The Christian Life is Supernatural

JI Packer:

"The Christian's life in all its aspects--intellectual and ethical, devotional and relational, upsurging in worship and outgoing in witness--is supernatural; only the Spirit can initiate and sustain it." Keep in Step with the Spirit, 1st edition, 9.

If this is the case, which it clearly is, how critical is prayer? Prayer is asking God to do all that we cannot do, and there is nothing that we can do without God.

The natural and supernatural aren't so far apart. Asking God for the ordinary and extraordinary should be the constant affair of the Christian, because nothing is ordinary. The weirdest thing about not asking for miracles, extraordinary things, is that we have forgotten that life itself is extraordinary and the gift of God.

Holy Spirit come.

Spirit & the Word - Calvin's Institutes 5

John Calvin: 

"But I answer, that the testimony of the Spirit is superior to reason.  For as God alone can properly bear witness to his own words, so these words will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men, until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit.  The same Spirit, therefore, who spoke by the mouth of the prophets, must penetrate our hearts, in order to convince us that they faithfully delievered the message with which they were divinely intrusted...the only true faith is that which the Spirit of God seals on our hearts."  Institutes of Christian Religion, Vol. I, 72-73.

A Defective Doctrine of the Holy Spirit

Martyn Lloyd-Jones:

"...in Acts 10.  We read in verse 44 that 'While peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word.'  And if your doctrine of the Holy Spirit does not include this idea of the Holy Spirit falling upon people, it is seriously, grievously defective.  This, it seems to me, has been the trouble especially during this present century, indeed almost for a hundred years.  The whole notion of the Holy Spirit falling upon people has been discountenanced and discouraged, and if you read many of the books on the Holy Spirit you will find it is not even mentioned at all, a fact which is surely one of the prime explanations of the present state of the Christian church."

Joy Unspeakable, 115-116.

A Controversial Statement

The "Doctor":

"Let us put it as plainly as that: you can be baptized with the Spirit and not show the fruit of the Spirit..." Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Joy Unspeakable: Power and Renewal in the Holy Spirit, 76

Think about that for a moment.

As a Christian, whether you agree or disagree with that statement will determine the way you handle and respond to certain revival movements and certain individual people, as well as, yourself.

Wisdom & Spirit

The religious leaders on the Council that Stephen was brought before in the book of Acts were:

"...unable to cope with the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking." Acts 6:10

Sophia and Pneuma! Wisdom and Spirit! How the church of Jesus Christ needs both!

I am stunned by Stephen's unbelievable knowledge of the Old Testament as he begins to preach, and of the power of God that rested upon him both in the conviction that was felt after his sermon (7:54) and the signs and wonders that were done before his sermon (6:8).

Stephen is indeed an unusual combination. May God raise up more unusual men!