Crabbs, Larry - SoulTalk

[Sharon Isley]

This is a book I started to read at the retreat I went on, and I felt God nudging me to buy it on my way home. It is an incredible book!

The main point is how we can learn to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit as we talk with other people. We spend so much time thinking about what we should say, how we can help. Instead we need to think beneath - what is the real struggle (typically one involving our desire to have life "work" as opposed to wanting God above all else.) We can learn to see how our own attitudes can get in the way (perhaps we are fighting the same battle they are, or we are wanting to rescue), and we can then see that we are powerless to make any real, eternal change. At that point, we become open to the power of God that will flow through us and minister to the souls of those we talk to.

It will be very helpful, as I learn to listen to others in a new way. But what I got out of it was more personal.

Through this book, God has been showing me how my prayers have often been designed to make God do my will, not His. How my desire to help others has too often been about making me feel good, or look good. How so much of my energy is focused on wanting things to turn out well, instead of submitting myself to pain if it would accomplish God's will.

I highly recommend this book.

[Brad Mercer]

I haven't read that book, but I heard Larry Crabb speak at a Promise Keepers conference a few years ago, that I attended with Roland Hearn and others from our church, NewStart-Frisco. Roland and I were barely suppressing the urge to shout. Crabb was saying exactly what we had been saying about the connection between sin and holiness on the one hand, and pain and sources of identity on the other.

Crabb is a psychologist with a Calvinist background, but has arrived at a very Wesleyan place in his thinking.

Brad

[Marsha Lynn]

I haven't read the book reviewed here, but I have collected six books by Larry Crabb over the years: Encouragement: The Key to Caring; Effective Biblical Counseling: A Model for Helping Caring Christians Become Capable Counselors; Connecting: Healing for Ourselves and Our Relationships; Men & Women: Enjoying the Difference; Finding God; and The Safest Place on Earth: Where People Connect and Are Forever Changed. I haven't read the last one yet but it looks to continue his general theme, which is a developing theory that most of what is done by professional counselors doesn't actually require professional training. Most people are simply looking for someone who will listen to them and care about them, someone with whom they can connect and who will encourage them. Crabb sees the church as an ideal place for this to happen.

The two books that most depart from that theme are Men & Women and Finding God. The former explores the nature of masculinity and femininity, lining up the physical differences with psychological differences in the basic makeup of men and women. The latter discusses the foundation and five "floors" of fallenness, the foundation being doubting God. When we doubt God, we tend to 1) turn to another person and say, "I need you;" 2) discover that the other person cannot meet our needs and say, "I hate you;" 3) realize that no one loves us as we desire to be loved and turn our hatred inward; 4) determine to survive by solving our own problems; 5) develop coping mechanisms. The solution to all of that is to go back to the foundation and replace doubt toward God with trust in Him. That enables us to build a very different structure.

I'm not sure when or where I acquired my first book by Larry Crabb (I'm thinking maybe it was at NPH during a General Ass'y), but each one I've read has been compelling enough to prompt me to pick up another as I've run across them here and there.

Marsha