The promised Spirit has come, and one of the great helps this Helper performs is a kind of tutoring. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says it well: “Unlike any other book that has ever been written, the Bible is alive; and it comes with a personal tutor—the Holy Spirit, who lives in us.”
One mark of a successful sermon is that it satisfactorily answers some questions while provoking still others. On Sunday I visited a little church in an eastern-Ontario village and heard just such a sermon. The pastor preached on Ephesians 4 as part of a series on the Christian’s identity in Christ, but as he continued…
You, Christian, are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God makes his habitation within you. He has joyfully, willingly, come to you so you can be near to him. This knowledge, this wonder, has powerful consequences. It gives assurance. If the Holy Spirit has made his home within you, you…
Today I come to the end of the series I’ve titled “Why I Am Not…” The purpose of this series has been to take a look at the things I do not believe and all along it has been my desire to explain rather than persuade. So far I have told why I am not…
I want to hear God’s voice. I want him to speak to me in a personal way. I want to know that it’s really and truly him. Is that too much to ask? It’s not too much to ask. In fact, it is God’s joy to communicate to each one of his children in the…
We are easily distracted by the things that matter less, and preoccupied with the things that matter least. This is exactly the case—too often, at least—when it comes to talk of revival and when it comes to our desire to see the Spirit’s work in our lives and in the church. J.I. Packer makes the…
Later this week I will be at McMaster University to speak to students there about knowing and doing the will of God. Few areas of Christian theology have generated more controvery and more bad teaching than this one. In his book Prayer, Tim Keller illustrates how even good men can take impressions, feelings, or promptings…
This week I read some of Richard Sibbe’s work The Love of Christ and was struck by an excerpt from one of his sermons in which he writes about the presence of Christ in and among his people. Here is how he wants to encourage you: What a comfort is this to Christians, that they…
Last week GLH Publishing released a new Kindle edition of Thoughts on Religious Experience by Archibald Alexander. I barely got a page or two into the book before I came across such a helpful section that describes the connection between knowledge and piety–between what we know and how we practice our Christian faith. Here is…
It is almost cliché to praise Charles Spurgeon for his ability to say in a few words when takes others so many. Yet he was a remarkably gifted man and one who used his gifts to serve the Lord. I loved reading these words which call on each of us to grow, and to grow…
This week I came across a sermon by Charles Spurgeon in which he preaches on the Holy Spirit as the Comforter or Helper. As he comes to his conclusion, he suddenly turns on those who approach him with a word from the Lord. I share this excerpt because it is amusingly stated and because I…
J.C. Ryle defines sanctification as “an inward spiritual work which the Lord Jesus Christ works in a man by the Holy Ghost, when He calls him to be a true believer.” In his classic work Holiness, he lays out twelve propositions concerning sanctification.
Once again, don’t run away from this blog post just because it has a Puritan flavor to it. I mentioned last month that I’ve been running through John Owen’s Overcoming Sin and Temptation and trying to distill each chapter to its essence–to a few choice quotes that capture the flavor of what Owen is trying…
Lately I’ve been sharing a few of the hymns and songs we sing at Grace Fellowship Church that are original or somewhat rare. Here is one written by Joseph Hart in the mid-1700’s. We sing it to a new melody written by our lead worshiper and use one of the verses as a chorus. I…
Over the past few days, I have been reading J.P. Moreland’s book, Love Your God With All Your Mind. It is a good book; deeply challenging. Moreland says many of the same things Nancy Pearecy did several years later in the much-lauded Total Truth. Like Pearcey, Moreland is concerned with the intellectual environment within Evangelicalism,…
It is interesting to look around and see how many people travel alone, and how many travel in groups. There are a great number of people, it seems, who travel to this conference on their own. These people tend to sit quietly on their own, sneaking into the auditoriums before they are supposed to be…
There are few subjects more debated and more hotly debated in the church today than whether or not the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit continue to this day. We have recently seen a great deal of discussion about this issue in the blogosphere. It is an issue which leaves many believers confused, unsure as…