Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04026 When I think about the Spirit in prayer, I am always brought back to a verse that quietly demolishes a lot of false confidence about my own praying. Most of us assume that prayer is a skill we slowly master, like learning an instrument, so that the longer we walk with God the…
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: 6 minutesQuestion 4013. Praying in the Spirit is a phrase that has been pulled in two very different directions, and I want to bring it back to what Scripture actually means by it. For some it conjures speaking in tongues and little else. For others it sounds so mystical that they assume it is for spiritual…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4011. The role of the Spirit in prayer is one of the most comforting truths I know, and also one of the most neglected. We talk a great deal about praying to the Father through the Son, which is right, but we often forget that the third Person of the Trinity is just as…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4007. The still small voice is one of those phrases that has wandered a long way from its home, and I want to walk it back. People use it to mean the gentle inner nudge of God in the quiet of prayer, and they build a whole approach to guidance on it. The phrase…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11110 The discipline of solitude is the deliberate practice of withdrawing from the company of others and the noise of daily life in order to be alone with God. It is one of the quieter spiritual habits, easily crowded out, yet it runs right through the life of Jesus and the saints of Scripture,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesThe discipline of silence is the deliberate practice of quieting both our surroundings and our own restless talking so that we can attend to God and to His Word without the constant noise that fills ordinary life. It is an old practice with deep roots in Scripture, and in a world of endless notifications it…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 11108 The spiritual disciplines are the ordinary, repeated practices through which believers place themselves in the way of God’s grace so that they may grow to know and love Him more. They are not a ladder we climb to earn God’s favour, and they are not religious performances that impress Him. They are the…