Releasing the Rivers Within: The Exhilaration of Utter Dependence on God - Softcover

Edwards, Dwight

 
9781578564606: Releasing the Rivers Within: The Exhilaration of Utter Dependence on God
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1578564603 ISBN 13: 9781578564606
Verlag: PRH Christian Publishing, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

God's passionate power is about to burst through the floodgates of your soul. You want to influence others for God. To experience more of the abundant power Jesus promised. To live a life overflowing with God's presence. To make a difference in the world. So why do these desires go unfulfilled? Where can you find the resources you need to experience the exhilaration of utter dependence on God? In Releasing the Rivers Within, Dwight Edwards reveals that all the good God wants to dispense through your life finds its origin in the indwelling supernatural resources He has already implanted within you. As Jesus told us in John 7:38, every believer has "rivers of living waters" within, pressing forward and awaiting release. And as you open yourself up and allow God's life to flow through you, you'll bring the greatest glory to Him, the most good to others, and the deepest satisfaction to yourself. Discover the resources God has placed within you. Release the rivers within-and experience life as God intended it: filled to overflowing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dwight Edwards serves as senior pastor for the 2,500-person congregation of Grace Bible Church in College Station, Texas. A direct descendant of the renowned early-American preacher Jonathan Edwards, he attended Dallas Theological Seminary. He serves as a consultant to Dr. Larry Crabb's New Way Ministries. Dwight and his wife, Sandy, have three sons.

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God's passionate power is about to burst through the floodgates of your soul.
You want to influence others for God. To experience more of the abundant power Jesus promised. To live a life overflowing with God's presence. To make a difference in the world.
So why do these desires go unfulfilled? Where can you find the resources you need to experience the exhilaration of utter dependence on God?
In "Releasing the Rivers Within, Dwight Edwards reveals that all the good God wants to dispense through your life finds its origin in the indwelling supernatural resources He has already implanted within you.
As Jesus told us in John 7:38, every believer has "rivers of living waters" within, pressing forward and awaiting release. And as you open yourself up and allow God's life to flow through you, you'll bring the greatest glory to Him, the most good to others, and the deepest satisfaction to yourself.
Discover the resources God has placed within you. Release the rivers within...and experience life as God intended it: filled to overflowing.

Aus dem Klappentext

God s passionate power is about to burst through the floodgates of your soul.

You want to influence others for God. To experience more of the abundant power Jesus promised. To live a life overflowing with God s presence. To make a difference in the world.

So why do these desires go unfulfilled? Where can you find the resources you need to experience the exhilaration of utter dependence on God?

In Releasing the Rivers Within, Dwight Edwards reveals that all the good God wants to dispense through your life finds its origin in the indwelling supernatural resources He has already implanted within you.

As Jesus told us in John 7:38, every believer has rivers of living waters within, pressing forward and awaiting release. And as you open yourself up and allow God s life to flow through you, you ll bring the greatest glory to Him, the most good to others, and the deepest satisfaction to yourself.

Discover the resources God has placed within you. Release the rivers within and experience life as God intended it: filled to overflowing.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Introduction
Made for the White Water

Ablistering summer sun in the Texas Hill Country made it a great afternoon to be in the cool waters of the Guadalupe River. We had joined several other families in tubing down the river, laughing and splashing one another’s rafts as we lazily floated along.

Most of the time we drifted slowly down the waterway. But a few times when the river picked up speed, we found ourselves swiftly carried along in white water—a blessed relief from the snail-like pace we’d been keeping.

I noticed an interesting thing that afternoon. At certain portions of the river, people would get out, carry their rafts along the bank upstream, then get in to ride down these stretches again. Guess which places these were? You got it. The white water. Nobody wanted more of the slow drifting.

But several of us, myself included, went back to reexperience the brief rush of losing control and being swept along in the fastest currents. Slowmoving waters offered plenty of relaxed comfort, but excitement and adventure came only where the water was white.

And so it is with life. Especially our Christian lives.

Something within all of us militates against unrelieved sameness, even when it involves our own personal comfort, safety, and security. The depths of our beings cry out (if we’ll listen closely) for a cause greater than ourselves, a launching out into uncharted waters, an unbridled assault upon life. We were made to soar, and our hearts can never know the thrill of this God-ordained flight while our wings are clipped, even though what’s clipping them may be pleasant and comfortable.

Something within us recoils at John Stott’s description of those whose motto is “safety first” and who “are looking for a safe job in which they can feather their nest, secure their future, insure their lives, reduce all risks, and retire on a fat pension…until life becomes soft and padded and all adventure is gone.”1

“Human nature, if it is healthy, demands excitement,” wrote Oswald Chambers. “God never made bloodless stoics; He makes passionate saints.”2

Perhaps this is one reason for the popularity of fast-paced, actionpacked movies. Film critic George Grella attributes the success of James Bond movies to the fact that Bond “lives the dreams of countless drab people.”3 How sad that we so often try to quiet our hearts’ cry for adventure and excitement by experiencing it vicariously through others’ risktaking—especially when God has provided for this need in spades.

You and I were made for the white water. Within every believer, without exception, divine waters eagerly press forward to be released into the lives of others as well as into a desperately needy world. The releasing of these waters will be the riskiest and most exciting thing you’ll ever do with your life. It’s the key to white-water living for every child of God.

Christ has created and redeemed each of us to be His unique and personal waterway, through whom He can cause His living waters to spill forth for the glory of God, the good of others, and the damage of Satan.

Apart from Him we’re only bone-dry riverbeds, having nothing of eternal consequence to offer anyone. Yet through Him—ah, what a difference that makes!—every life has monumental potential for dispensing the living waters of God to the parched souls of men. And as His waters are dynamically released from within, we experience the exhilaration of utter dependence on God and His strong flow through our lives.


Vibrant Rest

That’s what this book is all about—an approach to life and ministry that absolutely requires God and says that without Him we don’t even need to bother showing up. It’s about leaving behind safe, predictable, boring spirituality for the ride of your life. It’s a humble attempt to expound the essentials of what I believe Paul meant when he wrote about our serving God “in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter” (Romans 7:6).

This book is about the high adventure of living under the spell and sway of what the Bible calls “the new covenant” (2 Corinthians 3:6). It’s about seeking to understand the reasons behind the glad shout that the whole of our existence begins and ends with God, for when the Christian life is properly lived, all the glory must go to God because all the good comes from God.

In the following chapters we’ll examine what this God-infused good is and how it can be released through us for the benefit of others and, most of all, for the glory of God.

It’s the vibrant rest of true spirituality.

What do I mean by vibrant rest?

It’s another way of expressing what Jesus had in mind: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

If you reflect deeply on those words, you can’t help being impressed by the offer Jesus makes: Rest from the weight of sin, rest from the burden of guilt, rest from the tyranny of pressured obedience, rest from enslavement to men’s approval, rest from trying to measure up to God’s perfect standard—all are included here.


This wondrous rest of soul is in no way anemic, sluggish, or uninvolved. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It’s experienced only as we live in the exhilarating bondage of being inseparably yoked to the risen Christ. It means quietly and confidently abandoning ourselves to the control of God’s white-water currents as they carry us forward in the direction He’s heading.

Accompanying this flow is a God-energized, Christ-impassioned, spiritually vibrant rest that’s intensely active, yet never pressured, frantic, or guilt driven. It’s what I believe Jesus meant in John 15 by the word abide. It’s what Francis Schaeffer aptly described as “active passivity.”

Our vibrant rest is the glorious by-product of allowing God’s “rivers of living water” to flow out of our innermost being (see John 7:37-39). In the words of Dr. Larry Crabb, it means “releasing what is good”—and the “good” he speaks of is the life of Christ in our souls. As we abide in Him and allow His life to break forth through ours, we experience an energetic peace that defies description but not experience.

In my book Revolution Within, I focused on what it means to have rivers of living water dwelling within us. In this book I want to deal with what it means to have these rivers flow out through us into this broken, sin-sick world. I want to help you see what it looks like to have the life of God within us transported to the believers and unbelievers around us.


Radical, Naked Dependence

Why is this so important? Why bother to put out another book on Christian living and ministry when so many helpful ones are on the market already?

I find myself compelled to write because of two central truths I want to emphasize. You’ll find these same truths in other books, but candidly, such books are too few and were mainly written for previous generations.

My prayer is that the Spirit of God will be pleased to use this work to reawaken believers to these two core realities.

One of those realities is this: The kind of Christian living and ministry that exerts greatest influence for God is always based upon a Who rather than a what. The list of things promised in our day as keys to godly living...

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Verlag
PRH Christian Publishing
Erscheinungsdatum
2003
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1578564603
ISBN 13 
9781578564606
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
210
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
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