Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 2070 Genesis 6:6 records that “the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” Jonah 3:10 states that “when God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them,…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 2068 There are seasons in Christian experience, and in the history of God’s people collectively, when prayer seems to go unanswered, when heaven feels closed, and when the silence of God presses more heavily than any theological question a person could raise. This is not a problem for beginners or doubters only. Some of…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 2074 The question sounds simple but carries significant pastoral weight. Someone outside of faith is in crisis, or in genuine searching, or simply curious whether God pays any attention to those who don’t yet belong to him. The answer shapes both how we think about evangelism and how we understand the nature of prayer…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 2073 The question touches something every thoughtful believer wrestles with. If God knows the end from the beginning and his purposes are fixed, what does prayer actually accomplish? And if he already knows what we are going to ask, and has already decided how he will respond, does the whole exercise amount to little…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion Q04011 Prayer is often treated as though it were entirely a human activity, a matter of finding the right words or generating sufficient sincerity. Scripture presents a far more astonishing picture. The Holy Spirit is not a passive observer of our prayer life; He is an active participant in it, working from within us…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion Q04013 The phrase “praying in the Spirit” appears in two places in the New Testament: Ephesians 6:18 and Jude 20. It has generated considerable discussion, particularly in Pentecostal and charismatic circles where it is often associated with speaking in tongues. Understanding what the phrase actually means requires attending carefully to what these texts say…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04121 The sight of someone placing their hands on a sick person and praying for healing can provoke a range of reactions in evangelical circles, from warm affirmation to deep suspicion. For some, the practice conjures images of televangelist excess and manufactured spectacle. For others, it represents a sincere and scripturally grounded act of…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 04016 When Christians think about prayer, the question of who exactly we are addressing is more significant than it might first appear. Most believers instinctively pray to “God” or “Father” without pausing to consider the Trinitarian dimensions of what they are doing. But when someone asks whether it is appropriate to direct prayer specifically…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 06076 The question of what Paul’s thorn actually was has occupied readers for centuries, partly because Paul is deliberately vague and partly because the passage sits within one of the most extraordinary sections of personal disclosure in the entire New Testament. In 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Paul describes having been caught up into the third…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 2011 Ask a group of Christians whether God speaks to Himself and you will likely get some puzzled looks. The question seems either too obvious to bother with or too speculative to answer. In reality it touches something genuinely profound about the nature of the Trinity, and Scripture gives us more material to work…