CONNECTING
Healing for Ourselves and Our Relationships
by Larry Crabb

This is a book that every lay counselor and professional counselor would benefit from reading. In this book, Crabb does a fine job defining God's purpose for people and relationship especially in light of professional counseling.

Crabb's basic premise is that people need a connection with other people. Crabb talks about three ingredients needed for connection and consequent change:

Helping people to see that Christ delights in them and accepts them for who they are (warts and all).

Helping people to see the good God has put within them (I prefer to think of this "good" Crabb refers to as God's image in us that He is restoring).

Helping to expose the sin or pain in a person's heart so that they can more fully experience God's kindness.

Crabb's next premise is is that people are restored through connecting. Connecting occurs when people reveal their deepest needs and struggles to another member of the body. Crabb exhorts us to not do what we are generally inclined to do, that is retreat, reprove or refer when someone gets "real" with us. Our tendencies as helpers are frequently to fix, give advice or exhort others into holier living, when it would often be more effective to just "be." There is skill involved in learning to be comfortable being in the presence of another person who is sharing their pain without trying to "make it all better" for them.

Crabb teaches us that connecting with others requires us to lead with our heart and not with our head. Following with your heart is allowing what is in the heart to rise up to the surface where it can be exposed and communicated to others. According to Crabb, people experience the life-changing force of healing when something powerful comes out of one person's heart and touches something good in another. That powerful thing is a Person and He is called the Holy Spirit. The Spirit reaches out to one person through the obedience and willingness of another person. As much as Crabb emphasizes relationship, he does not do this however at the expense of ignoring sin. He addresses sin, the enemy within, and exhorts us to mortify our fleshly urges.

This book will help the reader learn to focus on their relationship with God and God's plans for their life in contrast to their own plans. For example, the author speaks of entering the battle where we too often are more concerned with preserving our dignity than in understanding the real battle that wars against our soul. Crabb rightly identifies the primary battle-knowing God well. Too often both professional and lay counselors get caught up in attending to the secondary battle of solving someone's problems.

People who are more likely able to connect with others and be used of God to bring healing into the lives of hurting people are those who understand that the life of Christ lives within them in a powerful way. These people are the ones who take time to nurture the life of Christ within them to become stronger than every other impulse. They are people who feel inadequate, but passionately depend on the Holy Spirit to equip and guide them. They understand that God lives in them so that they can be instruments of His peace.

The inspiration for this book arose out of a time of difficulty in Crabb's own life and I think a coming to terms himself with the need for connection within the body of Christ. At first glance he seems to abandon the fundamental nature of counseling techniques and tools in favor of the power of connection. However in reading other articles by Crabb since he wrote this controversial book, I believe that he would also agree that God uses many different parts of the body to bring healing into our lives, including traditional, Biblically based counseling. I agree with Crabb that connecting via relationships in the body is a tremendous and powerful influence God uses in His restoration process of our lives. However, I would add in conclusion, that this does not happen for the glory of God apart from His wonderful and powerful word, quickened to our souls by the power of His Holy Spirit because of the work of Christ.

Copyright © 2002 Jean and Alan LeStourgeon