Keep in Step with the Spirit

Keeping in Step with the Spirit is knowing who the Spirit is, what is appropriated to Him, and what He has promised to do for the believer.

What we are going to do this morning is look at J.I. Packers book titled ‘Keep in Step with the Spirit’. What I would like to do is a book review/summary of it. I’ll give a summary of each chapter and section and we’ll stop to discuss and highlight certain parts.

The backdrop for the book is all of the surrounding views of the Holy Spirits ministry amongst God’s people that have gone before us and are with us to this day. He encounters traditions such as the reformed/augustinian, Weslyan, Keswick, Charismatic, Evangelical, Pentecostal.

I admire it most for his charitable and ecumenical Spirit. I think this is an art we are lacking today. Not many, particularly reformed folks(I say this to myself), have the ability to be both reformed and charitable and ecumenical in the best sense.

Prophesying in the Charismatic movement

Prophesying in the Charismatic movement is often said to be a new revelation directly from God. And it’s supposed that this type of phenomena has been absent from the time of the church fathers up until the start of the twentieth century. He goes on to demonstrate from Scripture that prophesying has always been an explanation of the an existing text of Scripture or an explination of the current cultural happenings in light of Scripture. It is never brand new revelation. Today we would just call this teaching and preaching. At the simplest level of explaining Scripture to your kids. He writes off the predictive side of charismatic prophesying.

Quote on 257