How do Christians come to the certainty that the Bible is the Word of God, and gain an understanding of His mind and will from it? How do they acquire the ability to pray, and lead others in prayer? how are they comforted and supported in all the difficulties they meet? And how can the church be led, taught and guided aright, when Christ is not here on earth? According to the great Puritan leader John Owen, the answer to all these questions is the same: by the gracious and powerful work of the Holy Spirit. He it is who convinces, assures, teaches, comforts and equips the church and all its members for all the work they are called to do. In an age when many think Christianity is nothing more than human effort, based on fallible human conclusions, Owen calls the church back to divine certainty and divine resources. The style in which the Puritans wrote can present difficulties for modern readers, but this updated abridgement of by Dr. R.J.K. Law of The Spirit and the Church will allow Owen to speak to Christians today on a theme which remains as vitally important for the well-being of the church in the twenty-first century as it was when Owen first wrote.

Identifies God's pattern for strengthening a church, counseling on how to be sensitive to the works of the Holy Spirit while discussing principles by which God leads a congregation toward a distinctive spiritual mission.

"This book, which in my opinion is Moltmann's best, can be recommended on the basis that it contains challenging and creative insights that can be used by the discriminating reader in the service of church renewal Moltmann represents the theology of liberation at its best, and those who wish to know more about this theology would do well to study this creative and searching theologian." --Donald G. Bloesch Christianity Today "Moltmann is perhaps unsurpassed among his contemporaries in keenness of insight and rhetorical power." --Daniel L. Migliore, Theology Today "Moltmann presents a stirring vision which every Christian community could well ponder With a missionary emphasis, he seeks to help the reader face the question of the church's identity in the light of the contemporary political, economic, and social scene." --Religious Education

A highly practical guide for nurturing relations between believers and the Spirit, in order to better advance the Kingdom of God.

Do you long for something more in your relationship with God? Are you struggling to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit? Are you ready to embark on a Spirit-propelled adventure of restoration, renewal and transformation? When we do not experience God’s life within us, our Christianity can deteriorate into a lifeless system of rules and empty rituals. If this describes you at the moment, know that you are not alone. Many spiritual seekers are tired of a superficial faith and yearn to know the fi re of God’s presence burning in their hearts. In Holy Spirit Here and Now Trevor Hudson shares his personal journey and offers practical guidance to help you experience the Holy Spirit moving in your ordinary life. Some of the common hurdles he addresses are: Feeling that the Holy Spirit is only available to religious professionals, but not to you Being put off by negative past experiences with people attempting to push you into an experience of the Holy Spirit Having a sense that something is lacking in your relationship with God Feeling that experiences of God’s Spirit are far removed from our everyday lives Believing that experiencing the Holy Spirit is a once-off event rather than a lifetime journey. Trevor Hudson encourages you to allow every part of your life – your emotions, body, soul, relationships, career – to become an arena where the Holy Spirit can work. This is what it means to be truly fi lled with God’s Spirit.

The experiences of the early church have much to say about issues that concern Christians today. What can Acts tell us about tongues and other manifestations of the Spirit? How should the church reach out into the world with the message of salvation? This revised BST volume from John Stott opens to us the early days of the church as recorded by Luke in the book of Acts.

A lucid account of the function of the Spirit in the growth of the church. Through the history of God's people the constant element has been the presence of the Almighty. The baptism in the Holy Spirit, which so galvanized the young church, equipped and empowered the believers, boosting courage, fostering fluency and granting insights to ordinary men and women. Terry Virgo was baptized in the Holy Spirit as a young believer, and delighted in the experience. 'As we began to welcome the presence of the Holy Spirit, our church life was transformed,' he explains. 'The presence of the Holy Spirit changed everything.' As the Spirit moves, so there are healings, often dramatic. But there is more: a discovery of God's grace. As people discover grace for themselves a far more profound healing takes place, leading first to worship, then a recognition that we are a prophetic people.

In "Signs of the Spirit" the author analyzes church renewal from a historical perspective, focusing especially on the Montanist, Pietist, Methodist, and Moravian movements. Professor Snyder then synthesizes the lessons of church renewal in history and applies them in such a way that inspires a renewal strategy for the local church today.

The Church of the Holy Spirit, written by Russian priest and scholar Nicholas Afanasiev (1893–1966), is one of the most important works of twentieth-century Orthodox theology. Afanasiev was a member of the “Paris School” of émigré intellectuals who gathered in Paris after the Russian revolution, where he became a member of the faculty of St. Sergius Orthodox Seminary. The Church of the Holy Spirit, which offers a rediscovery of the eucharistic and communal nature of the church in the first several centuries, was written over a number of years beginning in the 1940s and continuously revised until its posthumous publication in French in 1971. Vitaly Permiakov's lucid translation and Michael Plekon's careful editing and substantive introduction make this important work available for the first time to an English-speaking audience.

In The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience, Simeon Zahl presents a fresh vision for Christian theology that foregrounds the relationship between theological ideas and the experiences of Christians. He argues that theology is always operating in a vibrant landscape of feeling and desiring, and shows that contemporary theology has often operated in problematic isolation from these experiential dynamics. He then argues that a theologically serious doctrine of the Holy Spirit not only authorizes but requires attention to Christian experience. Against this background, Zahl outlines a new methodological approach to Christian theology that attends to the emotional and experiential power of theological ideas. This methodology draws on recent interdisciplinary work on affect and emotion, which has shown that affects are powerful motivating realities that saturate all dimensions of human thinking and acting. In the process, Zahl also explains why contemporary theology has often been ambivalent about subjective experience, and demonstrates that current discourse about God's activity in the world is often artificially abstracted from experience and embodiment. At the heart of the book, Zahl proposes a new account of the theology of grace from this experiential and pneumatological perspective. Focusing on the work of the Holy Spirit in salvation and sanctification, he retrieves insights from Augustine, Luther, and Philip Melanchthon to present an affective and Augustinian vision of salvation as a pedagogy of desire. In articulating this vision, Zahl engages critically with recent emphasis on participation and theosis in Christian soteriology, and charts a new path forward for Protestant theology in a landscape hitherto dominated by the theological visions of Barth and Aquinas.