Dr Paul Allen

As Christians, we grieve. Oh, do we grieve. Being a Christian does not mean that our sorrows go away or are minimised, or that we pretend that the many sorrows of this life are no big deal. In fact, we Christians actually grieve more. God has taken out our old, dead hearts and put new hearts in us. In Christ, the insensitivities and imbalances of our old selves are being renewed day by day into the likeness of Jesus (Col. 3:10). With the help and healing of the Holy Spirit, we feel more, not less. More than joy alone, we feel, at new depths, the seemingly negative emotions of anger, fear, shame, guilt, and sorrow. With sin still indwelling us, we often err in the timing, focus, and intensity of our feelings. But in Christ, we really can, and really do, grow to feel holy anger, holy fear, holy shame, holy sorrow—a holy grief that is wholly different from worldly despair. All joy, no grief? In 1 Thessalonians 4:13, the Apostle Paul writes with the longing that Christians “not grieve as o...

In  Jack Deere 's intriguing book,  Surprised by the Power of the Spirit , he suggests the following hypothetical situation and result: "If you were to lock a brand-new Christian in a room with a  Bible  and tell him to study what the Scriptures have to say about healing and miracles, he would never come out of the room a cessationist." 1   Elsewhere, he writes, Everyone who picked up the Bible, started reading, and concluded that God was still doing signs and wonders and that the gifts of the Holy Spirit had not passed away. The doctrine of cessationism did not originate from a careful study of the Scriptures. The doctrine of cessationism originated in experience.  2 Deere may have a point, but a person reading the Bible and studying miracles and healing may also have several questions about these things. Why do the epistles have little discussion about them? Why does Paul leave people sick ( Phil 2:26-27 ;  1 Tim 5:23 ;  2 Tim 4:20 ...