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: 3 minutesQuestion 04096 At first glance, the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 and the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 appear to be two separate lists, one from Jesus and one from Paul, addressing similar territory from different angles. The connections between them are real and theologically significant, though the two passages are not simply saying…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 04097 The relationship between biblical sanctification and what contemporary psychology calls character formation or psychological maturity deserves careful handling. There are genuine points of contact, observations from psychology that illuminate what Scripture has always said, and areas where the two frameworks diverge at a fundamental level. The task is knowing which is which, rather…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04098 Paul had other options available to him when he wrote Galatians 5. He could have described the qualities he was commending as virtues, drawing on a framework that every educated reader in the Greco-Roman world would have immediately recognised. He could have presented them as the disciplines of the Christian life, the practices…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 04094 Gideon’s fleece has become a popular shorthand in contemporary Christianity for a particular approach to guidance: placing a condition before God and taking the outcome as a sign of His will. “I’ll put out a fleece” has entered the vocabulary of Christian decision-making as if it described an approved biblical method. Whether the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 04095 Scripture does not specify which career a believer should pursue, which city to live in, or which of two apparently godly people to marry. The absence of direct biblical instruction on these matters is not an oversight. It is itself a form of teaching about the kind of relationship God intends to have…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04093 The question of how to distinguish between what we want and what the Spirit is actually doing in us is one of the most practically pressing questions in the Christian life. It is not a question of doubt or weak faith; it is the honest recognition that we are fallen people with complex…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 04104 There is a common but mistaken assumption that once a person has the Spirit, the hard work is largely done. If the Spirit of God genuinely dwells in every believer, why does Paul write as though Spirit-directed living is something that requires determined, daily effort? The commands to “walk by the Spirit” (Galatians…
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…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 04021 Sanctification is not simply a matter of moral improvement or religious discipline. It is the Spirit’s work in the believer, transforming what we are from the inside out rather than merely adjusting behaviour on the surface. Understanding how the Spirit actually does this changes the way a Christian approaches the whole project of…