Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04039. The relationship between the Spirit and unbelievers touches something basic about who the Holy Spirit is and what He came into the world to do. If His indwelling is the very mark of belonging to Jesus, as Romans 8:9 insists, does that mean the Spirit has no dealings at all with those who…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04038. Being drunk in the Spirit describes a state, claimed in some charismatic meetings, in which believers stagger, slur their words, laugh uncontrollably, or behave as though intoxicated, all of it attributed to an overwhelming dose of the Spirit’s presence. It became widely known through the Toronto Blessing and similar movements of the 1990s,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04037. Being slain in the Spirit is one of the most familiar sights in charismatic worship, and one of the most easily misread. A preacher lays a hand on someone, or sometimes only sweeps an arm in their direction, and the person topples backward into the arms of a waiting catcher. I have watched…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04025. There is a real and felt difference between reading the Bible as a piece of ancient literature and reading it as the living word of God speaking into your actual situation, and that difference is the Spirit’s illumination at work. It is not chiefly a matter of intelligence or education. The most learned…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04024. Few aspects of the Spirit’s ministry are as misunderstood as the conviction of sin. In common Christian speech it has shrunk to a vague feeling of spiritual unease, something close to guilt with the lights off. But the way Jesus describes conviction of sin in John 16 is far more specific and far…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04023. Almost every honest believer eventually asks whether they are walking in the Spirit or the flesh, and means it as a real question and not a rhetorical one. Am I being led by the Spirit here, or am I following my own appetite and dressing it up as the will of God? That…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04022. When Paul tells us to walk by the Spirit in Galatians 5:16, he is not handing us a slogan or a mood. “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” is a precise instruction with real content, and it shapes the whole texture of ordinary Christian living….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04020. The difference between the fruit and gifts of the Spirit is one of those quiet distinctions that keeps a church honest about itself. Both the fruit and gifts come from the same Spirit, and yet they are doing two very different things, and when we blur them we start measuring one another by…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4019. What is the difference between carnal and spiritual Christians? The contrast between carnal and spiritual believers comes straight out of Paul’s letter to a church that was behaving badly, and it describes a difference we can all recognise if we are honest. Both are real Christians. Both have the Spirit. The difference lies…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4018. Can you lose the Holy Spirit once you have Him? This is a tender question, and it is usually asked by someone who is frightened rather than curious. They have sinned badly, or they have gone through a cold and prayerless season, and they wonder whether the Spirit has quietly slipped away. So…