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The mandate of Christ to his followers (and of God to the Church) couples evangelism to disciple-making, the preaching of the Gospel to teaching born-again people to live in the teaching of Christ. Matthew 28:19-20 19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the...

It doesn't follow that if you're living well in the Truth of Romans 8:9-14 that you cannot live in the rest of God's Truth, too. God doesn't ordain that you struggle and fight with yourself all the time. Just read His word and what He describes in it of the spiritually mature life of the...

Sure I have. It's my daily experience. The power of Christ (i.e. the Holy Spirit) rests upon me, compensating for my natural, human weakness, daily empowering, transforming and filling me as Scripture tells me the Spirit of Christ (Ro. 8:9) will do as I walk in loving, faith-filled submission to...

Not only have I read Romans 7 (many times), I've lived in what Paul described! But, like Paul, God didn't leave me there. Like Paul, God took me into the experience of Romans 8:1-16 (and Romans 6) where the battle of Romans 7 that Paul described finds its resolution. Have you read Romans 8:1-16...

I'm sure you mean well in posting these quotations, but how does all this correspond to the many passages in the New Testament that not only enjoin Christians to holy living but establish such living as the norm for them? What it seems Philpot is doing here is ennobling spiritual failure, making...

I think that's very sad. What's important, though, is that your experience and mine correspond to the Truth of God's word. And when I look into the "perfect law of liberty" and see those things in it that the verse I already posted to you indicate, I see a correspondence to God's word in my...

No, there aren't any "Canaanites" in my life. Thank God. But this is what ought to be the case after fifty years of walking with God - as those Bible verses/passages I cited in my last post indicate. Progressively, as I've lived in the way God has prescribed to all of His children, the awful...

And the letters of Paul, Peter and John in the New Testament, describing born-again believers as those who are freed spiritually from the power of sin and death? 1 Corinthians 1:30 Romans 6. Romans 8:9-16 Colossians 2:9-13 1 Peter 1:18-19 1 Peter 2:9 2 Peter 1:3-4 1 John 2:29 1 John 3:5-6...

Saying that God "grants the sinner new, spiritual life" is word-play, as far as I can see. By "grants" do you mean God allows the sinner genuine freedom to choose, or not to choose, their spiritual-regeneration? Or do you actually mean that God unilaterally determines that the sinner will be...

Please be more specific.

Interesting. I believe revival is a return of wayward, back-slidden Christians to joyful, holy, life-changing fellowship with their heavenly Father. It's a work of the Holy Spirit who convicts, illuminates, strengthens and changes the cold, compromised believer (Jn. 16:8; 14:26; Eph. 3:16; Phil...

No, no. I'm definitely NOT a Calvinist. I hold a soteriological view that is a combination of Molinism and Provisionism. But not being Calvinist does not mean I deny that God takes the initiative in saving people, as His word plainly says He does. I just don't think His initiative in this regard...

Even 75 years ago, "paying" and "price" would have had a transactional flavor. Folks back then knew what it was to pay money for something they wanted. Very likely, as you say, some Christians would have immediately understood Rice's language to refer to sacrifice. But you quoted his words in...

Well, when I read in the quotation from John Rice that Christians have to "pay the price" for revival, this sounded to me like he was locating the key to revival in their "paying" for it. The phrase "paying the price" has a consumerist flavor that seems to me to suggest that revival can be...

I used these terms in order to highlight the often Man-centered thinking I've encountered over the years concerning revival. I wouldn't use this kind of language in framing my understanding of what revival is, either. But the quotation from John Rice used the phrase "faithful few": "We can have...

Hmmm... Is it a "price" that must be paid? These terms have a transactional flavor that I'm not sure I like. Or maybe, for me, it's that this language comes too close to the language of the cross: Jesus paid the price for us at Calvary which we were impotent to pay ourselves. Did the Prodigal...

What is this price, exactly? Is God's reviving of His compromised children so transactional? Why would He hold the spiritual revival of others hostage to the paying of the price by the faithful few?

If there's one thing the Israelites demonstrated as a nation, it was how weak, vacillating and temporary their "obedience" to God was. Thank God, He made a "new and living way" through Christ (He. 10:19-22) by which we could "put on Christ" (Ro. 13:14; Ga. 3:27), in him finding reconciliation to...

A bit over a year ago, I departed permanently a church where I'd been an Elder and Discipler for a decade. I wasn't happy to go, knowing I was leaving the church in a deteriorating condition that, if things didn't change, would only accelerate into full collapse. But, there was a deeply...

That's a great verse! Understood less and less by modern, North American Christians, however. I work in the Church primarily in the realm of discipleship and over the last three decades I've been doing so, the doctrines of the crucified life and walking in/by the Spirit - meat-and-potatoes...