Trial, error, and success are the steps to finding your unique brand of servanthood. While following Jesus Christ always means becoming more Christ-like, as well as being part of Christ’s community of faith, the Church, God never intended for any two Christians to be exactly alike. Paul writes, â€...

This is part 2 of excerpts from James McDonald's article at the Straight Up blog regarding The Gift of Discernment Used in the Flesh “The wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God� (James 1:20). Righteous anger directed against specific sin and toward a solution is needed and produc...

encore presentation Dr. Piper's writings and books have been a tremendous encouragement in the lives of countless thousands and his online sermons have been a valuable source of the study of God's Word to equally as many. Following is a message he preached 25 years ago on the subject of spiritual gi...

I am taking the liberty to fisk a high profile posting on the cessationist argument… as it was lobbed to the post of Adrian Warnock. I just wanted to …. even though fisking may be frowned upon. This is the post, mostly -skipping over the preamble, answered in a rebuttal manner as is comm...

Speaking of John Wimber (see post below), Michael at Charismatica posted my favorite Wimber story on Tuesday: John Wimber: “When do we get to do the stuff?" "A professional musician who played the Las Vegas circuit for 5 years, John later signed with the Righteous Brothers. When John was gripped b...

I ran across one of my favorite John Wimber quotes reading this article about his daughter-in-law Christy. I personally heard John tell this story on a number of occasions when I attended Vineyard CF Anaheim while Wimber was the head pastor: "A professional musician who played the Las Vegas cir...

This is part 2 of some excerpts from a post I found at Christians in Context by Andrew Farris entitled An Exhortation for the Casual Continuationist / Practical Cessationist And yet Christians don't pursue these gifts, and I'm just not sure why. Wait, actually, scratch that; I know of a few reasons ...

I recommend this post by Andrew Farris at Christians in Context called An Exhortation for the Casual Continuationist/Practical Cessationist His point is that even those who say they are "continuationists" or "continualists" (those who believe in the continuing availability of all the spiritual gifts...

While at the Christian Musician Summit this past weekend I taught a workshop on Encouraging Spontaneity in Your Church. We had about 200 folks crammed into a room that held about 150, so it was, shall we say, a cozy setting. At one point, I led the group in singing spontaneous responses to different...

"A spiritual gift is a skill that the Spirit anoints to be effective. The effect is not always just conversions. It's the pricking of consciences. It's the deepening of love for the Lord. It's the correcting of behaviour in others". John Piper in Justin Taylor and John Piper (editors) - "Stand: A Ca...