Waiting for Heaven

Freedom from the Incurable Addiction to Self

By: Dr. Larry Crabb

Narrated by: Dr. Larry Crabb

Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

Are you tempted beyond your ability to resist?

We come into the world relentlessly narcissistic, resisting the kind of rigorous self-examination that reveals what is ugly in us and what is our impact on others. Too often, we live with our felt well-being as our priority concern, and so we continue, incurably addicted to ourselves and powerless to resist whatever temptations promise the sense of instant happiness we seek.

The result includes addictions to:

• Drugs, legal or illegal
• Food, its compulsive consumption
• Sex, both legitimate, illegitimate, and perverted expressions
• Money, to the pleasures and convenience and power money can buy
• Influence, self-satisfying, difference-making pleasure
• Recognition, respect that provides personal significance
• And dozens of addictions to other sources of satisfaction that desperate souls crave.

Could heaven possibly matter to my life now?

There is no question that addictions soil our souls, eventually taking control of our lives. The energy and motivation needed to serve the cause of Christ gets badly short-changed. That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news.

Biblical Christianity provides a way to rise up from this quicksand: waiting! Learning to eagerly wait for the Lord’s return is essential to overcoming the root demand beneath all addictions. But the choice to wait is easy to state but hard to make because arranging for a temporary and counterfeit experience quiets the demand of our tired and thirsty souls. While there is no path to walk that eliminates the struggle to resist temptation, we can be moving into greater freedom from it every day.

As we learn to wait eagerly for heaven when all our longings will be fully and forever satisfied, we will be inclined to live for one central reason: to make this life work as we want it to.

Two things will then happen:

• One, we will find ourselves driven by self-centeredness and by an addictive concern for our own felt well-being.
• Two, whatever either numbs our discontent with things as they are or provides a convincing sense of satisfaction for our deeply felt longings will lead us toward addictions of any available variety, all fueled by a core addiction to self.

Waiting for heaven to provide everything our souls yearn for and demanding nothing now frees us to love well now, to delight God, and to be there for others, requiring nothing in return.

The result? Joy! The satisfaction of living and loving like Jesus.

©2020 Larry Crabb (P)2021 Larry Crabb

THIS IS A MUST READ!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

If your looking for a book that is brutally honest about our brokenness while also revealing the hope of waiting for heaven then this if for you! It’s so much more than just waiting for heaven but enjoying relationship with the Father through Jesus now!!

absolutely fabulous!

I listened to it twice and recommended it to many other people! You won't be disappointed.

READ THIS BOOK - THERE IS SOMETHING MORE

Crabb has extremely good insights about spiritual thirst. You and I are thirsty for the Lord and we can recover to a way of better choices. Crabb will explain this and bring you to the grand eternal plan of " SOMETHING MORE". We do have some waiting ahead but we have a Holy God that gives us His love in a wreckless way to expose our sin and bring us back from the dead to a place of trusting Higher love over the lower earthly carnal path. We have a better choice and a God who models for us a way to stay thirsty for his promise of ultimate satisfaction and triumph over our default sinful self-protection in our daily life.

The only criticism I have was the choice of using another voice for chapter titles. It was about as pleasant as hearing a gong sound at the beginning of each chapter. It was a disturbing vocal sound interruption to my eardrum! versus the soft tone of Crabb's voice which could have been used. It was probably a grandchild to Crabb who wanted to assist their grandpa--- so be it---- but this was not a good experience for this listener.

Good intentions, but incorrect assumptions

I think this book will be an encouragement to many believers. I do not mean to be negative or critical but I find it to be disheartening that we think humility is bragging about our ability to sin. It breaks my heart when Christians don’t realize that Jesus paved the way through the cross for us to have an intimate, deep, satisfying relationship with his father just like he did. I have just recently came to a deeper understanding of how much the father loves me, and the price that he paid to restore that intimate relationship with him like he had with Adam before the fall. It is true that we all will probably fail to live the perfect lives that we would really like to, free from all failures and sin, but for us to start the day off with a presupposition that we are going to sin and fail and think that somehow that pleases God is disrespectful to what he did on the cross. God paid the price for it all on the cross. It is our responsibility to believe that. That is the fight of faith. We are called to fight the good fight of faith, which I do not believe is fighting the devil, but fighting the unbelief that causes us to doubt what Christ really paid for on the cross. Hope you enjoy the book. I do not think Jesus wants us to wait till heaven to experience what he’s already paid for and what he has provided for us to have here on earth. Intimacy with his father. If you want to read a short book about how to have intimacy with Christ. Read the book He Loves Me by Wayne Jacobson. It’s an easy read!!