Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1087. Scripture in worship is not decoration set around the edges of a service. It is the very substance of what we say, sing and pray when a church gathers before the Lord. I have led enough services now to know how easy it is to let worship drift into a performance of moods…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1057. public Scripture reading is commanded in the New Testament, not simply permitted as an optional liturgical flourish, and I think many churches, my own included at various points, have quietly let the practice shrink until Scripture is heard mainly in short snippets attached to a sermon rather than read at length in its…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4170. The difference between Spirit-led preaching and emotion-led preaching is one of the most practically important things a preacher can learn, and one of the easiest to get wrong. I have stood in services where the atmosphere was electric and the people were moved to tears, and I have come away uneasy, wondering whether…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 0032 I understand exactly why theology feels dry to so many Christians, because I have felt it myself and I have watched it in others for years. The word “theology” conjures up dusty books, abstract debates and lectures that seem to have nothing to do with the ache of an ordinary Tuesday. People associate…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04029 The role of the Spirit in worship is something I wish more congregations understood, because so much confusion about worship comes from forgetting it. We argue endlessly about styles, instruments, song choices and volume, as though worship were a matter of getting the externals right. Jesus cut straight past all of that in…
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 4005. Giving glory to the Spirit is something many believers feel oddly uncertain about, and the question deserves a straight answer. We sing freely to the Father and to the Son, yet when it comes to the third Person of the Trinity a strange shyness sets in, as though praising Him might somehow be…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 11002 Fasting is one of those spiritual disciplines that many Christians know about but few practice. It sounds old-fashioned, perhaps even unhealthy. Yet fasting appears throughout Scripture, both in the Old Testament and the New. Jesus Himself fasted and expected His followers to do likewise. What exactly is fasting, and what place should it…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 11092 The question of whether Christians should worship on Saturday (the Sabbath) or Sunday is one that generates considerable debate, particularly with the influence of Seventh-day Adventism and certain Hebrew Roots movements that insist Saturday observance is binding on all believers. Understanding what Scripture teaches about the Sabbath, how the early church transitioned to…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10198 The question of millennial worship strikes at the heart of what Ezekiel 40-48 actually describes and how it fits within the broader framework of redemptive history. These nine chapters contain the most detailed description of a future temple, its priesthood, its sacrificial system, and its worship practices anywhere in Scripture. The question they…