Shattered Dreams

""If I were a pastor, I would want to preach in the spirit of the New
Covenant, inviting everyone in the congregation to see the heart of
God revealed in the cross of Christ. 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. And I would offer my own life as a
growing, struggling, sometimes painfully unattractive example of what
doing that might mean. I would beg God to deliver me from Calvary-
denying sermons, which leave people feeling scolded and pressured.

I would ask God to never let me again preach an Eden-denying message
where psychological insights replace biblical wisdom in a misguided
effort to repair emotional damage when the real problem is a serpent-
inspired determination to experience life without God." " - Larry
Crabb "Shattered Dreams" (via Tom Wood, www.gracedagain.com)