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Christians doubt because they believe and claim God's promises to heal, and then consistently see no answer to their desperate petitions. In fact, most Christians have never witnessed a healing miracle. Faith dies with no track record of success. So pastors rationalize this pattern of failed...

As an evangelical charismatic who has served as a theology professor at a Catholic university, I have found the truth to be precisely the opposite. I totally get why several evangelicals have fled their local evangelical churches to find God real in our local Catholic church. Many evangelicals...

(1) a premonition that my friend Dallas would be accidentally killed if he joined his friends on a hunting adventure the next day: In vain I pled with him not to go, but he wouldn't listen and was killed just as God revealed to me. (2) a premonition that my friend Ted would imminently be...

(2) PETER'S FOCUS ON THE AFFECTIVE EXPERIENCE OF "TASTING" CHRIST'S GOODNESS Through John the seer, the Risen Lord describes His personal relationship with true believers as being spiritually "hot" and stuns the reader by adding that He'd rather we be spiritually "cold" than "lukewarm,"...

When I hear evangelicals speak of God talking to them, I typically dismiss this as wishful thinking that equates God with the voice in the back of their head. But here are 3 exceptions: (1) Christians who have learned how to "pray in the Spirit" (Spirit- directed prayer in English or other...

(1) JOHN THE SEER'S FOCUS ON THE NEED FOR THE EXPERIENCE OF FEASTING WITH THE RISEN LORD In Rev. 3:20 feasting on Jesus is an image of a "hot" spirituality in contrast with "lukewarm" faith-based spirituality whose adherents the Lord will "spit" or "vomit" (The Greek "emeo" can mean both) out...

In the NT normative Christian experience is limited neither to mere confession of sins and repentance nor to a lived faith based on salvation by grace through faith, but primarily consists of a living intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ. In a recent study 3 of 4 Christian young...

If you read my OP, you would realize that I believe in "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ" and indeed experience it. Reread the OP and you will see that the issue raised is that the Bible never uses the expression and indeed the texts commonly cited to defend this experience don't...

Nope! There is a specialized narrow use of the Hebrew for sexual relations between spouses, but no general meaning of this sort when applied to other relations such as the divine-human relationship.

Recent research has demonstrated that 3 out of every 4 Christian young people lose their faith by the time the graduate from college. I have been struck by the number of PKs who lose their faith, especially my 3 cousins whose parents pioneered a Christian work on a Caribbean island. When these...

The Protestant League used to meet regularly in the church of my youth. As a boy, I once asked their leader what they talked about in their meetings. He replied, "Oh, we talk about all the sex orgies in Catholic convents." HAVE YOU HEARD THIS? I don't believe it. do you? At Azusa St/ the...

In typical Catholic fashion you simply deny powerful eyewitness testimony of outpourings of God's power because this testimony threatens the relative impoverishment of your own limited spiritual experience. I'm grateful that other Catholic site members are not as spiritually bigoted and myopic...

Global Pentecostalism was sparked by the Azusa Street revival of 1908, which in turn was a continuation of the unprecedented Welsh revival of 1904-1906. In the Azusa street revival outsiders saw flames bursting from the building and even called fire departments to extinguish them! But those...

Mike is a devout evangelical friend with congestive heart failure. He is a lifelong believer, attends church regularly, leads a weekly Bible study, and visits shut-ins. Mike's pastor recently preached a sermon in which he claimed, "If you don't have a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ,"...

In my town evangelicals are flocking from their local churches to find God real in our local Catholic church! Uneducated biblical illiterates like you have no answer to the biblical basis of many Catholic distinctives. I guess it's time for me to make constructive use of you as an academic...

In the body of Christ the whole is greater--far more powerful than the individual parts. So join a weekly small prayer group. Doing so will help you feed off of every else's faith. Individually, you can't just TRY to believe and "without faith it is impossible to please God." Our little...

Its hard to believe that "In the Garden" and "Dwelling in Beulah Land" (my favorite old hymn) stem from the same composer, C. Austin Miles. In his photography studio Miles had a waking vision of Mary Madgalene clothed in a white robe, standing outside Jesus' tomb. Then the words of "In the...

(15) THE DEAD TRUCK DRIVER: Now I'll share the most spectacularly supernatural experience I've ever encountered. Leonard, a member of my UMC church, was a wealth retired real estate baron. As his pastor, I got to know him very well and visited his sick brother in a hospital. Leonard was very...

Curtis: "Your attempt at rebuttal ignores the fact that being sinless is the epitome of being good." This response ignores these 4 facts: (1) You ducked my point that Jesus felt the need to receive John's baptism of repentance and did so to "fulfill all righteousness (Matthew 415)," not to set...