Quotes from 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.

A man looks at a "sex goddess" and lusts. A man looks at a feminine woman and worships.

Nobody moves toward real Christlikeness without humility. Humility is not a bad self-image or a nonassertive personality. Humility is an eager willingness to see where you are wrong in order to experience the power of God that has already made you fit for His presence.

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.

The real power in helping somebody to be transformed is not to do something to them but to join with them.

Spiritual formation is relational formation. It is easier, and therefore more talked about, to practice spiritual disciplines in an effort to feel God's presence than to practice them in order to draw on the Spirit's power to love well. Spiritually forming people may or may not regularly experience God with them. But spiritually forming people will grow to increasingly reveal God's nature by how they relate.

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.

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.

The Bible is a love story that begins with a divorce. Everything from the third chapter of Genesis through the end of Revelation is the story of a betrayed lover wooing us back into His arms so we can enjoy the love of family forever.

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.

People experience the life-changing force of healing relationships when something powerful comes out of one and touches something good in another.

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.