“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.”

Shattered Dreams, Page 183

Question for Reflection:

Do you believe it’s possible to enjoy God more than anyone or anything else?

Human Needs as Motivation

Following the teaching of Webex 97, at the beginning of the question/answer phase, Dr. Brettell asked a question concerning the motivation of the OM and NM. The essence of the question as I understood it was is there a difference between Old Man motivation and New Man motivation? Isn’t OM motivation selfish and egocentric while NM motivation is unselfish and Christocentric? This is a key question in the discussion of OM-NM and Dr. Brettell’s keen understanding of these two different systems saw the issue right away. While I spoke to the issue briefly during the meeting, I would like to clarify it in the following discussion.

The following paragraphs will discuss the divine design of the soul, focusing on our needs that we experience as desires. We will explain how these needs motivate the Old Man to seek their fulfillment by attaching to people & by developing relational strategies designed to manipulate others to love us. We will then discuss how the new believer who initially perceives their needs as unfulfilled, uses the same needs/desires as the reason to pursue God. Finally we will see how as the believer reaches a mature status through spiritual growth, we realize that our needs were totally fulfilled at salvation and this new belief about being fulfilled enables us to sacrifice self for the sake of Christocentric motivations.

Neutral Soul – Sin Nature

First, we know that at the moment of birth, for one microsecond we have a soul that is neutral, meaning it is neither influenced by the sin nature or by the Holy Spirit. Following this micro brief moment, the sin nature takes over and begins to influence the soul. At that moment the soul begins to be dominated by the sin nature, by the world’s beliefs & by the devil (Eph 2:1-3).

Human Needs

Part of the divine design of the human soul is the existence of needs. God didn’t create man to be strong, to be independent, to stand on his own by his own power. He never intended that any of us would be able to exist in a self fulfilled state. He made us with holes in our soul that cause us to crave that these holes be filled by someone outside of ourself. The purpose of these needs is so that man will realize that we can never be happy without God and to a lesser degree, one another. He created man with a primary need for a relationship with God and a secondary need for other humans. While some believe these needs are a result of the fall and didn’t exist in the garden, I believe that they did exist as part of the divine design in the garden and that Adam and Eve experienced these needs. The basis for this belief is Gen 2:18:  Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” In the garden Adam was alone with God but he wasn’t designed to live alone, he was designed to need a wife to fulfill his human needs. The driving force of human needs goes all the way back to the creation of man’s soul and is in the heart of every human being.

Needs Experienced as Desires

Our human needs were given to us by God as part of our design to reveal our need for Him and our need for one another. We experience these needs as desires, as longings, as cravings and as Jesus called them as hunger and thirst in the soul. Our hearts feel empty and this emptiness creates a craving for someone else to relate to us and to express to us a positive regard for us. This is what Jesus had in mind when He called out to the crowd:

John 7:37-39 Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. 38 “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.’” 39 But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

God designed our needs with a primary, which is for Him and a secondary, which is for other human beings. Our needs/desires can be categorized as physical and soulish. Our physical needs are the most obvious and what many people think about when the subject of needs is discussed. Our soul needs are met through relationships with God and man. Each of us begins our life clearly in touch with our needs and we honestly acknowledge our desire for love, affection, attention, approval, acceptance, accomplishment, security, challenges, significance and the ability to contribute to others. As we encounter rejection, harshness, abandonment and disappointment because of our relationships, we naturally distance ourself from our feelings and desires as a means of protecting ourself from pain.

Old Man Beliefs

We are born with needs that feel like deep longings and cravings for love and relationship with others. From the moment of birth we begin to experience our needs and feel driven to find fulfillment for our needs. Being born after the fall, we are born spiritually dead, separated from God, unable to process spiritual concepts and unable to obey God. While we are designed to need God, Adam’s sin has caused us to be born cut off from God so that our needs go unmet. Because we experience the drive to connect, we turn to our only available relationships, people. We attach our needs to mankind and develop the belief that people are the source of meeting our needs. Our first relational attachment is mother, then father, then peers, then a mate and finally our own children. As we grow up, we continue believing that man can meet our needs and so we develop a system of relational strategies designed to cause others to see us in a positive light. From childhood to adulthood and even to the point of death we continue to be motivated by our desire to relate to others with love. The Old Man belief system, the beliefs of the unbeliever are totally motivated by the need for certainty, security, challenges, love, connection, growth and the need to contribute to others.

The New Man

Hopefully at some point we come to believe the gospel and trust in Christ for our salvation. At the moment we are born again and become part of God’s family, He meets every need we will ever have. Yet, at the moment of salvation we will have lived out our life with a critical need for God’s love but will never have experienced it. We will have lived with a need for His approval but having lived with out it. We will have lived with the need for spiritual self esteem but will have only the esteem we have earned through our own abilities.

Fulfilled Souls

For the believer every human need involves God either directly or indirectly. He gives us His love directly and provides for our every other need in many different ways. Initially when we come into His family we are still driven by the desire to fulfill our souls. The need/desire for love, approval, significance, meaning and purpose continues to be the reason we pursue God. As we learn the whole realm of doctrine and come to adjust ourselves to His plan, we develop our intimacy with God. As we lay aside our Old Man beliefs about relating to people and replace them with beliefs about relating to God, we come to experience His love as our reality. As our relationship with Him grows, He continues to fill our hearts with His love and unconditional regard. As we experience His love more and more we realize that our every need has been realized and we want for nothing, we are full, we are fulfilled.

Reciprocal Love

As we grow into love with God, our hearts are filled with confidence, courage, peace, compassion and an intense personal love for God. His loving us first causes love to grow in us. The Apostle John writing to the church said: 1 John 4:19 We love, because He first loved us. We love Him in a personal way and we gain the capacity to love others with unconditional love. It is at this point of fulfillment that we return His love and begin to be motivated by our love for Him instead of our need for Him.

Mature Motivation

It is at this point of adult growth that we take on spiritual responsibilities and honor Him simply because we love Him and want to please Him. As we continue to grow and reach the higher levels of maturity, we become willing to sacrifice everything we have in this life to glorify Him and please Him. Mature motivation as a Christian becomes Christ centered rather than self-centered. But, before we reach this place of fulfillment through spiritual growth and relationship with God, we will continue to be driven by our own needs.

The baby and childhood stages of the Christian life involve the same needs we had at birth and the same needs that drove us to build the Old Man belief system. These needs are not Old Man needs or New Man needs. Our needs are part of the divine design of the human soul and pre-date both sin and salvation. They are with us at birth, with us through our life as an unbeliever and are our motivation all the way to maturity when they are finally fulfilled through God’s love. Only then, having experienced fulfillment are we free to love like God and give freely in grace like God who has no needs and an abundance of inner resources to give to others.

Those of you who know me well, know that I consider Larry Crabb a major mentor in my life. His summary of the scriptures expressed within a psychological framework was the insight I desperately needed to understand psychology as a sub category of the divine revelation. My theological training under great Pastor-Teachers (RB Thieme & Ron Adema), great as it was, was not giving me the specifics I needed to understand my personal problems. My psychological readings were giving me the insights I needed to see my sin patterns and the thinking behind them. The writings of modern psychologists were giving me answers I desperately needed to understand my life experiences and how they had shaped my beliefs, my thinking, my feelings and my actions. God, knowing exactly what I needed, sent me the book Inside Out by Crabb, that gave me a biblical interpretation that brought the theology and the psychology together into one system, with the bible as the primary source and psychology as secondary. I jumped for joy as I read the second book, Understanding People, that explained more fully the combining of theology and psychology, allowing me to use the psychological insights within the biblical framework. I knew that they had to fit together and that what I was reading from Scott Peck, John Bradshaw, Minirith & Meier, Melody Beatie, Willard Harley and many others was truth because it revealed my life. I just couldn’t see how they fit together until Dr. Lawrence Crabb came along and showed me that all of our psychological problems were the experiential results of Adam’s fall.

I write these things not to praise Larry Crabb for his work is the copyrighted insights of the Holy Spirit and he is simply a seeker of truth for his own needs. I write to thank our gracious Lord and Savior for giving us seekers of truth the answers we seek and for allowing Larry to stick around a little longer so he can continue leading the way with insights that take us deeper into God’s love. Thank you Lord and thank you Larry for faithfully using the grace given to you to see into the depravity of your own soul, the purity of God’s and writing about it so I could see it too.

Finally, though I have never written to thank you for your work, I am sending this short letter in the hope that if you reads it, you will know that at least one other seeker is out here and that someone else is getting it and using it to grow free of the old man and enter into the love of the Lord. Keep going and don’t quit until you cross over.

Reflections: Looking Back, In, and Ahead Sixteen Days After Cancer Surgery

by

Larry Crabb

Successful Surgery

Surgery took place Friday morning, August 12, from about 7:00 A.M. to I think around 3:30 P.M. (including prep). Literally thousands prayed. Hundreds sent emails, cards and notes. Dozens called. (One card assured me that my surgeon had the latest technological equipment. Turn the page and “He just bought a 54″ flat screen High Def TV”). If I knew a stronger word than grateful, I’d use it. If the sincerity of a “thank you” depends on whether those words come from the center of our souls, then Rachael’s thank you and mine are deeply genuine.

Reading all the wonderfully warm words you sent to us made me realize how hesitantly I receive love. Maybe a good psychologist could explain my resistance. But whatever the defensive crust might be that foolishly and wrongly protects my heart from the nourishment it longs for, it’s been penetrated by you. In my pre-surgery ramblings, I spoke about searching for my center. In these post-surgery reflections, I think I can speak from the center of my penetrated heart, opened in large measure by so many of you. For 16 days, I’ve been looking back on what was happening in me since August 12, I’ve been paying attention to what’s going on in me each moment, and I’ve been looking down the narrow road as my slow journey towards maturity continues.

But first: after cutting out 1/8 of my cancer-spotted liver, removing 2 suspicious lymph nodes (one turned out to be cancerous), and leaving no remnant of my stone-infested gall bladder, my surgeon emerged from the operating room to greet nearly 2 dozen family and friends with a reassuring smile. He spoke surgeon-speak, but his message was clear: “GOT IT ALL”. No further treatment needed just follow-up blood tests. Your prayers for successful surgery were answered. God is worthy of praise whether surgery succeeds or fails, but a certain level of grateful praise comes more easily with good news. So, thank you for joining Rachael and me and our family in praising the Lord.

But a question arises as I praise. Do I know what it means, like Paul, to be content with whatever happens? Would richer praise emerge from deeper places within me if the news were different, even terrifying? Along with much appreciated prayers for my health, many of you asked God to give me a satisfying sense of His presence no matter what happened. I don’t know if that prayer was answered. I don’t think it was.

As I lay in the hospital, epiduraled, IV’ed, catheterized, and oxygenated, I remembered something my then 79 year old father said after his open heart surgery. Serious complications kept him in the hospital for 21 days. When he was finally discharged, as I was driving him to his home in South Carolina, mother in the front seat, dad lying down as best he could in the back, my father broke a sober silence with a weak voice: “I’m grateful for all the friends who came to visit me in the hospital. But the visitor I most wanted never came”.

“Who, dad?,” I asked with more than a little curiousity.

“God”, he plaintively replied.

I had no idea what to say, so, uncharacteristically when I’m at a loss for words, I said nothing.

Without any prompt from me, dad waited a few seconds and then, in a voice trembling with joy, added, “I’m so grateful”.

“For what?”, I blurted out. “God’s absence?”

“Oh, Larry, God gave me the privilege of trusting His Word in the absence of His felt presence. He must see a kind of faith in me that I can’t see in myself. I was able to rest in His written promises. I think that pleases Him.”

I remember thinking to myself as my father spoke, “Would I count it a grace-provided privilege to draw near to God when I had no sense at all of His drawing near to me? Or do I feel entitled to some felt awareness that He is with me before I’d be strongly interested in pleasing Him?”

All that happened more than a decade ago. For the past 2 weeks, after reading a little Chesterton, after slowly devouring Lewis’s book Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, after re-reading and finally understanding a little of Till We Have Faces, Lewis’s last and favorite of all his books, I’ve spent the last week soaking my soul in The Message of the Cross by British scholar Derek Tidball. I wanted to see God’s ultimate expression of love (Calvary) whether I experienced His love or not. I knew my faith required content and could best be nourished by meditating on the content that most clearly evidences the God of love.

Here’s one sentence (among hundreds) that grabbed me: “… an evangelical spirituality is developing which, in its search for self-affirmation and comfort, can only be described as cross-avoiding rather than cross-carrying”. “Calvary,” Tidball suggested, “has been replaced by Pentecost”. That sentence did more than grab me. Has the wonder of the ongoing value and presence of Calvary dimmed as I’ve been depending on the felt experience of the Spirit? When I feel empty, scared, alone, discouraged, or defeated, do I pray for the Spirit to replace those feelings with fullness, joy, and hope more than I trust Him to bring me back to the one Event on which my faith depends?

Tidball quotes charismatic thinker Tom Smail, “Experience of the Spirit has for many become more central than faith in the Crucified, so that the Christian centre has moved from Calvary to Pentecost”. “The way to Pentecost is Calvary,” Smail declares; “The Spirit comes from the Cross”.

God gave me an opportunity to bring those lofty thoughts into my immediate reality on August 16, around midnight in my hospital room, 4 days post surgery. Thanks to morphine, I had little pain. Thanks to a skilled surgeon, I had little worry. Thanks to an attentive nursing staff, I had little need. I was coasting in the river of shallow praise. Then, God seized the opportunity to fix my focus on Calvary in a way that released, not without struggle, deeper trust and richer praise.

I’ll spare you the graphic details, but I will tell you they were not pretty. Unexpected complications arose suddenly at midnight, leaving me in terrible pain, fear, and frustration. Before I pressed the “Get in here now button”, I prayed:

“God, I know You’re here. I believe You love me. And I know You’re aware of what’s happening right now. And I know You could relieve my difficulty in seconds. God, that’s what I want You to do so I’m asking You, begging You, in faith, to do what only You can do. Please, solve this problem!”

I paused, for only a few seconds. Then, with neither cynicism nor disappointment but with a strangely calm settledness, I went on, “God, I really don’t expect that You’ll answer that prayer. And I don’t believe that if I had faith that You would, then my prayer would be answered. So, in line with James’ encouragement, I pray now for wisdom. What do You want me to see in my suffering? How have You empowered me to please You in my trouble? What would it mean to consider this misery as an opportunity for great joy like You said in James 1? God, I know You’re good. I believe You’re doing me good right now. Help me define good the way You do so that I can see how You are using Your power, right now, to do me good.”

That prayer was answered. My by then lesser but still strong desire for pain relief was non-miraculously, uncomfortably and slowly satisfied (in measure) by standard medical means offered by competent medical personnel. But in those difficult moments, I became quietly aware of a desire to reveal the Christ I knew on the Cross, the One who lived to honor His Father and to bless others at any cost to Himself, who remained profoundly other-centered even while enduring pain that would seem to justify an obsession with His own relief. I discovered in my center a primary longing to be spiritually formed, to relate like Jesus, in any circumstance. I had no overwhelming experience of His loving presence. God still seemed distant, unnear in the way I was thinking of nearness.

But thoughts of Calvary aroused a compelling desire to reveal to others that I had been crucified with Christ by now crucifying every desire in me that competed with my longing to reveal Christ to others and release Christ into others by the way I related, all for the Father’s pleasure and in the Spirit’s power. Calvary became the center. Resurrection became a personal vision. Pentecost supplied the power to stumble toward the vision.

I’ve just described what took place Tuesday night, August 16, beginning near midnight and slowly growing clearer during a sleepless early morning. Looking back on that miserable opportunity to move another small step on the narrow road to life, and now looking in to see if anything remains from that night, I think something I’ve believed and taught for years has taken deeper root in my soul. It’s this: whether the truth excites me or not, my supreme good in this world lies not in the enjoyment of blessings I legitimately desire such as good health, loving responses from others, good income, well-received ministry, respect and recognition from people important to me, godly kids and grandkids who fulfill my dreams for them. My supreme good in this world, the source of my deepest joy, lies rather in the Cross-dependant, Resurrection-affirmed, Pentecost-supplied power to relate like Jesus through any trial in a way that reveals God’s heart to others and releases God’s life into others.

That Terrible Tuesday became a window that let me see a beam of glory, a door opening that drew me to walk more closely with Jesus, to keep Him company as He continues to bring His light and love into the dark places of our human experience, to take more seriously my calling to love God with all my heart (releasing the pure longings that fill my center), with all my soul (releasing by choice the power to live from my center), with all my mind (releasing my capacity to think, study, meditate and believe what I can know of God as I sit at the foot of the Cross and immerse myself in God’s 66 love letters), and with all my strength (releasing the already supplied courage to persevere in love when I fail others badly or slightly and when I am failed badly or slightly by others.

I’ve just re-read these rambling reflections. If I take my eyes off Christ, I want to burn everything I’ve written, leaving only my expressions of thanks to you for your prayers and the good news of successful surgery. I write better than I live. When I see Jesus remaining on the Cross during those 3 hours of darkness when He felt Satan’s presence and His Father’s absence, when I hear the call to be formed like Jesus, I realize how far beneath my calling I live, how too often I lose sight of my calling and want only those blessings that provide immediate satisfaction and comfort, how easily I let boredom, sleeping troubles, health and money worries, ministry pressures that feel like inconveniences, and debilitating weariness of soul and body reduce my calling to little more than an irritant, a lovely but unrealistic, unreachable, and only weakly desired goal. I so easily slip into complacent satisfaction with a hoped for good life as I naturally define it.

The battle continues. But my Terrible Tuesday has wakened me to so much more that is available to me in the Gospel of our Creator God, our Incarnate God, our Crucified God, our Resurrected God, our Pentecost-released God, and our Soon Coming God. Father, Lord Jesus, indwelling Spirit, expand my capacity to know You, to believe You, to trust You, to enjoy You, to be formed like Jesus and to keep in step with Your Spirit, all for Your glory, which means my good.

Well, that’s it. Brevity is not among my gifts. My only excuse for so many words lies in the stewardship opportunity that burdened me to honor all your kindnesses to Rachael and me by sharing what I discern to be how God has been (and will continue to be) working in response to your prayers. Thanks for listening. Be encouraged. I am.

Larry