Mark Cowper-Smith's Blog, page 11

What does it mean to be “in the Holy Spirit?”

Some time ago Mark got stuck on the harmless little phrase “in the Spirit” as it appears in the lives of Jesus and the writers of the New Testament. They seemed to throw the term around without ever defining it. To them it seemed self-explanatory. So, he decided to look up all the places where the term is found and do a word-study on the word “in.” We know, it sounds pointless, studying the word “in”, but what he found surprised him and gave us an understanding of the Holy Spirit that brought...

Bob’s Story

[image error]In the fall of 1964, after graduating high school the previous spring, I headed off to college in the San Francisco bay area. I soon found myself deeply immersed in the budding counter-culture that was emerging in that region. It wasn’t long before I was experimenting with drugs and the “hippie” lifestyle. This soon led to an increasing inquisitiveness about spiritual alternatives.  “Trips” on LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs caused me to encounter spiritual dimensions that I had never expe...

Share your story with us

Many of you who follow this blog have your own blog sites. Mark and Bob have filled a book with their stories of walking with a Supernatural God.

Now we want to hear from you.

Here is Mark’s story again from Chapter 2: Reluctantly Supernatural

Reluctantly supernatural. That about sums me up.

Have you ever been in a church meeting where things get sort of out of control? I don’t mean the usual out of control which involves a 25-minute introduction to taking the offering or a 40-minute altar c...

Does God really use mental images?

[image error]Mental images may come as still images or as “movies” [a scene being enacted in our mind’s eye]. The scene may be purely imaginary or it may be something that we have actually seen [a memory]. Here is one example of the “movie” variety.

In Mark’s words:

“I was scheduled to do a conference in a city a few hours north of ours. I was brushing my teeth in the morning and talking to God about the conference to start that night. I said, “I don’t want to just teach like I usually do, I want to do so...

Can God talk to me in mental images?

How do we hear the voice of God? Or perhaps better put, how does God communicate with us in an immediate and personal way? God is capable of communicating to us through all of our senses, but most of the time He communicates to us through our minds and our emotions. He places thoughts and images in our minds, which do not originate with us, likewise, with our emotions.

Ironically, we have heard people say that God cannot plant a thought in someone’s mind. We say ironically because these are...

Examining How We Hear God’s Voice

[image error]Last post we shared a video about How to Hear the Voice of God. There are so many ways He speaks to us that it is important to share our stories with one another.

We want to take a moment to analyze how the dream and fortune cookie worked together to bring about life-changing faith.

There was nothing obviously supernatural about the dream itself. It could have been nothing more than Mark’s subconscious wishing that he had more influence. This would be a fair interpretation given his disillusi...

How Does God Speak to Us?

This is the first part in a practical guide to hearing from God.

One of the ways we hear God’s voice is through His immediate word to us, which is also revelation because it is a work of the Holy Spirit. It has the same effect of revealing His truth to our minds and our lives, but it comes directly rather than through Scripture. It is always consistent with what Scripture teaches us, but it is not dependent upon Scripture for its delivery. When the message comes through another person, we ca...

What do I need to know when I am waiting?

[image error]As we discussed in the last blog post, there is something more important to God than our breakthroughs and that is our character development. The breakthroughs He values most are character breakthroughs and He is willing to allow us to wait for our breakthroughs if it is the only way to grow our character.

The upsetting fact is that He will intentionally prolong our wait until we have learned what He intended for us to learn.

David was persevering while running for his life from King Saul whe...

Are you waiting well?

[image error]Have you ever been offended against God?

Come on, let’s be honest for a moment. Have you ever felt disappointed with God? I have.

Disappointment with God is possible because of a misunderstanding of what we like to call “breakthroughs”.

We love our breakthroughs. We are all waiting for our “breakthrough”.

We have received a promise or prophetic word from God [or so we perceive] and it has not happened yet. Because our lives are bounded by time and space we feel the injustice of this; God has...

You never know who you are influencing

Hi Mark,

You don’t know me, though we met a couple times about twenty five years ago. I was probably eight or nine years old at the time. You were serving at with the Vineyard church in Calgary and came to do a weekend workshop in my small town in northern Alberta. My parents attended and I was there off and on. My older brother recorded your sermons on cassette tapes. Back then I didn’t pay much attention, while I was a Christian, as a child understands it, I would have rather been playing...