Changed my perspective in a very good way

books:


	• Shattered Dreams: God's Unexpected Pathway to Joy Larry Crabb WaterBrook Press, 2001 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 33 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Changed my perspective in a very good way

This book was so good I had to buy one to put back in the church library because I didn't want to give theirs back. It is one of the few books I have read cover to cover and didn't want to end.

Insightful and moving

Insightful and moving, revealing an unexpected point of view. This will certainly provide you with a different perspective to consider. Well worth the read.

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A Breakthrough Book!

Every once in awhile, we get a gift of a book from a talented author genuinely inspired by God. This is one of those books.

Larry Crabb in Shattered Dreams has the courage to tell us that God is not supremely interested in our being happy. This disturbs people, but it is 100% true. God wants us close to him, and to act like His son Jesus.

Larry Crabb uses powerful imagery to explain how God wants us to be holy and set apart to Him, and will let our lesser happiness shatter when he wants to grow us up in His Joy. Joy and happiness are not synonymous, and Crabb argues when we genuinely are more interested in pleasing God and spending time with him that getting our way, we will experience the Joy of God like never before.

This book is a must read for anyone who is serious about their faith and understanding the struggle between our own happiness and living out the will of God; once we "offer our bodies as living sacrifices" and "be not conformed to the pattern of this world", God will reveal His "good, pleasing and perfect will", and at that point, we experience the genuine Joy of God!

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For all who hunger and thirst...

It's interesting reading through the comments posted on Amazon books. Call me a pessimist, but I find I often pull up the low stars reviews first. I want to see what made angry or disappointed folks bother to post at all. Are they on a mission to save others from wasting their time? Are they trying to correct the author's theology? Or, are they merely wanting to contribute another perspective to a reading community?

I'm usually cautious when a review (positive or negative) becomes tainted with "reactionary vengeance". A good book is like good art. It is very individual. What bores one person to death will likely move another to life-changing tears.

I was loaned a copy of Shattered Dreams by a new friend. He was a Pastor for over 20 years. He did tons of counseling - free of charge - to drug addicts, religious burn-outs, poor and wealthy. For now, he needs a break from "professional Christianity". He is tired, fighting disillusionment, in a chasm of sorts.

So am I.

We are both wrestling an unseen foe in a fog. Struggling to keep the pilot light flickering on our faith, our passion for God, our "grasp" of the gospel as we have so zealously (and sincerely) tried to live it, share it, be transformed by it. Our sense of perspective and purpose seems to be slipping away. Like Naomi, we are inclined to snap, "Don't call me 'Naomi' (pleasant). Call me 'Mara' (miserable)."

I don't know that I blame God for the fog. At least, not in a final way. In fact, I have stumbled on to notions I never noticed before while in the thick of it. God's sovereignty. And, on its heels, God's faithfulness. And, attached inseparably to that, God's deep, mysterious goodness. A baffling, double-take kind of goodness.

I have always sensed (hoped?) that the fog (self-induced, life-induced and, perhaps, God-graciously-induced) was functional in its restrictiveness. Like a cast that heals a body by imprisoning it, I am beginning to hear in the fog an invitation. A whisper, really - but a clear one - to lean in or clench onto God in a way I haven't before. In a couldn't outside the fog. Like Jesus' analogy about the blind leading the blind, I have to admit I am certainly blind. Thus, I need a guide. Even the blind being led by a wise and loving Guide will feel uncertain at times, wobbly, untrusting, fearful, etc. I think this is one way of looking at Larry Crabb's message. God - through pain, suffering - brings us to a full embrace of our blindness and, equally, a complete surrender of our strivings (even the 'noble' ones).

This is not an insult to us as humans. This is not a "Woe is me! I'm a worthless worm" experience. This is a "I am made to find my sustenance in God". Like Jesus, we learn this type of obedience through "suffering". Through fog. This is not morbid, or dark, or emo. This suffering is not devoid of joy or, even, seasons of giddiness. Indeed, my deepest 'highs' have come in this condition.

Jesus put it plainly: God did not come for the healthy. God is the great Healer but He only heals the sick. God is the Great Provider but He only feeds the hungry. God is the Living Water, but He only quenches the thirsty. I think "Shattered Dreams" does an excellent job of illuminating this powerful and core reality in God.

One review said, in effect: "This type of God is like telling a child to return to an abusive father. I want nothing to do with this type of God". I didn't get that message at all. The big, fat difference in this comparison is the fathers. One destroys. One creates. One is imperfect. One is perfect. One is full of unmet needs and wrath. One needs nothing. One is perfect Love. And Love never fails.

I haven't finished the book so I may come to appreciate some of their comments better later. Still, I have already gotten so many nuggets of gold in the first 5 chapters to justify a lasting gratitude for Larry Crabb's insights. I will most certainly buy my own copy - to read again and again through the years. So many of the negatives seem to focus on Larry not giving us "application tools" for navigating these times. I think he does. The tool is to let God be God. Stay on the bike. I think Mr. Crabb feels that any clever acronym or "1,2,3 steps" would be artificial, manipulative and disruptive. On top of that, God would, if allowed, simply unmask these, too. And that's something awesome and glorious. To realize that the God of all creation invites us to simply walk with Him as He determines the path. And trust - because of who God is - that it will be all it should be, which, incredibly, is more than you or I can imagine or dream of.

If you want God (or, even, can only say you 'want to want' God), I think you'll benefit from reading this book. But read it slowly. Ingest even the shortest sentences. I have already been encouraged and taught so much. I have been ministered to and provoked to lean into God's sovereignty in the midst of the fog and, therein, taste joy. Thank you, Larry Crabb.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

If God loves me, why does life hurt so much?

?A new way to live is available to us,? writes widely respected author and counselor Larry Crabb, ?a way that leads to a joy-filled encounter with Christ, to a life-arousing community with others, and to a powerful transformation of our interior worlds that makes us more like Jesus.?
You?ll see how God moves you from shattered dreams to better dreams to the highest dream? and the joy that comes from dreaming it.

This is a book that will...
draw you to your closest Friend,
help you discover your deepest
spiritual desires,
point you to your greatest hope,
help you face your deepest pain,
and invite you to your highest joy.

Join Larry Crabb on a life-changing adventure of encountering God in the midst of life?s most difficult times. And learn to live beyond your Shattered Dreams.

From the Hardcover edition.

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