Understanding the Person and ministry of the Holy Spirit—His deity, personality, baptism, filling, gifts, fruit, and ongoing work in believers.
Reading Time: 8 minutesQuestion 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 in the heart of every believer. What happens to me when I die, and how do I ever arrive at the glory God has promised?…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 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 means? Should I expect them, seek them, or be suspicious of them? I want to think this through carefully, because the two easy answers, an…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 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 it is quietly ignored in churches that feel awkward about anything they cannot tidily explain. Neither response does justice to what the New Testament plainly…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 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 conference stages where healing is promised on demand. On the other side many cautious evangelicals quietly file the whole category under “things that stopped with…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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 hear about least. It sounds technical, and because it is tied so closely to tongues themselves, many believers pass over it without realising that Paul…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 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 the badge that proves a person has truly received the Holy Spirit. In others it is written off entirely as a first century oddity that…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 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 my time with it. Some believers treat every passing impression as a word from the Lord, while others are convinced that genuine prophecy stopped dead…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 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 freeing studies a Christian can undertake. When Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:7 that to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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 meant, something genuinely wonderful opens up. He uses it three times. In 2 Corinthians 1:22 God has put His Spirit in our hearts as a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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 Corinthians 6:19: do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? That a…