iChaplain

Most of us don’t wake up expecting miracles.  We don’t expect seas to part, or storms to fall silent at a word. For many of us, life feels ordinary—steady, sometimes heavy, often routine. So when we read about “signs and wonders” in the Bible, they can feel far away… almost like they belong to a different world. And yet, quietly, many of us still find ourselves asking: “God, are you still at work like that today?”  There’s a story often told about John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard movement. He had been encouraging people to pray for healing—to step out and simply do what we see Jesus doing. At one gathering, someone came forward for prayer. Wimber prayed. And nothing seemed to happen. Afterwards, someone asked him, "why?" He didn’t try to explain it or tidy it up. He simply acknowledged, with honesty and humility, that he didn’t know—and that God did. And then he carried on and prayed for the next person. That, in many ways, captures something i...

Who Is the Holy Spirit? (Not What) We are more shaped by culture than we realise—especially when it comes to how we think about the spiritual. From “May the force be with you” to Ghostbusters with its famous line, “Who you gonna call?” T he world around us has given us a whole vocabulary for “spirit.” Some of it is light-hearted, some of it imaginative, and some of it just plain confusing. In films and media, spirit is often reduced to one of two things: either an impersonal force you can tap into, or something strange and paranormal—like a problem to be managed, avoided, or joked about. Even the everyday language we use—“good vibes,” “positive energy,” “free spirit”—quietly reinforces the same idea: that “spirit” is vague, distant, or abstract. Culture has a powerful way of shaping how we think about spiritual realities without us even noticing. And here’s the challenge: If that’s the framework we carry, it shapes how we understand the Holy Spirit—often without us even realis...