Larry Crabb - Inside Out

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1988, 2007, 2013 by Lawrence J. Crabb Jr., PhD, PC, Inc.

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ISBN 978-1-61291-312-4
ISBN 978-1-61291-481-7 (electronic)

Dr. Crabbs current literary agent is Keplen Crabb.

Some of the anecdotal illustrations in this book are true to life and are included with the permission of the persons involved. All other illustrations are composites of real situations, and any resemblance to people living or dead is coincidental.

Unless otherwise identified, all Scripture quotations in this publication are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version ( niv ). Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Other versions used include: the Holy Bible, New Living Translation ( nlt ), copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved; and The Holy Bible, English Standard Version ( esv ), copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Crabb, Lawrence J.

Inside out / Dr. Larry Crabb. 25th Anniversary Edition.

p. cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-61291-312-4

1. Christian life. I. Title.

BV4501.2.C687 2013

248.4dc23

2012044145

Build: 2021-04-21 15:23:03 EPUB 3.0

OTHER BOOKS BY LARRY CRABB

The Adventures of Captain Al Scabbard (childrens adventure stories)

Basic Principles of Biblical Counseling

Becoming a True Spiritual Community (formerly titled Safest Place on Earth)

Connecting

Effective Biblical Counseling

Encouragement

Finding God

Fully Alive

God of My Father

Marriage Builder

Men and Women

The Papa Prayer

The Pressures Off

Real Church

Shattered Dreams

Silence of Adam

66 Love Letters

SoulTalk

Understanding People

Understanding Who You Are

To my two sons,

KEP and KEN,

whom I love with a passion

that time only strengthens.

My greatest privilege and deepest

prayer is to be used of God

to further the wonderful process

of your growth in Christ.

I DIDNT SEE it twenty-five years ago when I wrote Inside Out, but I see it now with welcome clarity: Inside Out describes what life is like when Christians walk the narrow road that Jesus said would lead us to relate to others the way He does.

Something else, though, has become disturbingly clear, something that seems more true now than when I first wrote this book: With few exceptions, todays Christians prefer a broad road. And we walk a broad road, thinking were following Jesus on the narrow road.

A comfortable journey matters more to us than a holy journey, yet, because were Christians, we know that holiness is supposed to matter. Our solution to the tension is to redefine what it means to be holy in a way that allows us to feel warmly connected to God while we continue to live lives dedicated to our felt well-being. God becomes someone to use for our sake, not someone to worship for His.

The problem is not new. In Isaiahs day, Gods people insisted that their spiritual leaders not disrupt their self-serving understanding of the spiritual life. Confirm our view, they said. Let us hear from you, God, the message we want to hear. Be done with all this talk about hardship and difficulties that will only get worse throughout life. We dont want to hear gloomy sermons about living life on the narrow road that will only make us better people. We want a better life.

Now, we do want to follow God, and we are willing to be good, but on two conditions: that the goodness our holy God requires must not get in the way of the good life of comfort that we want, and that our goodness must guarantee from God the blessings we need to feel good about ourselves and our life (see Isaiah 30:10-11).

Paul faced that same attitude in the early church. And he realized that if left unchallenged and unchecked, such an attitude would produce a church overflowing with shallow passion that Christians would mistake for worship, a church emptied of spiritual power that people would not recognize as a significant loss, perhaps not even recognize at all. I see it on the horizon, Paul said, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions (2 Timothy 4:3, esv ).

That time has come. I thought it had come twenty-five years ago. It had. But today its worse. Two thousand years ago, Paul worried that we were turning to a different gospel. Today weve already turned to a very different gospel, a false gospel that perhaps is not blatantly wrong but effectively masquerades as the good news Jesus came to bring.

Scores of Jesus followers are following Him to get what they want to believe He provides. Even the healthy renewed focus on spiritual formation in the evangelical church sometimes centers on the promise that we can enjoy spiritual experience with little concern for spiritual relating. The reference point can easily shift from us to me. In what follows, I will try to concisely state what I believe is the problem. Though the scheme I see at work is expressed in compressed language, I urge you to see if you recognize the problem.

Pulpits all across the country distort the gospel of a crucified Savior and resurrected Lord who pours His other-centered life into us. They insist that a certain kind of moral behavior will lead to blessings, and they do so by encouraging followers of Jesus to lead The Managed Life, an ethical but self-centered life that will persuade God to open the windows of heaven and shower our life and our culture with everything we need to live The Blessed Life. Vending-machine Christianity: Insert a dollar of ethical living and out comes a thousand dollars of personal well-being in an improved world. Managing our way to the life we want is the first leg on the broad road we blindly and proudly assume is the road that will lead to life as we define it.