Here’s an outline of a conversation I had after church a while ago: “Does the Holy Spirit speak to you personally?” “Yes”, I said. “Absolutely! He’s been speaking to me and to you during the last 30 minutes, through the Holy Scriptures”. “No, I don’t mean that. I mean do you hear his voice telling …
Does God work from the inside-out or the outside-in? I think, as evangelicals, our instinctive answer would be that God works from the inside-out. After all, the fundamental problem is our hearts, and the gospel is that God promises us a new heart (Eze 36:26). Only once there’s been inward spiritual transformation can we expect …
A while ago I took part in a Muslim-Christian discussion. At one point in the evening, I heard the old chestnut that Jesus prophesied the coming of Mohammed in John 14-16, when he promised to send “the Helper”. It’s a common argument that does the rounds on Muslim websites. Now, it’s an “interesting” feeling when …
We saw on Sunday that Barnabas was “full of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 11:24) and I said that every Christian needs to be “full of the Holy Spirit”. Someone, helpfully, asked me afterwards what that means. In Pentecostal churches, the sign of being filled with the Spirit is speaking in tongues and having a dramatic …
