SHATTERED DREAMS: GOD'S UNEXPECTED PATHWAY TO JOY by Larry Crabb

IDEAS

*Hope in new dreams brings joy; living for the better dreams creates joy.

*Brokenness – admit that you are helpless and nothing without God; you cannot do it alone

*Selfishness – our primary commitment is to protect ourselves and therefore never being fully vulnerable to others

*Our pain will always have a purpose.

*Many people will try to “help out” by putting a time limit on mourning and believing that there is a “proper way to mourn.” Page 65  “With each other we’re more proper than real, more appropriate than alive.” Page 67

*Deadening pain is the way of Buddha; deepening our desire is the way of Jesus.

* We must pray for brokenness, for the power to trust God no matter what life brings.

QUOTES

“. . . what He’s doing while we suffer is leading us into the depths of our being, into the center of our soul where we feel our strongest passions.

“It’s there that we discover our desire for God.  We begin to feel a desire to know Him that not only survives all our pain, but actually thrives in it until that desire becomes more intense than our desire for all the good things we still want.  Through the pain of shattered lower dreams, we wake up to the realization that we want an encounter with God more than we want the blessings of life.  And that begins a revolution in our lives.” (emphasis added) page 4

“The road will take us through some dark nights, but you need not wait for morning to rejoice.  Morning will come, but you can welcome your suffering now as an opportunity to meet God, to encounter Him with a passion that will free you to get close to a few people in authentic community and to experience genuine transformation in your personal life, especially in the way you love others.

“May we trust God’s Spirit to draw on the resources of Christ to lead us into the arms of the Father, even if shattered dreams have made it seem impossible to ever dream again.” page 7

A man who had shattered dreams:  “He could not imagine a higher dream than going backward to what once was.” Page 10

“God had a greater dream for the man than a return to a pleasant life.” Page 11

“He still saw his pain.  But now he saw God.  And the cry for blessing was no longer a demand for a pleasant life.  It was a cry for whatever God wanted to do, for whoever He was.” Page 12

“It was a new dream . . . it was a dream of actually knowing God and representing Him in an unpleasant world.” Page 12

“His suffering became to him a doorway into God’s heart.  He shared God’s pain in His great project of redemption.  Suffering together for a single cause made him feel closer to God.” Page 13

“We are not defined by the things we suffer.” Page 27

When dreams shatter:

-we lose hope

-we lose the capacity for soul-pleasure

-then we sink into depression

-and pretend we’re still okay

“There is, of course, a price to pay for this adjustment to shallowness.  When the capacity for soul-pleasure is lost, we become irresistibly attracted to lesser pleasures – either to counterfeits of soul-pleasure (like power, popularity, and prowess in business or sports or party humor) or to substitutes for soul-pleasure (like addictive eating, drinking, and sexual fun).” Page 30

“We long to experience a compelling pleasure that eliminates all pain.” Page 31

We become focused on immediate pleasure instead of delayed gratification.

“As long as our purpose is to have a good time, to have a soul-pleasure exceed soul-pain, God becomes merely a means to an end, an object to be used, never a subject rightfully demanding a response, never a lover to be enjoyed.  Worship becomes utilitarian, part of a cunning strategy to get what we want rather than a passionate abandonment to someone more worthy than we.” Page 32

“The richest hope permits the deepest suffering, which releases the strongest power, which then produces the greatest joy.” Page 45

“Happy people do not love well.  Joyful people do.  That’s why happiness, the pleasant feelings that pleasant circumstances generate, must be taken away in order to be replaced by joy.

“Happy people rarely look for joy.  They’re quite content with what they have.  The foundation of their life consists of the blessings they enjoy.  Although they may genuinely care about those less fortunate and do great things to help, their central concern is to keep what they have.  They haven’t been freed to pursue a greater dream.  That’s why they cannot love well.  In His severe mercy, God takes away the good to create an appetite for the better, and then eventually, He satisfies the new appetite, liberating them to love.

“It comes down to this: God’s best is available only to those who sacrifice, or who are willing to sacrifice, the merely good.  If we are satisfied with good health, responsible children, enjoyable marriages, close friendships, interesting jobs, and successful ministries, we will never hunger for God’s best.  We will never worship.  I’ve come to believe that only broken people truly worship.  Unbroken people – happy folks who enjoy their blessings more than the Blesser – say thanks to God the way a shopper thanks a clerk.” Page 57

Buddism – “We kill desire in an effort to escape pain.” Page 63

“People who insist on happiness never find joy.  They allow themselves to feel only those desires that are met.  Denied desires they deaden.  The effect is to feel happy for a season, perhaps a long season, but it’s a selfish happiness.  They live for the ongoing satisfaction of desires other than the desire to know God.  They become self-absorbed.”  Page 75

If the author were Naomi’s (Bible story) pastor he would speak to her and the congregating like this:  “I would encourage them to interpret all of life’s hardships not as problems to fix or struggles to relieve or pain to deaden, but as important elements in a larger story that all God’s children long to tell.  I would urge them to accept wherever they are on the journey, whether happy or miserable, as the place where God will meet them, where He loves them, where He will continue to work in them.” Page 81

“Inconsolable pain, the kind that drives away every vestige of happiness and renders us incapable of fully enjoying any pleasure, can be handled only by discovering a capacity for a different kind of joy.  That is the function of pain, to carry us into the inner recesses of our being that wants God.  We need to let soul-pain do its work by experiencing it fully.

“If we deny how badly we hurt, we remain unaware of our desire for God and ware only of lesser desires.  When those lesser desires are the only ones we actually feel, they inevitably become compulsive demands.  An addiction begins.” Page 85

“We need God.  He is all we need.  But until we realize that fact, we experience lesser desires as needs and devote our energy to arranging for their satisfaction.  That defines addiction.” Page 68

“Whatever brings satisfaction relieves pain for the moment, then creates deeper emptiness that, in turn, more rudely clamors for relief.  We lose our power to choose.  The will becomes a slave to whatever god makes us feel better.  We die as persons while Satan chuckles.” Page 86

A woman’s husband died and she said: “Everything’s different now.  What used to matter so much just doesn’t matter in the same way.  Nothing really matters now but knowing God.” (Emphasis added)

She continued, “Although I’m grateful for all the blessings I still have and although I deeply value the wonderful support of family and friends, nothing has the power to touch me where I most keenly hurt, especially at four in the morning.  At those times all I can do is turn to God.”(Emphasis added) Page 87-88

“. . . the happiness He provides now is the strange happiness of longing for what we were designed to experience but must wait to fully enjoy.  It’s the happiness of serving a God we trust enough to let us cry today, knowing He has promised to wipe our eyes tomorrow.” (Emphasis added) Page 89

When we abandon ourselves to God:  “No longer do we live for blessings; no longer do we pray, ‘God, here is what I need.  Give it to me!’  Now we rest, an agitated rest that includes the agony of frustration, but still we rest.  And we learn to say, “God, whoever You are, whatever You do, that is all I want.  I demand nothing.  I will wait for You.” page 92

“When we attempt to serve two masters, we end up bowing before the one who is more apparently responsive to our needs and hating the other.  An hour of pornography reaps more immediate dividends than an hour of prayer.  It’s only play money, but it looks real.  And it does buy pleasure on demand.  Prayer doesn’t do that.”  (Emphasis added) Page 96

We shouldn’t dwell on the difficulties of life.  “More often, we should lighten up, enjoy what’s enjoyable, and seize everyday opportunities to trust God and do good.”

“. . . We’re reduced to exhilarating humility, to an interior darkness, a silencing darkness, that lets us see God in the richest way He can be seen in this life.  We will see Him in heaven in ways we cannot see Him now.  But we can see Him now in ways that release us to worship and love, even when dreams shatter.” Page 103

“The Spirit’s masterpiece is the man or woman who much prefers to live elsewhere, who finds no deep joy in the good things of this life, who looks closely in the mirror and years to see something different, whose highest dream is to be in the Presence of the grace-filled Father.  It is the person whose life here is consumed with preparing to meet Him there.” (Emphasis added) page 126

“When we see the heart of Jesus and understand His passion for us, the hell of the spiritual journey becomes the foyer of heaven.”  Page 129

“People who spend their lives in the slums, people who have never seen lakes and trees and flowers, suffer from undeveloped imaginations.  They wish for nothing better than that their children live in a tenement with uncracked windows and running water and fewer rats.  For a hobo, it’s really living to ride in a railroad car that doesn’t smell.

“But God’s children are neither slum dwellers nor hobos.  We’ve been empowered to dream bigger dreams than mere earthlings can imagine.  In God’s eyes, big houses, happy families, and comfortable bank accounts are, in themselves, nothing more than rat-free hovels and disinfected cattle cars.

“The finest things this world can offer have no compelling appeal to a reborn spirit.  They are as nothing compared to the joy of living in His Presence.” Page 134

“We conceive of the spiritual journey as a cooperative enterprise where we pool our resources with God’s to see to it that life works well enough to keep us relatively happy till we reach the world where life works perfectly and we always feel great.” Page 141

“Something bad happens.  I hurt.  I feel unhappy.  I long to feel good.  I ask God for help.  I am resolved to feel better.  I do whatever I can to make at least a few dreams come true.  That is the way of the flesh.

“Something bad happens.  I hurt.  I feel unhappy.  I long to feel good.  But I trust God.  His pleasure matters more than mine.  But His pleasure includes mine.  I believe that.  So I abandon myself to His pleasure.  I live to please Him.  I work hard and live responsibly and strive to put balance in my life because that pleases Him.  Making Him feel good is a higher priority than making me feel good.  And somehow, inevitably, at some point, I discover joy.  That is the way of the Spirit.” Page 153-154

“The good news of the gospel is not that God will provide a way to make life easier.  The good news of the gospel, for this life, is that He will make our lives better.  We will be empowered to draw close to God and to love others well and to do both for one central purpose, to glorify God, to make Him look good to any who watch us live.” (Emphasis added) Page 155

“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.

“If dreams never shattered, we would continue to believe that lie and value only what God can do for us now; we would value neither His Presence nor all that He intends to do later.  And we would not be willing to pay the devastating price required to experience His Presence now.  Without trials, only spoiled brats would enter heaven.  And that would turn heaven into hell.” (Emphasis added) Page 157

Author’s friend David Shepherd said:  “Faith, as I am growing to understand it more, is about looking beyond my circumstances to a person.  To have faith in better circumstances, even in God creating better circumstances, is not true faith.  I want to be the kind of man who can watch every dream go down in flames and still yearn to be intimately involved in kingdom living, intimately involved with my friend the King, and still be willing to take another risk just because it delights Him for me to do so.  And my flesh shivers to think about it.” Page 161

“As a church, we’ve lowered our sights; we ask for too little.  We dream only of escaping the pain of life by entering the bliss of heaven.  And until then, we dream only of surviving this life with less heartache and more blessing.  We have given up the dream of knowing God now.” Page 182

“We settle for lesser joys, for more manageable pleasures that come with a smaller price tag, at least for now.” Page 183

“If we believe there’s more pleasure in something other than God, then our obedience will never rise above required duty, our prayers will never aim higher than using God, and our joy will always leave an emptiness that drives us to further self-centered efforts to find the fullness we demand.” (Emphasis added) Page 183

“Only a thrilling, soul-pleasuring encounter with God that generates more pleasure than sin will free us from our addiction to sin.” Page 186

“It’s important to remember that our addictions are not the product of psychological disorder.  They are not the expression of internal damage caused by difficult backgrounds.  They are rather the fruit of the flesh, that natural tendency in all of us to fill our empty souls with some pleasure other than God.  Obedience to God is a fruit of the Spirit’s revealing the sweetness of Christ to our spirits so that we actually enjoy obedience more than sin.” Page 208

“. . . we see ourselves, as minor offenders who perhaps deserve a scolding, maybe even a ticket.  But our reasons for breaking the law seem reasonable.” Page 194

“In our Christian culture, we’ve weakened our understanding of personal sin by talking too soon and too much about our longings and our needs.  We want to feel good about ourselves, we long for enjoyable relationships, we desire effective and recognized ministries.  We become the point and see nothing really wrong with it.

“Because we focus more on our longings than our evil, we see ourselves not as hopelessly arrogant, worthy of eternal misery, but as scoldably selfish, deserving of perhaps a slap on the wrist.” Page 194

“We may admit that our minor offenses warrant a reprimand, but we really believe that if someone knew what we’ve been through and the pain we feel, the scolding would give way to a sympathetic hug.  We struggle and we make mistakes, but given our hurt, given how poorly the people in our lives have responded to our longings, our struggles are quite understandable.  If God loves us, He really ought to help.” Page 194