God must open the eyes of our understanding before we can truly know and rightly interpret His truth. His truth is available only to those with a regenerate spirit and in whom His Spirit dwells, for only the Spirit can illumine Scripture. Just as the physically blind cannot see the sun, the spiritually blind cannot see the Son. Both lack proper illumination.
Nothing in Scripture teaches that the filling of the Spirit is accompanied by ecstatic experiences or external signs. To be sure, being filled with the Spirit does bring the believer tremendous exhilaration and joy, but the New Testament epistles reveal that being filled with the Spirit brings forth the fruit of the Spirit, not the gifts of the Spirit.
Topics: Holy Spirit Source: Charismatic Chaos, Zondervan, 1992, p. 316.
The more you focus on yourself, the more distracted you will be from the proper path. The more you know Him and commune with Him, the more the Spirit will make you like Him. The more you are like Him, the better you will understand His utter sufficiency for all of life's difficulties. And that is the only way to know real satisfaction.
Topics: Holy Spirit Source: Religious Hedonism in Our Sufficiency in Christ, Crossway Books
Humanism is the philosophy that says humanity has unlimited potential. Give people enough time and education, and they can solve any problem. A stepsister to existentialism, humanism urges everyone to self-authenticate, to be someone.
Topics: Humanism Source: Charismatic Chaos, Zondervan, 1992, p. 48.
Idolatry is having any false god - any object, idea, philosophy, habit, occupation, sport, or whatever that has one's primary concern and loyalty or that to any degree decreases one's trust in and loyalty to the Lord.
Topics: Idolatry Source: 1 Corinthians, p. 232-233.
Idolatry is worshiping something other than the true God in the true way.
Inspiration is God superintending human authors so that using their own individual personalities, experiences, thought processes and vocabulary they composed and recorded without error His revelation in the original copies of Scripture.
Topics: Inspiration Source: Doctrine of Scripture, Sermon, 1997.
Mary's virginity protected a great deal more than her own moral character, reputation, and the legitimacy of Jesus' birth. It protected the nature of the divine Son of God... Jesus had to have one human parent or He could not have been human, and thereby a partaker of our flesh. But He also had to have divine parentage of He could not have made a sinless and perfect sacrifice on our behalf.
That Jesus is Himself God is the heart of the gospel, because apart from His deity He could not save a single soul. No heresy so corrupts the gospel and robs it of its power as the teaching that Jesus is not God. Apart from His deity, there is no gospel and no salvation.
Topics: Jesus, Heresy Source: Matthew 8-15, p. 273.
What Jesus forbids is self-righteous, officious, hasty, unmerciful, prejudiced, and unwarranted condemnation based on human standards and human reasoning... [He condemns] the judgment of motives, which no mere human being can know of another, and to judgment of external forms.
God must open the eyes of our understanding before we can truly know and rightly interpret His truth. His truth is available only to those with a regenerate spirit and in whom His Spirit dwells, for only the Spirit can illumine Scripture. Just as the physically blind cannot see the sun, the spiritually blind cannot see the Son. Both lack proper illumination.