John Bevere’s hotly anticipated new book launches in Singapore first.
Contributed By Yong Yung Shin
Why don’t most Christians rule in life? This is the big question American Christian author John Bevere addresses in his latest book, Relentless. After all, the Bible itself says, “All who receive God’s abundant grace and are freely put right with Him will rule in life through Christ,” (Romans 5:17). In other words, all who have freely received God’s grace are empowered to be pre-eminent in this life. Relentless finds out why this is not the case with the majority of believers today, why it is imperative that it should be, and how to realize this important truth in our own lives.
Bevere’s beginning chapters do with what he does best—taking a Bible verse by its horns (in this case, Romans 5:17) and unpacking the truth it holds. As he does this, many readers will no doubt be convicted by varying degrees of unbelief in their hearts; if we truly read and internalize the Bible for what it literally says, life would be rather different.
A 2009 survey discovered that most born-again, Bible-believing American Christians understood God’s grace as salvation, unmerited gift or forgiveness of sins, period. Only two percent of American believers are aware of grace being God’s free empowerment that gives us the ability to go beyond our natural ability.
Relentless aims to reverse the trend by bringing readers to the point where we know, beyond head knowledge, that what gives us the edge over unbelievers is the supernatural wisdom and creativity of God’s grace to help us go beyond the known—our confidence is to be solely in the grace of God to excel in our respective arenas, nothing more, nothing less. At the same time, it explains how we are to get there—one of the most quotable lines of the book has to be, “Faith is the pipeline of grace”—as well as the obstacles, including the devices of the devil and the disguises of false humility.
At times, he uses his biting wit to put the point across: “Why is it that we so often succumb to the world’s faithless ways? For example, when a recession hits, why do we Christians tend to fear and falter along with everyone else? Sometimes I think we ought just to rewrite Philippians 4:19 to say, ‘And my God shall supply all your need according to how Wall Street, the banking system, and the economy are doing.’”
Bevere’s not speaking from a theological point of view, but a personal, “tried-and-tested” one, recounting his failures, his struggles and subsequent victory through grace; despite having repeatedly flunked his English papers in school, he has gone on to write 15 books, many of them international best-sellers. He is also one of the most renowned speakers in the world. Indeed, Bevere doesn’t just carry but bears testimony to his message.
His ability to elucidate the Word of God creates nothing less than a revelatory read, even for long-time believers. Don’t expect Relentless to be sugar-coated in any way: Bevere presses home the point that just as the enemy is relentless in stealing, killing and destroying, we as children of God and heirs with Christ are to be relentless in staying the course to see God’s kingdom manifested on earth as it is in heaven.
Relentless retails at S$31.50 at Attributes bookstore from Nov. 12 onwards.
