Pneumatology (Holy Spirit)

Question 4071. When I am asked to compare the doctrine of the Spirit across the Reformed, charismatic and dispensational traditions, I always begin by reassuring people that the disagreements, real ...

Question 4090. People are sometimes genuinely surprised that the gift of administration appears in the Bible at all, as though spreadsheets and rotas and Spirit-given gifts belonged to two entirely ...

Question 4088. I have a real and settled fondness for the gift of helps, because it is the gift that the church most takes for granted and could least possibly ...

Question 4085. When people ask me about the gift of pastoring, I always start with the picture buried right inside the word itself, because the word pastor simply means shepherd ...

Question 4067. Few slogans have travelled further or faster through Christian circles than let go and let God, and I am regularly asked whether it is actually biblical or just ...

Question 4064. Of all the gifts I could be asked about, the gift of teaching is one I hold especially dear, because it is the gift God has largely given ...

Question 4043. In Galatians 5 Paul sets two lists side by side, the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, and I cannot think of a passage ...

Question 4030. When I trace the Spirit’s work from the opening chapter of Genesis through to the book of Acts, I find one and the same Person at work throughout, ...

Question 4084. Few questions are as heavy as this one, and I never treat it lightly: is there a point of no return, a place where a person has so ...

Question 4128. The phrase "unction of the Holy One" appears in the King James Version of 1 John 2:20 ("But ye have an unction from the Holy One"), and it ...

Question 4127. The Spirit's anointing is a phrase that is used very freely in contemporary Christian conversation, not always with a great deal of precision. People speak of 'coming under ...

Question 4126. The question of whether martyrdom is a spiritual gift - and whether there is a special grace for martyrdom - is one that requires both honest exegesis and ...

Question 4125. The question of whether celibacy is a spiritual gift tends to generate two opposite responses: either people dismiss it as a peculiarly Roman Catholic concern that has nothing ...

Question 4124. The gift of leadership is one of those gifts about which there is both too much talk and too little clarity in the contemporary church. Leadership has become ...

Question 4122. The phrase "law of the Spirit" appears in one of the most important sentences Paul ever wrote. Romans 8:2 reads: "For the law of the Spirit of life ...

Question 4115. The gift of hospitality is one that sits interestingly between what we would normally classify as a spiritual gift and what Scripture presents as a universal Christian obligation ...

Question 4112. The gift of exhortation is one of the motivational gifts Paul lists in Romans 12, and it is worth spending some time on the Greek behind it before ...

Question 4110. The gift of giving is one of those spiritual gifts that Christians sometimes speak about nervously, as though naming it might somehow absolve the rest of us of ...

Question 4091. The gift of mercy is one of the spiritual gifts listed by Paul in Romans 12, and it is perhaps the easiest to overlook and the hardest to ...

Question 4138. "The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (Romans 8:16). This verse is one of the most personally assuring statements in all ...

Question 4137. Three times in the farewell discourse of Jesus, recorded in John 14-16, the Holy Spirit is called "the Spirit of truth." The first occurrence is in John 14:17, ...

Question 4136. "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper" (John 14:16). The phrase "another Helper in John 14" is one of the richest descriptions ...

Question 4135. "Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’" (John 7:38). The rivers of living water are Jesus’s ...

Question 4134. The power of the Holy Spirit in Acts 1:8 is Jesus’s last commission before His ascension, and it is often misread. We tend to hear "power" and imagine ...

Question 4133. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts" (Zechariah 4:6). Of all the Spirit passages in the Old Testament prophets, this ...

Question 4132. The valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37 is one of the most dramatic and theologically charged visions in all of Scripture. Bones scattered across an open valley, ...

Question 4131. The new heart and new spirit in Ezekiel 36 stand at the very heart of what the new covenant promises and the Spirit accomplishes. "I will give you ...

Question 4130. The Joel 2 Holy Spirit prophecy is one of the most significant in the entire Old Testament. "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour ...

Question 4129. The sevenfold Spirit in Isaiah 11 is not a reference to seven separate spirits but to the Holy Spirit in the fullness of His Person and ministry, described ...

Question 4148. The Spirit symbolised by fire is one of the most dramatic and recurring pictures in Scripture, reaching its most famous expression at Pentecost, where "divided tongues as of ...

Question 4147. The Spirit symbolised by a dove is one of the most visually arresting pictures in the whole New Testament, appearing at the precise moment of Jesus' baptism when ...

Question 4146. The names and titles of the Holy Spirit in Scripture are far more numerous, and far more theologically loaded, than most believers realise, and working through them carefully ...

Question 4145. The liberty of the Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3:17 is the freedom Paul says belongs to everyone in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, a freedom from the old ...

Question 4144. The ministry of the Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3 is Paul's description of the new covenant he has been entrusted to preach, a covenant written not on stone ...

Question 4143. The spiritual man and natural man in 1 Corinthians 2 are Paul's two categories for describing how human beings relate to the things of God, and the difference ...

Question 4142. The continuous filling of the Spirit is exactly what Paul has in mind when he writes "be filled with the Spirit" in Ephesians 5:18, and the Greek grammar ...

Question 4141. Receiving the Spirit by faith is the very first argument Paul reaches for when he wants to correct the Galatian churches, and he reaches for it because it ...

Question 4140. The Spirit of adoption is Paul's name in Romans 8:15 for the Holy Spirit in His specific work of bringing us, as believers, into the felt reality of ...

Question 4139. The groaning of the Spirit in Romans 8:26 is Paul's description of the Holy Spirit interceding for us with what he calls "groanings too deep for words", at ...

Question 4150. The Spirit symbolised by oil is one of the oldest pictures in the Bible, and it carries a weight that is easy to miss if we only think ...

Question 4149. There is a reason the Spirit symbolised by wind runs all the way through the Bible, from the second verse of Genesis to the upper room at Pentecost, ...

Question 4158. The Lakeland Outpouring was a series of nightly meetings held in Lakeland, Florida, in 2008, led by a travelling evangelist and broadcast widely over Christian television and the ...

Question 4157. The Brownsville Revival was a sustained season of intense meetings that began on Father's Day in 1995 at Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola, Florida, and continued for ...

Question 4156. The Toronto Blessing is the name given to a wave of unusual religious phenomena that began in 1994 at a church near Toronto airport and spread to thousands ...

Question 4155. This is one of the genuinely puzzling sayings of Jesus, and blasphemy against the Spirit seems at first to be ranked as worse than blasphemy against the Son ...

Question 4154. The fear of the unforgivable sin is one of the heaviest burdens I am ever asked to help carry, and it tends to settle on the most sensitive ...

Question 4153. Can a true Christian commit the unforgivable sin? I want to answer that plainly at the very start, because leaving it hanging only prolongs the fear: no, a ...

Question 4152. Few questions arrive in a pastor's study carrying more fear than this one, and the unforgivable sin has tormented more tender consciences than almost any other phrase in ...

Question 4151. The Spirit symbolised by water is a picture that would have spoken instantly to people who knew what it was to be thirsty. We turn a tap and ...

Question 4161. Soaking prayer is a style of prayer that grew up in renewal and charismatic circles, in which a person lies down or sits quietly, often with gentle worship ...

Question 4160. Grave soaking, sometimes called grave sucking or mantle grabbing, is the practice in some charismatic circles of lying on or beside the grave of a famous dead preacher ...

Question 4159. The holy laughter movement is the label attached to a wave of charismatic experience that surged through certain churches from the early 1990s onward, in which whole congregations ...

Question 4168. The Holy Spirit empowers elders for the work of leading a local church, and the New Testament shows us how, in the appointing of overseers, in the gifts ...

Question 4167. Anointing oil runs right through the Bible, from the consecration of priests and kings in the Old Testament to the instruction in James that the elders anoint the ...

Question 4166. The doctrine of initial evidence is the classic Pentecostal teaching that speaking in tongues is the necessary first sign that a person has been baptised in the Holy ...

Question 4165. The Word of Faith movement is the stream of teaching, popularised through prosperity preachers and broadcast ministries, that treats faith as a creative force released by spoken words ...

Question 4164. Kenneth Hagin, who died in 2003, was the man more than any other who gave the Word of Faith movement its shape, and his teaching on the Holy ...

Question 4163. The Latter Rain movement was a revival that broke out in 1948 in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, and although it was formally disowned by the main Pentecostal denominations within ...

Question 4162. Bethel Church in Redding, California, has become one of the most influential charismatic ministries in the world, and its doctrine of the Holy Spirit shapes the worship, expectations, ...

Question 4178. How does the Holy Spirit guide a believer in vocational discernment, in those large decisions about what work to take up, where to live, and how to spend ...

Question 4177. What is the Spirit's role in a person's calling to ministry, and how can anyone be sure that the call is from God rather than from their own ...

Question 4176. When Paul tells Timothy to stir up the gift that is in him, what exactly is he asking his young colleague to do? The phrase has a vivid ...

Question 4175. Can a believer today receive a spiritual gift through the laying on of hands, the way Timothy seems to have received something through Paul's hands? This is a ...

Question 4174. When it comes to identifying spiritual gifts, believers often reach first for a questionnaire, tick a few boxes, and come away with a printout telling them their top ...

Question 4173. Do spiritual gifts change over time, or once the Spirit gives a gift is it fixed for life like the colour of your eyes? This is a question ...

Question 4172. Can a Christian have more than one gift from the Holy Spirit, or are we each handed a single speciality and told to stay in our lane? The ...

Question 4171. The difference between spiritual gifts and talents, and between both of those and a learned ability, is a question I am asked more often than almost any other ...

Question 4170. The difference between Spirit-led preaching and emotion-led preaching is one of the most practically important things a preacher can learn, and one of the easiest to get wrong ...

Question 4169. The Holy Spirit and ordination are joined together in the New Testament far more closely than our tidy modern ceremonies sometimes let on. We tend to picture ordination ...

Question 4188. Anyone who has preached for long comes to feel the weight of this question, because the work of the Spirit in preaching is the difference between words that ...

Question 4187. There is no hour in which the ministry of the Spirit is more precious than the last, and to ask how He will comfort a dying believer is ...

Question 4186. The ministry of the Spirit in doubt is something I wish more Christians understood, because doubt frightens believers far more than it needs to. A question rises that ...

Question 4184. Most believers, if they walk with God long enough, come to know what I call the dry places, and the ministry of the Spirit in wilderness seasons is ...

Question 4183. When we talk about the Spirit in suffering, we are touching one of the most tender places in the Christian life, because suffering is where our theology either ...

Question 4182. Almost every Christian I have ever pastored has had at least one sin that seems to cling closer than the rest, and the longing to overcome a besetting ...

Question 4181. The difference between being Spirit-led and impulse-led is one of the most practical things a Christian can learn, and one of the most commonly muddled. A sudden strong ...

Question 4180. When people ask me how the Spirit and marriage decisions relate, they usually want one of two things. Either they are single and longing to know whether a ...

Question 4179. Few questions touch daily Christian living as closely as the relationship between the Spirit and the conscience, because both of them speak to us from within and we ...

Question 4198. We talk a great deal about famous missionaries and almost never about the fact that the Holy Spirit is the primary missionary of the church, and I am ...

Question 4197. We usually think it is possible to grieve the Spirit only as individuals, in the privacy of our own hearts, but Paul's warning was written to a whole ...

Question 4196. The love among believers that Jesus made the badge of His disciples is not something we work up by trying harder to be nice; it is fruit the ...

Question 4195. When Paul calls the Philippians to be of one mind, he is not asking a roomful of different people to think identical thoughts, and a great deal of ...

Question 4194. When Paul tells the Ephesians to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3), he hands the church one of ...

Question 4193. Nothing wounds a congregation quite like church division, and nothing exposes how badly we need the Holy Spirit more clearly than the way a fellowship can tear itself ...

Question 4192. Few subjects make a congregation more uneasy than church discipline, and almost no one stops to ask what the Holy Spirit has to do with it. We tend ...

Question 4191. Ask most people what the Holy Spirit has to do with believer's baptism and they will picture the water and stop there, as though the Spirit were a ...

Question 4190. We rarely stop to ask what the Holy Spirit is doing at the Lord's Supper, and I think that is because we have quietly assumed He is not ...

Question 4189. There is a world of difference between reading the Bible and meeting God in it, and that difference is the whole point when we ask how the Spirit ...

Question 4199. The bond between the Spirit and resurrection is one of the richest truths the New Testament holds out to us, and it answers a question that sits quietly ...

Question 4185. I want to write about the Spirit in depression with great care, because this is a subject where careless words from a pulpit have wounded many sincere believers ...

Question 4021. How does the Spirit sanctifies us? I love the question because the answer takes us straight to the heart of how God changes a person. To say that ...

Question 04123. Speaking in tongues today divides opinion in the church perhaps more sharply than any other single spiritual gift, and I want to give this question the space a ...

Question 4019. What is the difference between carnal and spiritual Christians? The contrast between carnal and spiritual believers comes straight out of Paul's letter to a church that was behaving ...

Question 4100.The Spirit in salvation does far more work than most believers realise, and most of it happens before we are even aware anything is happening at all. Salvation is ...

Question 04200. Conviction of sin is the doorway every one of us has to walk through before the gospel can mean anything at all, because good news only sounds like ...

Question 4014. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is one of the most misunderstood doctrines in the modern church, and few subjects have caused more confusion, division and quiet discouragement ...

Question 04038.Being drunk in the Spirit describes a state, claimed in some charismatic meetings, in which believers stagger, slur their words, laugh uncontrollably, or behave as though intoxicated, all of ...

Question 4079. Whether losing the filling of the Spirit happens through a single, dramatic act of sin or through a slower, more gradual drift is a genuinely practical pastoral question, ...

Question 4077. The laying on hands appears repeatedly in the Acts narratives connected to the Spirit's reception, and I want to work through those specific passages carefully, because the pattern ...

Question 4078. How the Spirit's filling relates to intercessory prayer is a connection Scripture draws explicitly, and understanding it will change how you approach prayer for others, particularly when you ...

Question 4075. Spirit baptism and water baptism are related but distinct realities, and confusing the two has caused more pastoral trouble in Baptist churches than almost any other misunderstanding in ...

Question 4076. Second blessing language has circulated in evangelical churches for well over a century, usually describing a dramatic, identifiable post-conversion experience in which a believer receives a fuller measure ...

Question 4073. The Spirit's distinct personhood is one of those doctrines that sounds like abstract technical furniture until you try to pray, worship, or teach without a clear grasp of ...

Question 4074. The counsel of God is not a phrase Scripture uses lightly. It describes the settled purpose and plan that God formed within Himself before He ever spoke creation ...

Question 4072. The deep things of God are the subject of one of Paul's boldest claims about the Holy Spirit, made in passing in a letter to a fractious, spiritually ...

Question 4069. The Spirit before Pentecost operated on a genuinely different basis from His ministry today, and understanding that difference clears up a great deal of confusion about how Old ...

Question 4070. Trinitarian pneumatology is not an optional specialism sitting alongside the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It is the frame within which the doctrine of the Holy Spirit must ...

Question 4089. I get asked about this more than almost anything else in pastoral conversation, so let me say plainly that guidance through dreams is something Scripture treats with real ...

Question 09022 Western Christianity has a persistent individualism problem. The dominant assumption in many evangelical and charismatic contexts is that the believer's relationship with God is a private transaction, and ...

Question 4086. Spirit's conviction of sin is one of the most significant realities in the whole business of evangelism, and the question of what it actually does inside a person ...

Question 4082. Spirit's intercession is one of the most quietly comforting truths in the whole of Romans 8, and it is worth asking directly whether grieving the Spirit through unconfessed ...

Question 4083. Spiritual dryness is one of the most disorienting experiences a Christian can go through, the sense that yesterday's warmth in prayer has gone cold overnight and nothing you ...

Question 4080. Does the filling and assurance of a believer's salvation genuinely connect to one another, or are they two entirely separate matters that should never be confused. I want ...

Question 4081. Grieving the Spirit is one of two warnings Paul gives about how believers can disrupt their relationship with the Holy Spirit, and the other, quenching the Spirit, gets ...

Question 4096. I get asked fairly often whether the fruit of Spirit in Galatians 5 and the character Jesus describes in the Beatitudes are really describing the same thing, and ...

Question 4097.Character formation is a phrase psychologists reach for almost as often as pastors do, and that overlap is worth pausing on before going any further. Anyone who has watched ...

Question 4098.The fruit metaphor Paul chooses in Galatians 5 was not his only option, and that is worth sitting with for a moment. He could have written a list of ...

Question 4094. Gideon's fleece has become popular shorthand in contemporary Christianity for a particular approach to guidance: placing a condition before God and taking the outcome as confirmation of His ...

Question 4095. Scripture does not specify which career I should pursue, which city I should live in, or which of two apparently godly people I should marry. That silence is ...

Question 4093. Learning to discern Spirit's leading from my own preferences, fears and appetites is, in my experience, one of the hardest and most necessary skills in the Christian life ...

Question 4092. Elijah's journey to Horeb is one of the most emotionally honest passages in the entire Old Testament, and I think that is exactly why so many believers find ...

Question 04116. Whether spiritual gifts today remain a genuine part of the church's life is one of the most practically consequential questions in modern evangelicalism, because the answer shapes what ...

Question 04113. Whether God still does miracles today is a question I get asked more often than almost any other, usually by someone who has either just watched a television ...

Question 4109. Sign gifts are often assumed, even by thoughtful Christians, to have belonged exclusively to the twelve apostles, as a kind of one-off credential to authenticate their unique office ...

Question 4111. Water baptism does not sit in the same fixed relationship to the Holy Spirit's coming everywhere we look in Acts, and that surprises people the first time they ...

Question 4107. Simon Magus is one of the more unsettling figures in the book of Acts, precisely because he looks, for one brief moment, like a genuine convert. Luke tells ...

Question 4108. The spirit reception pattern that runs through Acts 2, 8, 10, and 19 is one of the more rewarding things to trace through the whole book, because Luke ...

Question 4104. walking in Spirit is commanded throughout the New Testament precisely because having the Spirit and yielding to the Spirit are two different things, and the gap between them ...

Question 4106. Philip the evangelist is one of my favourite characters in the whole book of Acts, and I suspect he does not get nearly the attention he deserves. He ...

Question 4101.Spirit indwelling and whether it can ever be lost is not an abstract puzzle for theologians to argue over on a wet afternoon. It reaches directly into how a ...

Question 4103. Spirit baptism and water baptism are related closely enough in the New Testament that Christians regularly confuse the two, but they are not the same event, and keeping ...

Question 4102. receiving the Spirit is exactly what the disciples appear to be doing on resurrection evening, when Jesus breathes on them behind locked doors and says, 'Receive the Holy ...

Question 4050. The interpretation of tongues is the gift that quietly does the heavy lifting whenever tongues are used in the gathered church, and yet it is the one we ...

Question 4051. Few subjects in the church today generate more heat and less light than the gift of healing. On one side the airwaves are filled with dramatic claims and ...

Question 4052. The gift of miracles tends to be handled in one of two unhappy ways. Either it is inflated into something sensational, a kind of spiritual circus act, or ...

Question 4054. The word of knowledge appears exactly once in Paul's list of gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, and that single appearance has carried an enormous amount of theological weight ...

Question 4053. I get asked about the gifts of the Spirit more than almost any other subject in pastoral ministry, and the gift of discernment of spirits sits near the ...

Question 4055. The word of wisdom is easy to confuse with wisdom in the broad biblical sense, the kind James promises every believer may ask God for in James 1:5, ...

Question 4056. Few questions in contemporary church life generate more confusion, and in some quarters more dangerous claims, than whether apostles and prophets still function today with the same authority ...

Question 4057. The Spirit and resurrection are linked in Scripture far more tightly than most Christians realise, and once you see the connection you will not read Romans 8 the ...

Question 4058. The Spirit in the Millennium is a subject Scripture addresses more directly, and more beautifully, than most believers realise, and I want to trace what the Old and ...

Question 04028 The work of the Spirit in evangelism is the most overlooked factor in the whole business of telling people about Jesus. We fret about our nerves, our lack ...

Question 04029 The role of the Spirit in worship is something I wish more congregations understood, because so much confusion about worship comes from forgetting it. We argue endlessly about ...

Question 04026 When I think about the Spirit in prayer, I am always brought back to a verse that quietly demolishes a lot of false confidence about my own praying ...

Question 04027 The assurance of salvation is one of the sweetest gifts the Holy Spirit gives, and one of the most attacked. I have lost count of the believers who ...

Question 04024. Few aspects of the Spirit's ministry are as misunderstood as the conviction of sin. In common Christian speech it has shrunk to a vague feeling of spiritual unease, ...

Question 04025. There is a real and felt difference between reading the Bible as a piece of ancient literature and reading it as the living word of God speaking into ...

Question 04022. When Paul tells us to walk by the Spirit in Galatians 5:16, he is not handing us a slogan or a mood. "Walk by the Spirit, and you ...

Question 04023. Almost every honest believer eventually asks whether they are walking in the Spirit or the flesh, and means it as a real question and not a rhetorical one ...

Question 04020. The difference between the fruit and gifts of the Spirit is one of those quiet distinctions that keeps a church honest about itself. Both the fruit and gifts ...

Question 04039.The relationship between the Spirit and unbelievers touches something basic about who the Holy Spirit is and what He came into the world to do. If His indwelling is ...

Question 04036. The phrase second blessing describes the belief that there is a definite work of grace beyond conversion, a later crisis experience in which the believer is lifted onto ...

Question 04037.Being slain in the Spirit is one of the most familiar sights in charismatic worship, and one of the most easily misread. A preacher lays a hand on someone, ...

Question 04034. Follow the Gospels closely and you cannot miss how often the Spirit and Jesus appear side by side. From the announcement of his conception to the power of ...

Question 04035. Few areas cause more confusion than the Spirit's ministries to the believer, because the New Testament uses four different pictures that are easy to run together. We are ...

Question 04032. When I open the Bible at its first page I find that the Spirit in creation is already there, before light, before land, before a single living thing ...

Question 04033. Ask where the Bible comes from and you cannot answer well without speaking of the Spirit and inspiration in the same breath. The Scriptures did not fall from ...

Question 04031 The day of Pentecost is one of those hinge moments in the Bible where the whole story turns. Before that morning the disciples were a frightened, waiting handful; ...

Question 4049. The gift of tongues has caused more heat and less light than almost any subject I deal with as a minister. In some circles it is treated as ...

Question 04046. When Paul calls the Spirit's guarantee a deposit on our inheritance, he reaches for a word straight out of the ancient marketplace, and once you see what it ...

Question 04047. The variety of spiritual gifts in the New Testament is wider and richer than most believers realise, and learning what Scripture actually lists is one of the most ...

Question 4048. The gift of prophecy is one of the most discussed and most misunderstood of all the gifts the Spirit gives to the church, and I want to take ...

Question 04044. Becoming more sensitive to the Spirit's leading is something many believers long for and few feel they have grasped. The phrase itself can sound mystical, as though some ...

Question 04045. To call your body the Spirit's temple is one of the most startling things the New Testament says about you, and Paul says it without flinching in 1 ...

Question 04042. Paul tells us not to grieve the Spirit, and I have noticed over the years that most believers nod at that instruction without ever asking what it actually ...

Question 04040.The work of the Spirit in regeneration is the hidden hinge on which the whole of conversion turns. Behind every genuine coming to Jesus there lies a deeper miracle ...

Question 04041.Few questions unsettle a tender conscience like falling away, and few passages of Scripture stir more argument than Hebrews 6:4-6. There the writer describes people who were once enlightened, ...

Question 4017. What is resisting the Holy Spirit, and is it something a Christian can do? The phrase comes to us from a tense and dramatic moment in the book ...

Question 4018. Can you lose the Holy Spirit once you have Him? This is a tender question, and it is usually asked by someone who is frightened rather than curious ...

Question 4011. The role of the Spirit in prayer is one of the most comforting truths I know, and also one of the most neglected. We talk a great deal ...

Question 4012. To quench the Spirit is a phrase Paul drops into a single short verse, and yet it carries a warning every believer needs to hear. We can, by ...

Question 4013. Praying in the Spirit is a phrase that has been pulled in two very different directions, and I want to bring it back to what Scripture actually means ...

Question 04120. The Spirit's illuminating work inside a believer and His convicting work upon an unbeliever are close cousins in Scripture, yet they are not the same ministry, and mixing ...

Question 04121. Laying on hands for the sick is one of those practices that can provoke suspicion in one congregation and warm expectation in another, and I think both reactions ...

Question 4016. Can we pray to the Holy Spirit, or should we only ever pray to the Father or the Son? I get asked this more than you might think, ...

Question 4005. Giving glory to the Spirit is something many believers feel oddly uncertain about, and the question deserves a straight answer. We sing freely to the Father and to ...

Question 4015. When someone asks me what the procession of the Spirit means, I usually start by admitting that it is one of those phrases the church has used for ...

Question 7006 Few passages in Scripture have caused more anxiety among believers than Jesus' solemn warning about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. People have come to me over the years, ...

Question 4099.Receiving the Spirit is exactly what Paul asks these Ephesian men about in Acts 19:2, and the answer they give has been fought over ever since, mostly by people ...

Question 4105. laying on hands by the apostles, rather than the moment of their belief, is what Luke tells us the Samaritans in Acts 8 were actually waiting for before ...

Question 4059. The Holy Spirit's deity is not a matter of theological hair splitting, because how you answer it shapes how you pray, how you read the New Testament, and ...

Question 4060. Spirit baptism and the filling of the Spirit get muddled together constantly in popular teaching, and the confusion is not simply academic, because getting this distinction wrong has ...

Question 4061. Whether spiritual gifts today continue to operate the way they did in the first century turns, for a great many cessationist writers, on a single disputed phrase tucked ...

Question 4062. The relationship between prophecy and Scripture is often assumed rather than genuinely examined, and the assumption usually runs in one of two mistaken directions, either treating every prophetic ...

Question 4063. Spirit filled living is commanded, not simply commended as an optional extra, in Ephesians 5:18, and Paul does not leave the command floating vaguely in the abstract for ...

Question 4068. The gift of healing has not ceased, but it has also never operated the way the New Testament describes at every point in church history since Pentecost, and ...

Question 9109 The church has always struggled to hold two things together: genuine openness to the Spirit's ongoing work in equipping believers with gifts, and the biblical insistence on order, ...

Question 4066. A prophetic word is never simply accepted on the strength of someone's confidence in delivering it. Paul is explicit about this: when someone speaks a word of prophecy ...

Question 4065. Spiritual gifts are not an aspiration to work towards but a settled fact about every believer in Christ. That is a statement of what has already happened, grounded ...

Question 04117. Third wave charismatic is the name usually given to a movement that emerged among evangelical, non-Pentecostal churches in the 1980s, most closely associated with John Wimber and the ...

Question 04118. Spiritual impartation is the phrase charismatic circles use so often that many Christians employ it without ever pausing to ask whether it describes something the Bible actually teaches ...

Question 04119. The sealing of the Spirit is the term Paul uses in Ephesians to describe something that happened to you the moment you believed and that nothing since has ...

Question 1008. The question of dreams and visions and prophecy today stirs up real confusion and no small amount of division in the church. Does God still speak through such ...

Question 1017. Spiritual understanding of the Bible is not the same thing as being able to read it, and the difference has real implications for how we do evangelism, how ...

Question 1028. The Holy Spirit's role in understanding Scripture is something I have watched play out in my own reading more times than I can count. I will sit with ...

Question 01148 One of the most practically significant questions in contemporary Christianity concerns the difference between the Holy Spirit opening a person's mind to understand what Scripture already says, and ...

Question 01149 There is a beautiful coherence to the doctrine of Scripture that is sometimes missed in debates about inspiration and interpretation. The same Holy Spirit who oversaw the production ...

Question 0039. Some Christians treat the Spirit and study as competitors, as though leaning on the Holy Spirit means I can set aside the effort of learning sound doctrine. The ...

Question 4010. The fruit of the Spirit is one of those phrases I hear quoted so easily that we rarely stop and ask what it actually promises about the Christian ...

Question 4008. The guidance of the Spirit is one of the dearest privileges of the Christian life, and also one of the most misunderstood. Many believers picture it as a ...

Question 4007. The still small voice is one of those phrases that has wandered a long way from its home, and I want to walk it back. People use it ...

Question 4006. The Spirit's voice is something believers ask me about constantly, usually after someone has told them that God spoke to them in an audible voice and they are ...

Question 4004. Can we really grieve the Spirit? Ephesians 4:30 says we can, and it is a command both sobering and, when you stop to think about it, quite remarkable: ...

Question 4003. Being filled with the Spirit is one of those phrases that gets pulled in two opposite directions, and I think both of them miss it. Some treat it ...

Question 4002. When do we receive the Holy Spirit? I want to answer that we receive the Holy Spirit at the moment of saving faith, fully and permanently, and not ...

Question 4009. The fruit of the Spirit is Paul's lovely picture of the character that God grows in a believer's life, and it is found in Galatians 5 where he ...

Question 4001. The person of the Spirit is the first thing I want settled when anyone asks me who the Holy Spirit really is, because almost every mistake people make ...

Question 4000. The doctrine of the Spirit is the part of Christian teaching that asks who the Holy Spirit is, what He does, and what His nearness means for an ...