Practical guidance for following Christ daily—prayer, Bible reading, spiritual disciplines, and growing in godliness.
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 11066 There is a kind of spiritual fatigue that is not produced by overwork but by accumulation — the weight of sin that has been noticed but not confessed, the prompting that has been registered but set aside, the quiet conviction that has been managed rather than acted on. Many Christians carry more of…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 11067 Paul’s command to “walk by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16) and his instruction to “keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25) assume a kind of moment-by-moment awareness of the Spirit’s presence and movement. The New Testament pictures the Christian life as one lived in ongoing, conscious dependence on a divine person who dwells…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 11070 Depression is one of the most misunderstood experiences within the Christian community. Well-meaning believers have told sufferers that their depression is evidence of weak faith, unconfessed sin, or spiritual failure. The effect of such responses is not healing but additional pain layered on top of pain that was already unbearable. Before asking whether…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 11069 The Bible contains more than three hundred commands not to fear, which might suggest that every experience of fear or anxiety is a failure of faith. That reading, however, misunderstands what those commands are actually doing, and it places an additional burden on sincere believers that they were never meant to carry. Scripture…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11071 This question cuts right to the heart of Christian living and witness. We live in an age where people often pit truth against love, as though you must choose one or the other. “Speaking the truth is unloving,” some say. Others counter, “Love without truth is meaningless.” But Scripture never presents us with…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4087 The question of how to distinguish a genuine prompting from the Holy Spirit from one’s own reasoning or from an external spiritual influence is one of the most practically pressing questions in the Christian life. It is easy to claim, and equally easy to dismiss — and both errors have consequences. Claiming the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4083 Spiritual dryness is one of the most disorienting experiences in the Christian life. The person who yesterday felt the presence of God in prayer and worship finds today that their devotional life feels mechanical, prayer seems to bounce off the ceiling, and the Scriptures that once spoke with directness now seem opaque. The…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 11056 Acts 1:8 is the last thing the risen Jesus said before His ascension, and it was not a farewell encouragement. It was a structured programme. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 11081 The Samaritan mission in Acts 8 is one of the most theologically charged events in the book of Acts, though Luke narrates it with characteristic restraint. Philip crossed not merely a geographical boundary when he went to Samaria; he crossed a centuries-deep fault line of religious contempt and mutual suspicion. That God used…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 04026 Prayer is not a skill that can be fully mastered through technique or discipline alone. The New Testament presents the Holy Spirit as intimately involved in the believer’s prayer life, not as an optional enhancement for those who have progressed beyond ordinary prayer, but as a necessary participant in prayer that actually reaches…