#spiritual gifts

Cessationist: The Film

The debate about the continuation or cessation of the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit shows no signs of abating or of coming to a resolution. This is true within the wider church and true also within the narrower group who hold to Calvinistic theology. The debate began soon after the coalescing of what became known as “New Calvinism” and it extends today past its recent rupture. Some insist that the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit—prophecy, healing, and tongues—have …

Each Gift Has Its Place

I once read the fable of a little bluebell that had been planted in the shady corner of a great garden. Though it was thriving in its place, it one day cast its eye toward the roses that had been planted where the sun was brighter and where more visitors could pause to gaze at their beauty. Suddenly discontent, the bluebell asked the gardener if it could be transplanted to a brighter and more visible location. The gardener granted the …

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How To Discover and Deploy Your Gifts

The area of spiritual gifts is one that seems to come and go, to ebb and flow, in the life of the church. Sometimes we are inundated with talk of discovering and deploying our gifts, and sometimes it seems they get forgotten altogether. Either way, I was blessed to read some of Sinclair Ferguson’s thoughts on the matter (from his book Maturity). Here is what he has to say about the matter. *** The place to start is this: do …

What Makes the Spiritual Gifts Discussion Different

I am under the impression that the earliest Christians didn’t expend a lot of effort debating the cessation or continuation of the miraculous spiritual gifts. Their discussions did not revolve around wrongly denying the existence of active gifts or wrongly affirming the continuation of ceased gifts. After all, they clearly and undeniably saw the gifts of prophecy, healing, and tongues in operation. Trusted Apostles heard words of prophecy and affirmed their truthfulness, lame legs were healed and blind eyes were …

Spiritual Gifts: What they Are and Why they Matter

The movement called the New Calvinism has been around for quite a long time now, but still hasn’t solved one of its most basic questions: Do the miraculous or revelatory gifts of the Holy Spirit continue to the present time or have they ceased (positions that are generally labeled “continuationism” and “cessationism” respectively)? And is there room within the movement for people who hold to opposite positions? At the beginning of 2018 I suggested this would be one of the …

Letters to the Editor (Miracles, Cessationism, Husbands)

This week I told Why I Am Not Continuationist (or charismatic) and, not surprisingly, that generated quite a number of letters to the editor. So, too, did an article on the marks of a godly husband’s love. Here are a few highlights. Comments on Why I Am Not Continuationist First, thank you for your blog and more specifically for the series of “Why I Am Not …”. I enjoyed and learned from every one of them. I anticipated your most …

Why I Am Not Continuationist

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 atheist, Roman Catholic, liberal, Arminian, paedobaptist, dispensational, or egalitarian. Today I want to explain why I am not continuationist or, if you prefer, charismatic. Once …

Finding Your Gift

There have been a couple of times in the past few years that I have written about spiritual gifts and spiritual gift inventories. These articles continue to be read (thanks, I suppose, to the efforts of search engines) and, since I have given a great deal more thought to this subject, I wanted to update what I have said in the past. When I first began thinking and writing about spiritual gift assessments I was responding to a question that …

Seminar 2 – Nathan Busenitz – Evangelical Charismatics

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 open to the public and sitting quietly with their books or laptops. There are also plenty who have come with friends and co-workers. These people …

Spiritual Gift Assessments & The Bible

Quite a while ago I wrote an article about spiritual gift assessments. Today I am hauling that article out of storage and am going to update it. At the time I first wrote about spiritual gift assessments I was responding to a question a friend had asked me. He was interested in knowing my opinion on these assessments. I had taken them a few times through my church and various men’s groups and had always found them somewhat helpful, though …