Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4017. What is resisting the Holy Spirit, and is it something a Christian can do? The phrase comes to us from a tense and dramatic moment in the book of Acts, and it carries a sharp edge. To understand resisting the Holy Spirit we have to watch where the Bible actually uses the language,…
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: 6 minutesQuestion 4004. Can we really grieve the Spirit? Ephesians 4:30 says we can, and it is a command both sobering and, when you stop to think about it, quite remarkable: ‘And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.’ That the Spirit of God can…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4003. Being filled with the Spirit is one of those phrases that gets pulled in two opposite directions, and I think both of them miss it. Some treat it as a rare, elusive state reserved for the spiritual elite, and others treat it as a synonym for emotional intensity in worship, as though the…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 4002. When do we receive the Holy Spirit? I want to answer that we receive the Holy Spirit at the moment of saving faith, fully and permanently, and not at some later crisis that divides Christians into the haves and the have-nots. That is the short answer, and I am convinced it is the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4001. The person of the Spirit is the first thing I want settled when anyone asks me who the Holy Spirit really is, because almost every mistake people make in this area flows from getting that one point wrong. Is the Spirit a Person, or is He a force? Is He someone I relate…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 4000. The doctrine of the Spirit is the part of Christian teaching that asks who the Holy Spirit is, what He does, and what His nearness means for an ordinary believer trying to follow Jesus on an ordinary day. We give it a technical name, pneumatology, and the name can make the whole thing…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 04036. The phrase second blessing describes the belief that there is a definite work of grace beyond conversion, a later crisis experience in which the believer is lifted onto a higher plane of the Christian life, often identified with a baptism in the Spirit understood as separate from and after salvation. The idea has…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04034. Follow the Gospels closely and you cannot miss how often the Spirit and Jesus appear side by side. From the announcement of his conception to the power of his rising, the Holy Spirit is present at every hinge of the Lord’s earthly life. This is not a minor thread running quietly in the…