Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 7090 Few situations in pastoral work are as uncomfortable as sitting with someone who has come forward at three separate meetings, prayed the same prayer each time, and can point to no genuine change of any kind. They are not play-acting. The tears were real. The desire was real. And yet a year on,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07056 Faith and repentance are two words for one turn. That is the heart of the answer, and getting it right saves a great deal of unnecessary anxiety, because a good deal of pastoral damage has been done by treating them as two separate transactions that must be completed in the correct order. The…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07055 There is always a moment of salvation, even when nobody can identify it. That is the short answer, and it holds two things together that people often set against each other: the instantaneous nature of what God does, and the very gradual experience many believers have of coming to realise it. This question…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07054 Christian conversion is the moment a person changes hands. It is not a church membership process, it is not a decision card, and it is not the gradual improvement of a decent life. It is the point at which someone stops trusting themselves and starts trusting Jesus, and everything after that flows from…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 07051 True repentance is one of those words the church uses constantly and explains rarely, which is a pity, because a great deal of unnecessary misery grows in that gap. Some people think it means grovelling. Some think it means getting your life sorted before God will have you. Some have been told it…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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 when they hear the gospel deserves a careful answer. Does it genuinely open the possibility of a real response, or does it produce some kind…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 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 only inform and words that actually save. I can prepare a sermon, choose my texts, order my arguments, and deliver them as clearly as I…