Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4079 Every serious Christian has encountered the experience of doing something wrong — a sharp word, a deliberate compromise, an act of selfishness — and then wondering, sometimes with real anxiety, whether something has been lost with God. The question of what a single act of sin does to the Spirit’s filling is not…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4078 The relationship between the filling of the Spirit and intercessory prayer is one of the more neglected connections in practical pneumatology, despite the fact that the New Testament draws the two together with some consistency. Intercessory prayer — praying on behalf of others — is not simply a spiritual discipline that believers undertake…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4072 One of the most remarkable statements in Paul’s letters about the Holy Spirit appears almost in passing in the middle of his argument about the Spirit’s role in revealing God’s wisdom. In 1 Corinthians 2:10, Paul writes: “for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” The phrase “the depths of God”…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07030 The question of whether there is a point beyond which the gospel can no longer reach a person is one that pastoral ministry cannot avoid. It surfaces in conversations about hardened relatives who have heard the gospel repeatedly and seem impervious to it, about people who once appeared to be close to faith…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09022 Western Christianity has a persistent individualism problem. The dominant assumption in many evangelical and charismatic contexts is that the believer’s relationship with God is a private transaction, and that discerning the Spirit’s voice is primarily a personal skill to be developed in isolation. Scripture tells a different story. The gathered church is not…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4089 Dreams occupy an interesting position in the biblical record. They are neither marginalised as purely psychological phenomena nor elevated as the primary channel of divine communication. Scripture treats them with a seriousness that neither the sceptic nor the enthusiast fully honours — the sceptic too quick to dismiss them entirely, the enthusiast too…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4086 One of the most significant pastoral and theological questions in evangelism concerns what actually happens in a person when they hear the gospel. Is the Spirit’s work of conviction something that genuinely opens the possibility of response, or is it an irresistible divine action that produces a predetermined outcome? And if the conviction…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4087 The question of how to distinguish a genuine prompting from the Holy Spirit from one’s own reasoning or from an external spiritual influence is one of the most practically pressing questions in the Christian life. It is easy to claim, and equally easy to dismiss — and both errors have consequences. Claiming the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 4082 Romans 8:26-27 describes one of the most intimate and remarkable ministries the Holy Spirit performs on behalf of every believer: He intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words, and He does so according to the will of God. This intercession is not an occasional intervention but a constant reality — the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 4083 Spiritual dryness is one of the most disorienting experiences in the Christian life. The person who yesterday felt the presence of God in prayer and worship finds today that their devotional life feels mechanical, prayer seems to bounce off the ceiling, and the Scriptures that once spoke with directness now seem opaque. The…