Understanding the Person and ministry of the Holy Spirit—His deity, personality, baptism, filling, gifts, fruit, and ongoing work in believers.
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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, often by thoughtful believers who have noticed that the Bible’s prayers are nearly always addressed to the Father, and who wonder whether the Spirit has…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 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 centuries while ordinary believers were left wondering whether it mattered at all. It does matter, and I want to show you why. The procession of…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 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 among sincere believers. Some are taught it is a second blessing they must seek after conversion, others that it is proved by speaking in tongues,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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 by it. For some it conjures speaking in tongues and little else. For others it sounds so mystical that they assume it is for spiritual…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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 our own choices, smother the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, the way a bucket of water smothers a fire. That is a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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 about praying to the Father through the Son, which is right, but we often forget that the third Person of the Trinity is just as…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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 life. People treat it like a personality test, as though one believer were issued patience while another got kindness and a third somehow missed out…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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 lists love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It is one of the best loved passages in the New Testament, and also…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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 mysterious inner sat-nav that, if only they could tune in finely enough, would dictate every decision from which job to take to which cereal to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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 to mean the gentle inner nudge of God in the quiet of prayer, and they build a whole approach to guidance on it. The phrase…