Releasing the Rivers Within by Dwight Edwards

Author:Dwight Edwards [Edwards, Dwight]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5058-3
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2013-07-17T00:00:00+00:00

Desperate Neediness

But what does brokenness look like? While it often involves sorrow and remorse over our sins, I don’t think those are its primary attributes. I believe brokenness has far more to do with absence of confidence than anguish of heart. Larry Crabb writes, “Brokenness is the admission that the flesh is utterly insufficient for the job it has taken on.”4 It has to do with a spirit utterly drained of self-sufficiency, self-independence, self-glorification. It maintains a desperate sense of its ongoing neediness for anything genuinely good to come from us.

Brokenness is the condition expressed in the first beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). It’s what Paul was alluding to when he cried out, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells” (Romans 7:18).

Our flesh can so easily deceive us into trusting things other than the Lord Himself alone. C. S. Lewis noted that our problem isn’t trusting God; it’s in trusting God only. The more our movement toward others is energized by dependence upon a conglomerate (God plus other things), the less possibility there is for the sheer, naked power of the Holy Spirit to break through.

We all have areas in our lives that could be considered natural strengths. Perhaps you were blessed with a bright intellect. Great! Thank God for it—and then get over it. The greatest intellect, as great a gift as it can be, isn’t one iota less dependent upon the Holy Spirit for illumination than anyone else. “There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit,” John Calvin wrote, “than confidence in our own intelligence.”5

Martin Luther noted this as well:

It is very certain that we cannot attain to the understanding of Scripture, either by study or by the intellect. Your first duty is to begin by prayer. Entreat the Lord to grant you, of His great mercy, the true understanding of His Word. There is no other interpreter of the Word of God than the Author of this Word, as He Himself has said: “They shall all be taught of God.” Hope for nothing from your own labors, from your own understanding: trust solely in God, and in the influence of His Spirit. Believe this on the word of a man who has had experience.6

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