Larry Crabb Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 55 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Larry Crabb.
Famous Quotes By Larry Crabb
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. — Larry Crabb
We'll never abandon ourselves to the Spirit as long as we think we can change without Him. — Larry Crabb
When spiritual friends share their stories, the others listen without working. They rest. There's nothing to fix, nothing to improve. A spiritual community feels undisturbed quiet as they listen, certainly burdened ... but still resting in the knowledge that the life within, the passion for holiness, is indestructible. It needs only to be nourished and released. — Larry Crabb
The goal of our sanctification is that we place Christ on display in the way we love others. — Larry Crabb
Churches that never deal with the real fight that following My Son requires often grow large but mostly with small Christians. — Larry Crabb
Shattered dreams are never random. They are always a piece in a larger puzzle, a chapter in a larger story. The Holy Spirit uses the pain of shattered dreams to help us discover our desire for God, to help us begin dreaming the highest dream. They are ordained opportunities for the Spirit to awaken, then to satisfy our highest dream. — Larry Crabb
Led by myself and two colleagues, the course offers a newly developed model of spiritual direction that draws on both the age-old wisdom of the church and more recent perspectives. I call it the Passion/Wisdom Model of Spiritual Direction, and I see it as offering the opportunity for our interior worlds and supernatural reality to meet. — Larry Crabb
Evangelicals sometimes expect too much or, to put it more precisely, we look for a kind of change God hasn't promised. It's possible to expect too little, but under-expectation is usually a cynical reaction to dashed hopes for too much. We manage to interpret biblical teaching to support our longing for perfection. As a result, we measure our progress by standards we will never meet until heaven. — Larry Crabb
If we look for ways to get rid of necessary pain, we'll be disillusioned or misled. For people who define real change as the elimination of inevitable struggle, the final chapters will be terribly disappointing. — Larry Crabb
Men who as boys felt neglected by their dads often remain distant from their children. The sins of fathers are passed on to children, often through the dynamic of self-protection. It hurts to be neglected, and it creates questions about our value to others. So to avoid feeling the sting of further rejection, we refuse to give that part of ourselves we fear might once again be received with indifference. — Larry Crabb
The central truth that serves as the platform for Christian marriage - and for all Christian relationships - is that in Christ we are at every moment eternally loved and genuinely significant. — Larry Crabb
In order to meaningfully repent of the ways in which we violate love, we must recognize them. We won't recognize self-protective patterns of relating as sinful violations of love until we face the disappointment in our soul we're determined never to experience again. — Larry Crabb
The Christian always has reason to celebrate. When we fail, celebrate His grace. When we are blessed, celebrate His mercy. When others reject us, celebrate His love. — Larry Crabb
It's so natural to think the Presence of Jesus has no greater purpose than to improve the quality of our journey through life - with quality defined as a pleasurable, satisfying, self-affirming existence - a journey where certain things don't go wrong or, if they do, they correct themselves. Marriages should work, biopsies should come back benign, ministry efforts should succeed, and we should feel pretty good about the way most things go. — Larry Crabb
Change from the inside out involves a steadfast gaze upon our Lord that's life changing because it reflects a deep turning from a commitment to self-sufficiency. Without repentance, a look at Christ provides only the illusion of comfort. — Larry Crabb
Godly people ... nobly endure hard things. They know that their existence is meaningful and that they are destined for unlimited pleasure at the deepest level in heaven. Because they keenly feel that nothing now quite meets the standards of their longing souls, the quiet but deeply throbbing ache within them drives them not to compalint, but to anticipation and further yieldedness. — Larry Crabb
Certainly we struggle as victims of other people's unkindness. We have been sinned against. But we cannot excuse our sinful responses to others on the grounds of their mistreatment of us. We are responsible for what we do. We are both strugglers and sinners, victims and agents, people who hurt and people who harm. — Larry Crabb
The more clearly we recognize how deep our commitment to self-protection operates in our relational style and the more courageously we face the ugliness of protecting ourselves rather than loving others, the more we'll shift our direction. — Larry Crabb
How we feel, how we've been treated, what we do, why we do it - everything about our lives is important. We are valuable players in the cosmic drama he directs, and we are not wrong to be concerned with how we're getting on. But God matters more. He invites us to enter into relationship with him on his terms. He invites us to join him in achieving his great purpose: the overthrowing of evil and the bringing together of all things in Christ. He invites us, in short, to find him. And he lets us know that in the process of finding him, we'll find ourselves. — Larry Crabb
We must admit that simply knowing the contents of the Bible is not a sure route to spiritual growth. There is an aweful assumption in evangelical churches that if we can just get the Word of God into people's heads, then the Spirit of God will apply it to their hearts. That assumption is aweful, not because the Spirit never does what the assumption supposes, but because it excused pastors and leaders from the responsibility to tangle with people's lives. Many remain safely hidden behind pulpits, hopelessly out of touch with the struggles of their congregations, proclaiming the Scriptures with a pompous accuracy that touches no one. Pulpits should provide bridges, not barriers, to life-changing relationships. — Larry Crabb
Modern Christianity, in dramatic reversal of its biblical form, promises to relieve the pain of living in a fallen world. Then message, whether it's from fundamentalists requiring us to live by a favored set of rules or from charismatics urging a deeper surrender to the Spirit's power, is too often the same: The promise of bliss is for now! Complete satisfaction can be ours this side of heaven. Some speak of the joys of fellowship and obedience, others of a rich awareness of their value and worth. The language may be reassuringly biblical or it may reflect the influence of current psychological thought. Either way, the point of living the Christian life has shifted from knowing and serving Christ till He returns to soothing, or at least learning to ignore, the ache in our soul. — Larry Crabb
I've practiced centering prayer. I've contemplatively prayed. I've prayed liturgically ... I've benefited from each, and I still do. In ways you'll see, elements of each style are still with me. — Larry Crabb
There's no higher dream than experiencing God as He moves through every circumstance of life to an eternal encounter with Himself where transformed people will enjoy perfectly loving community around Jesus Christ, the source of Perfect Love. — Larry Crabb
Preachers and counselors can spend their energy exhorting people to change their behavior. But the human will is not a free entity. It is bound to a person's understanding. People will do what they believe. Rather than making a concerted effort to influence choices, preachers first need to be influencing minds. When a person understands who Christ is, on what basis he is worthwhile, and what life is all about, he has the formulation necessary for any sustained change in lifestyle. Christians who try to "live right" without correcting a wrong understanding about how to meet personal needs will always labor and struggle with Christianity, grinding out their responsible duty in a joyless, strained fashion. Christ taught that when we know the truth, we can be set free. We now are free to choose the life of obedience because we understand that in Christ we now are worthwhile persons. We are free to express our gratitude in the worship and service of the One who has met our needs. — Larry Crabb
The pain of aloneness and pointlessness is piercing. It demands relief. That single fact - that the pain of living apart from God is unbearable - exposes our sinfulness as horribly grotesque and foolish. We insist on finding relief without coming to God on His terms. — Larry Crabb
I find it much easier to counsel than to be counseled, to reach out to a friend in my small group who is feeling insercure than to reveal my own inseurity. The truth is we don't much like being dependent. We don't enjoy admitting how depeately we long for someone's kindness and involvement. It's so humbling. — Larry Crabb
Other forms of relating to God that have unique value in connecting us to Him include contemplative prayer and centering prayer. — Larry Crabb
I once heard worship defined as celebrating the availability of God. — Larry Crabb
We were designed to love and when we do, something good develops inside. We feel clean, rich, whole. Even better, we become less concerned with how we feel and more concerned with the lives of others. — Larry Crabb
The degree to which we openly express our feelings should be governed, not by fear of reprisal, but by our commitment to loving others. — Larry Crabb
The marriage relationship is one of God's creations for building up people. It gives husbands and wives the chance to minister to an immortal human being in a uniquely intimate fashion. To enjoy the meaningfulness of marriage, then, requires a once-made but ongoing commitment of mutual ministry to our mates and the more we seize them, the more meaning our marriage will have. — Larry Crabb
When hints of sadness creep into our soul, we must not flee into happy or distracting thoughts. Pondering the sadness until it becomes overwhelming can lead us to deep change in the direction of our being from self-preservation to grateful worship. — Larry Crabb
Maturity involves two elements: 1) immediate obedience in specific situations and 2) long-range character growth. — Larry Crabb
God is always working to make His children aware of a dream that remains alive beneath the rubble of every shattered dream, a new dream that when realized will release a new song, sung with tears, till God wipes them away and we sing with nothing but joy in our hearts. — Larry Crabb
A vision we give to others of who and what they could become has power when it echoes what the spirit has already spoken into their souls. — Larry Crabb
Men are easily threatened. And whenever a man is threatened, when he becomes uncomfortable in places within himself that he does not understand, he naturally retreats into an arena of comfort or competence, or he dominates someone or something in order to feel powerful. Men refuse to feel the paralyzing and humbling horror of uncertainty, a horror that could drive them to trust, a horror that could release in them the power to deeply give themselves in relationship. As a result, most men feel close to no one, especially not to God, and no one feels close to them. Something good in men is stopped and needs to get moving. When good movement stops, bad movement (retreat or domination) reliably develops. — Larry Crabb
I assume the Spirit is always whispering, "Abba", to God's children, assuring them that they are safe in His care. And he is continually calling them to become what God saved them to be, solid people, indestructibly alive, hurting perhaps, but consumed with pleasing the Father. — Larry Crabb
It is regrettable that many Christian psychologists talk more about such things as unconscious motivation and emotional damage than they do about sin and responsibility. — Larry Crabb
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. — Larry Crabb
Many of us place top priority not on becoming Christ like in the middle of our problems but on finding happiness ... I must firmly and consciously by an act of my will reject the goal of becoming happy and adopt the goal of becoming more like the Lord ... — Larry Crabb
The real power in helping somebody to be transformed is not to do something to them but to join with them. — Larry Crabb
I hear Jesus telling us to stop negotiating with Him, to stop offering something we think we have in exchange for His blessings. — Larry Crabb
A man looks at a "sex goddess" and lusts. A man looks at a feminine woman and worships. — Larry Crabb
It is the understanding of others and the awareness of their needs, that the ambassador of CHRIST should strive to cultivate — Larry Crabb
We cannot count on God to arrange what happens in our lives in ways that will make us feel good.We can, however, count on God to patiently remove all the obstacles to our enjoyment of Him. He is committed to our joy, and we can depend on Him to give us enough of a taste of that joy and enough hope that the best is still ahead to keep us going in spite of how much pain continues to plague our hearts. — Larry Crabb
We have made a terrible mistake! For most of this century we have wrongly defined soul wounds as psychological disorders and delegated their treatment to trained specialists. Damaged psyches aren't the problem. The problem is disconnected souls. What we need is connection. What we need is a healing community. — Larry Crabb
The core problem is not that we are too passionate about bad things, but that we are not passionate enough
about good things. — Larry Crabb
If I understand accountability, but not acceptability, I will live under pressure to behave well in order to be accepted. If I understand acceptability, but not accountability, I may become casually indifferent to sinful living. When I understand first my acceptability and then my accountability, I will be constrained to please the One who died for me, fearful that I might grieve Him, not wanting to, because I love Him. — Larry Crabb
We can't always make life work. But we can always draw near to God. There is a different way to approach our problems. There is a NEW WAY to live. — Larry Crabb
The problem sincere Christians have with God often comes down to a wrong understanding of what this life is meant to provide. — Larry Crabb
We must come to the Bible with the purpose of self-exposure consciously in mind. I suspect not many people make more than a token stab in that direction. It's extremely hard work. It makes Bible study alternately convicting and reassuring, painful and soothing, puzzling and calming, and sometimes dull - but not for long if our purpose is to see ourselves better. — Larry Crabb
We don't like to hurt. And there is no worse pain for fallen people than facing an emptiness we cannot fill. To enter into pain seems rather foolish when we can run from it through denial. We simply cannot get it through our head that, with a nature twisted by sin, the route to joy always involves the very worst sort of internal suffering we can imagine. We rebel at that thought. We weren't designed to hurt. The physical and personal capacities to feel that God built into us were intended to provide pleasures, like good health and close relationships. When they don't, when our head throbs with tension and our heart is broken by rejection, we want relief. With deep passion, we long to experience what we were designed to enjoy. — Larry Crabb
Face the hard questions that life requires you to ask. Gather with other travelers on the narrow road, pilgrims who acknowledge their confusion and feel their fears. Then, together, live those questions in My Presence. — Larry Crabb
A marriage bound together by commitments to exploit the other for filling one's own needs (and I fear that most marriages are built on such a basis) can legitimately be described as a "tic on a dog" relationship. Just as a hungry tic clamps on to a nourishing host in anticipation of a meal, so each partner unites with the other in the expectation of finding what his or her personal nature demands. The rather frustrating dilemma, of course, is that in such a marriage there are two tics and no dog! — Larry Crabb
The root of all our personal and emotional difficulties is a lack of togetherness ... I therefore believe that the surest route to overcoming problems and becoming the people we were meant to be is reconnecting with God and with our community. — Larry Crabb