Deep Longings & Wrong Strategies

Excerpt from BOOK: Inside Out by Larry Crabb

INWARD: The Inside Look

A helpful place to [get started in understanding where to begin with an inside look] is with a record of what God saw when He looked deeply in the hearts of His people during a time in their history when they were slipping away from Him. Listen to His comments:

"My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water." - Jeremiah 2:13 NIV

Notice two observations the text suggests: First, people are thirsty... Second, people are moving in the wrong direction in response to their thirst...

The human race got off on a seriously wrong foot when Eve yielded to Satan’s lie that more satisfaction was available if she took matters into her own hands. When Adam joined her in looking for life outside of God’s revealed will, he infected all his descendants with the disease of self-management. Now no one seeks after God in an effort to find life. The most natural thing for us to do is to develop strategies for finding life that reflects our commitment to depending on our own resources. Simple trust is out of fashion. Self-protection has become the norm...

An inside look, then can be expected to uncover two elements imbedded deeply in our hearts: 1) Thirst or deep longings for what we do not have; and 2) stubborn independence reflected in wrong strategies for finding the life we desire.

"So above all, guard the affections of your heart, for they affect all that you are. Pay attention to the welfare of your innermost being, for from there flows the wellspring of life." - Proverbs 4:23 TPT

It is with an understanding of these two fundamental elements that we can productively explore beneath the surface of our everyday problems.

1. Deep Longings (Thirst)

Every person is thirsty. We all long for what God designed for us to enjoy: tension-free relationships filled with deep, loving acceptance and with opportunities to make a difference to someone else... [These] deep longings, reflect our humanness and all the dignity accorded to us as bearers of God’s image. We long for a quality of relationship and meaning that no other creature has the capacity to enjoy. We were designed to richly enjoy the person of God as well as His provisions... God assumes His people are thirsty but He never condemns them for that thirst. Thirst is not the problem.

2. Wrong Strategies

People are moving in wrong directions in response to their thirst. They refuse to trust God to look after their thirst. Instead they insist on maintaining control of finding their own satisfaction. They're all moving about determined to satisfy the longings of their hearts by picking up a shovel, looking for a likely spot to dig, and then searching for a fulfillment they can generate. To put it simply, people want to run their own lives. Fallen man is both terrified of vulnerability and committed to maintaining independence...

Wrong strategies exist because we are sinful. Only foolish, rebellious, proud people would move away from the Source of life in search of a fulfillment they can control. And that is exactly what we’ve done—and do. Spouses demand certain responses from one another as a condition for life. People require that they never hurt again the way they once did in some previous trauma. We devise strategies designed to keep us warmly involved with each other at a safe distance. We live to gain life from others and to protect ourselves from whatever we think is life-threatening.

Change from the inside out begins with an awareness of our thirst. It continues with an awareness of how we try to satisfy our thirst with our own resources. (See: Counterfeit Affections)