstance at work.

  • being kind to a needy neighbor when you’d rather do anything but.

  • releasing the goodness of God’s nature when your nature is screaming for someone to be good to you.

  • faithfully following your call to serve when your only results are more weeds.

  • gently responding to someone who undermines or demeans you.

  • exercising self-control by not succumbing to a temptation after a severely disappointing day.

  When the dream of experiencing now what is reserved for us in heaven is decisively shattered and when the shattering is embraced and not fought, either we’ll sink into despair or we will hope in God, and wait as faith becomes a firmer foundation and godly love a way of life.

  The shattering of our deepest dream of fulfillment in the present becomes the unexpected pathway to the happiness Jesus knew during His life on earth: the happiness of trusting God, serving others, and confidently waiting for complete happiness in being reunited with God in paradise forever.

  That’s some fresh thought from this midsixties Christian living with an assortment of terrific blessings and uncertain challenges. It all leaves me feeling pretty good a lot of the time, though I’m often weary and sometimes unmotivated to do much of anything. But I want truth to move me through my ups and downs on the pathway to life. I want the truth of hope, sometimes unfelt, to keep me faithful and loving.

  And as these thoughts slowly mature into convictions through time in the Bible, in prayer, in worship and community, I think I’ll have a better chance of finishing well and not letting weariness paralyze me or futility overwhelm me. I’ll have a better shot at agreeing with Paul that “everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8, NLT), of knowing Him as my Savior from sin, as the model of my vision for helping people and our culture for good, and as my strength as I walk the narrow road of faith and love that comes from the hope of heaven.

  And that happiness, that joy, is available now. And it’s enough to last me till then.

  DR. LARRY CRABB, founder and director of NewWay Ministries

  August 2010

  INTRODUCTION

  A NEW WAY

  Three ideas fill my mind as I write this book. The first is this: God wants to bless us.

  At a time when every blessing the Jews expected to enjoy was taken from them, God spoke of a coming day when “I will never stop doing good to them.… I will rejoice in doing them good” (Jeremiah 32:40-41).

  That day has come. God is now dealing with us in a new
way. Our badness is no longer the obstacle to blessing. Nor is our goodness the condition for blessing.

  In God’s new way, He blesses us just because He loves—because we’re His beloved children and He wants to reveal Himself through us. That idea fills more than my mind. It fills my heart. Let me put it even more clearly.

  There’s never a moment in all our lives, from the day we trusted Christ till the day we see Him, when God is not longing to bless us. At every moment, in every circumstance, God is doing us good. He never stops. It gives Him too much pleasure. God is not waiting to bless us after our troubles end. He is blessing us right now, in and through those troubles. At this exact moment, He is giving us what He thinks is good.

  There, of course, is the rub. He gives us what He thinks is good, what He knows is good. We don’t always agree.

  We have our own ideas about what a good God should do in the middle of our circumstances, ideas that stretch all the way from opening a space in a crowded parking lot near the mall’s entrance to funding our ministry dreams to straightening out our kids to giving us a negative biopsy report.

  It’s those ideas that get in the way of our realizing what goodness really is. Like children, we believe a loving parent would give us ice cream without first making us eat spinach. Goodness is ice cream. It certainly isn’t spinach.

  But our problem is worse than that. Not only do we want what immediately feels good and often dislike what in fact is good for us, but we’re also out of touch with what would bring us the most pleasure if it were given to us. There is a heavenly ice cream with the nutritional value of spinach. And it’s available now, in this life.

  That introduces the second idea that drives me as I write:

  The highest dream we could ever dream, the wish that if granted would make us happier than any other blessing, is to know God, to actually experience Him. The problem is that we don’t believe this idea is true. We assent to it in our heads. But we don’t feel it in our hearts.