The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life

For Expectant Mothers ONLY. Who knew a parking lot could be so cruel? It was like I just got rejected from the Mommy Club. “No barren women allowed.” The sign could have said: For women whose bodies work right. For women who have had their prayers answered. For women who have something to look forward to. For women with something to expect.

One of the gifts in the church that we see in the pages of the New Testament that is so vitally needed today and neglected—we don’t talk about it much—is the ministry of encouragement.

God’s mission in creation and redemption is to bring men and women into the fellowship that Father, Son, and Spirit have always shared.

It is necessary not only to pray, but also to pray “as we ought” and to pray for what we ought. Our attempt to understand what we should pray for is deficient unless we also bring to our quest the “as we ought.” Likewise, what use to us is the “as we ought” if we do not know for what we should pray?

Yes, the Father has eternally loved his only begotten Son. But what makes the gospel such good news for us is that the Father has graced us with every spiritual blessing—chief of which is our adoption as sons to himself—“in the Beloved” (1:7). The gospel transforms obedience.

You will weep and worship. And as you relish your union with him—you will be changed. For you are in the Son. You will climb and not be able to reach his heights, you will dive and not be able to reach his depths. And just when you think you have traversed to the ends of him, you will see some yet unknown land in the distance, and he will bid you come, “Deeper.”

The first flames of revival in the British Isles were visible in Wales.

Friends, humility is the only soil in which unity will grow. Only when Christ is more precious to us than our reputations, will we give up our petty rivalries and personal agendas. Only when his glory eclipses all else in our eyes will we live for him and not for another purpose. The peace and unity we so desperately need will be, friends, the fruit of a fresh humbling before the glory of Christ. It is only the gospel, the good news of Christ our saviour, that creates true peace. The gospel creates peace, and the gospel defines peace.

Behold the beauty of Jesus, which is the beauty of the Triune God—this beauty is able to save because it is not merely the beauty of a man, but is rather the timeless beauty of the incomprehensible, unchanging, self-existing, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present, all-holy, all-just, all-gracious, loving, undiminished glory of the Trinity. That glory is able to save. And when we look at the crucified and risen Savior in this precious book, we are looking at that glory of that God.

The gospel is refreshing for the inmate because it reconciles and restores them to a right relationship with God. It brings them joy in the darkest of places. It makes their wrongs right. It grants them a new identity in Christ.