Drawing from a study of Naomi in the Book of Ruth, Crabb gives us “an invitation to taste and see that Lord is good even when the bottom falls out of your life.”  The three ideas this invitation builds on are:

1.  God wants to bless you.  “He can’t resist giving us the highest good”…an encounter with Himself.

2.  The deepest pleasure we’re capable of experiencing is a direct encounter with God.  “an encounter with God is what we want, but we don’t know it.”  We foolishly look for happiness in all the wrong places, “We dream lower dreams”, such as good marriages, talented kids, health, “and think that there are none higher”

3.  God uses the pain of shattered dreams to help us discover our desire for Himself.  The suffering caused by shattered lower dreams, “must not be thought of as something to relieve if we can or endure if we must.  It’s an opportunity to be embraced, a chance to discover our desire for the highest blessing.  God wants to give us an encounter with Himself.”

A comprehensive workbook is also available.  It is designed for 8 weeks of personal or group study.  The workbook is written in ways that will cause you to reflect on your personal disappointments to come fact to face with God’s desire for you.

This book and companion workbook is a timely call to the Western Christian to recognize God’s pathway to joy (encounter with God) is suffering.  We are so blessed with the lower dreams in life that we think they are the best dreams and we are crushed when they are shattered.