Chad Pregracke has a passion for cleaning America's rivers. For the past 15 years, Pregracke has been pulling out tires, refrigerators, washing machines and more out of the Mississippi River and other rivers across the country.
As a native of East Moline, Illinois, Pregracke grew up near the Mississippi River, which supplies drinking water to millions of people. In an interview with news station CNN in 2013, Pregracke said he consistently saw trash in the Mississippi River while working as a commercial shell diver when he was a teenager.
Unable to shake the desire for cleaning the river, Pregacke obtained a grant from Alcoa in 1997. He began that summer to clean the Mississippi River, and has been pulling out trash ever since, but now he does it with help from other volunteers who share the same passion.
Pregacke wants to see the waterways clean and flow unhindered across the country so that millions can have the drinking water they need to survive.
Just like Pregacke has this natural passion, God has a spiritual passion to rid people of the debris and trash that clog them up and hinders them from experiencing the flow of God's Spirit.
God, and only God, can cleanse us from the inside out by His Spirit so that we can experience a revival – a new beginning – in our lives. When we experience spiritual revival in our lives, God's "river" flows through us and purges out of us all that is not of Him – envy, selfishness, hatred, jealousy and other soulish sins.
What is God's River of Revival?
Revelation 22:1 (MSG): Then the Angel showed me Water-of-Life River, crystal bright. It flowed from the Throne of God and the Lamb, right down the middle of the street.
Revelation 22:1 describes the Water-of-Life River, also called "the River of Life," as "clear as crystal" which means its waters are not muddied; they do not mix with the earth along the river basin. Because God's River is pure and refreshing; it cleanses us and causes us to experience revival.
A river must have a source that is higher than itself. Usually, a river originates in the mountaintops and flows downstream to reach the valleys. God's River of Revival, when flowing freely, joins our relationship with Him (the mountain) to the place of our need (the valley). The higher the mountain, the greater the flow. The deeper the valley, the greater the flow, the stronger the power of the current.
