For so long the Spirit worked in hidden ways among a chosen few; now He openly demonstrates His power, working powerfully in the lives of many and helping the church to grow as a kingdom of faith and love and holiness that one day will fill the earth. He does all this in the name of Christ — on His behalf, for His glory. The Spirit inspires joy, peace, righteousness, and the witness of the love of God in our hearts. He labors among the followers of Christ with the joy and abandon of a hind let loose.

The night on which He was betrayed, Jesus spoke to His disciples about the dawn of a new day that would be heralded by the Holy Spirit’s coming to dwell in them (John 14:17). Jesus says in John 16:8, “When he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” [This article is the substance of an address given for the Philadelphia Conference of Reformed Theology (PCRT), 2010, in Sacramento, California and Greenville, South Carolina. I wish to thank Ray B. Lanning for his assistance on parts of this article.]
This new day is the period of time in which God the Holy Spirit dwells in believers and the church in the full measure of His divine Person and in abundant demonstration of His divine power. Sent by the Father and poured out by the Son, the Spirit’s commission is to sanctify believers to be members of Christ, dwelling in them and applying to them what they already have in Christ, namely, the washing away of their sins, the daily renewing of their lives, and all the other benefits purchased for them by Christ’s redemptive sacrifice on the cross.
Ten days after Christ’s ascension to heaven, the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples gathered in Jerusalem on the feast day of Pentecost. Christ had prepared the apostles for what would happen to the church. So now, as the sound of a mighty, rushing wind filled the meeting place and tongues of fire appeared to hover over every head, believers knew that they were being filled with the Spirit. They began to speak in many languages, “out of every nation under heaven.”
The prophetic words of Christ were being fulfilled: the church was baptized with the Holy Spirit, and her members received power from on high. The age of the Spirit had begun! To understand this phenomenon, let us examine the age of the Spirit from three perspectives: the Spirit’s work in prior ages, the Spirit’s work in this present age, and the Spirit’s work particularly in revival.
The Spirit’s Work in Prior Ages
A superficial reading of the New Testament might lead some to conclude that the presence of the Spirit in the church and in the world was something new. The same mistake is often made regarding what Christ calls “the new covenant in my blood.” It is easy to separate the New Testament from the Old and conclude that a great gulf exists between the two. Some Christians speak of Pentecost as “the birthday of the church,” as if there were no visible church in the world prior to that time. Worse yet, some speak of the Jewish church of the Old Testament as something radically different from the Christian church of the New, as though each had nothing to do with the other.
That is simply not so, for the person and work of the Spirit are introduced to us already at the dawn of time. The earth was shrouded in darkness and a flood of great waters, but Moses tells us, in Genesis 1:2, “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The verb “moved upon” can be translated as “hovering” in the sense of shaking or fluttering, like a bird hovering over its nest. In fact, Deuteronomy 32:10–11 uses the same verb when it speaks of an eagle hovering over its young, tending to their every need. In His capacity as “Lord and Giver of Life,” the Spirit was fully present and active at the beginning to enact the astonishing results demanded by the various creative “fiats” of God. Psalm 104:30 says, “Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth.” In particular, the Spirit filled the earth, the seas, and the dry land with all kinds of living things. We may thus speak of the biosphere, or realm of life and living things that cover the earth, as the great creation of God the Holy Spirit (cf. Job 26:13).
In our creation, the Spirit was also present as the “Breath of Life,” or the breath of God that proceeded from the Father and the Son. When breathed into the nostrils of the divinely sculpted but lifeless form of man, the Spirit transformed a creature of dust and earth into a living being (Gen. 2:7). Job 33:4 says, “The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.” Thus we owe our life and the life of every other living thing as much to the power and creativity of the Holy Spirit as we do to the hand of our Maker and Father in heaven.
Man is a created being and therefore has no life in himself. He cannot beget himself, nor can he generate or sustain his development to maturity. He cannot keep himself alive or deliver himself from the power of death. For all this we must depend upon the grace of God, and, in particular, upon the work of the Holy Spirit. When God withholds His grace, we decline and die; when He sends forth His lifegiving Spirit, we and all living things are quickened again and flourish by the same power that gave us life at the beginning (Ps. 104:30).
So wherever there is life, the Holy Spirit is at work. David lived in a world pervaded by the presence of the Holy Spirit, for he says in Psalm 139:7: “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” But the Spirit is more than power. As a person, He possesses the intelligence and the wisdom of God. As the source of “all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works,” He is at work in the minds and hearts of human beings everywhere. All valid insights into the nature of things, philosophical or scientific; all skills, whether manual, mechanical, or creative; all discoveries, inventions, or works of art; and everything that blesses the life of mankind reveal the presence and work of the Holy Spirit throughout history. The Spirit distributes gifts of statesmanship and craftsmanship that extend beyond man’s natural capacity.
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Our hearts are deceitful, but God knows our hearts inside out. He has made our hearts new. The labyrinth belongs to him now and he is gradually remodelling it into a beautiful place where sin cannot hide.  And if you want to know the true state of your heart, the Lord will help you. Ps 139.23f: Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

In Proverbs 4.23 Solomon warns his son, ‘Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.’ He goes on to give admonitions about the mouth, the eyes and the feet (vv24-27), but it is the heart that must be guarded above all else. Why?
In Scripture, the word ‘heart’ is used more than 1000 times, but it almost never refers to the physical organ inside our chests. The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament sums up all the usages of the term in this way: it is ‘the richest, most all-encompassing biblical term for the totality of a man’s inner nature.’ The heart is said to do a wide range of things in the Bible, but all its many activities fall into one of the three main faculties of the soul: the mind, the affections and the will. It includes the mind—our thoughts, imagination, fantasies, judgments and attitudes. It encompasses the affections—our emotions, our desires and longings, our revulsions. And it describes the will—our choices, decisions and motivations.
Once we understand that the heart involves all these things, it becomes even clearer why we must guard it with all vigilance, before all else—because it is so fundamental. It is the control centre of the whole person. Indeed Scripture sometimes uses ‘heart’ as a kind of synonym for the self (e.g. Gen 18.5; Ex 9.14; 1Pt 3.4: ‘…the hidden person of the heart’.)
We also need to guard our hearts with all vigilance because they are under constant attack. From the world and the devil outside ourselves of course, but also—most dangerously of all—from an enemy within: the flesh—a traitor inside our own hearts, a Judas looking for an opportune moment to hand us over to sin. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jer 17.9). It is like an unsearchable labyrinth, with endless twists and turns, blind alleys and dark corners where the Minotaur of our indwelling sin lurks in wait for us.
We need to guard our hearts too because the Lord wants our hearts. Prov 23.6: My son, give me your heart. What a beautiful and powerful incentive this is! We are keeping our hearts for our Father! We wouldn’t be satisfied with a marriage where our spouse was dutiful and faithful outwardly, but longed inwardly to be with someone else to whom their heart belonged. Why would God be content with that from us? He wants our hearts—our minds, our affections and our wills. The totality of our inner nature and not just our outward behaviour. Isa 29.13: And the Lord said: “…this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me… Ps 51.16f: For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
How then do we do this vital work of guarding our hearts? The first step is to do a ‘spiritual MRI scan’ of our hearts. We need to know the current state of our hearts so that we can address the problems and weaknesses we find. Rom 12.3 tells us to ‘think [of ourselves] with sober judgment.’ The Puritan John Flavel, in an exposition of Prov 4.23, wrote these challenging words: ‘Some people have lived forty or fifty years and have had scarcely one hour’s discourse with their own hearts! … Of all works in religion, this is the most difficult, constant and important work. Heart work is indeed hard work. To shuffle over religious duties with a loose and heedless spirit will cost no great pains. But to set yourself before the Lord and tie up your loose and vain thoughts to a constant and serious attention upon him, this will cost you something.’ John Owen in his book The Mortification of Sin advises his readers: “Be acquainted, then, with thine own heart: though it be deep, search it; though it be dark, inquire into it; though it give all its distempers other names than what are their due, believe it not.”
As we carry out this spiritual MRI scan of our hearts we need to bear in mind what the heart is—the totality of our inner nature: the mind, will and affections. We need to assess all three areas of the heart with probing diagnostic questions. Here are some examples of what that might look like:
A. The mind (thoughts, attitudes, imagination, plans, judgments, discernment).
a) What do you think about? Do you think about spiritual things? The glory of God? The Person and work of Jesus Christ? The Gospel of grace? Sinclair Ferguson once asked the unsettling question, ‘How many Christians today could sit in a room without any resources and think about Jesus Christ for more than five minutes before they run dry?’
b) What do you think about when you’re not focused on specific tasks? John Owen calls these ‘Natural, voluntary thoughts’. They’re like the screensaver that comes up on our computer screens. When the computer is idling for more than a few minutes, it’s the image that appears. What images appear in your mind when it’s not actively engaged in a particular task? Owen says, ‘These thoughts give the best measure of the frame of our minds and hearts… such as the mind of its own accord is apt for, inclines & ordinarily betakes itself unto.’ In other words, do you think about spiritual things when you’re not forced to because you’re listening to a sermon in church or taking part in a Bible study?
c) Owen also asks, do you abound in spiritual thoughts? What proportion of your thoughts are spiritual compared to your thoughts about other things? Here’s a very challenging way of asking the question: do spiritual thoughts ever distract you when you’re engaged in other pursuits? We all know what it’s like to be distracted by earthly thoughts intruding when we’re trying to pray or read the Bible in our daily devotions or listen to a sermon, but is it ever the other way around? Do you ever find yourself thinking about the Lord Jesus when you’re in the middle of watching a film or a football match?
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Written by Christopher F. Rufo |
Tuesday, September 5, 2023
If biology, human nature, and traditional ethics are seen as impediments, rather than as guides, then rational restraints no longer remain on what can be done; the only real limitation is the imagination. And the human mind, untethered from moral limits, can conjure up nightmares. The surgeon, armed with a scalpel and a genital-nullification robot, becomes the new arbiter of human nature.

The debate about transgender medicine is shifting. Legislators in 20 states have recently passed bills to restrict transgender medical interventions, such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital surgeries, for minors. And the tide of public opinion appears to be moving against “gender-affirming care,” a euphemism for child sex-change procedures not supported by the evidence and that often cause devastating consequences. Preventing such procedures for patients under age 18 has to be the baseline.
But opponents of gender medicine should not celebrate prematurely—the battle is far from won. And while restrictions on such procedures for minors are essential, more scrutiny should be focused on a lesser-known practice: “non-binary” surgeries for adults.
Curtis Crane is one of the doctors leading this movement. Crane is a University of Iowa and Dartmouth College-trained urologist and plastic surgeon who specializes in transgender medical interventions, including experimental non-binary surgeries. 
In 2015, Crane received a flurry of publicity as an innovator in vaginoplasty, which involves castrating and creating an artificial vagina for “male-to-female” patients, and phalloplasty, which involves creating and installing an artificial penis for “female-to-male” patients. He boasted of a one- to two-year waitlist and claimed to have one of the highest volumes of transgender surgeries in the United States.
Since then, business has boomed. Crane operates clinics in San Francisco, California, and Austin, Texas, employs a team of five doctors, and conducts procedures on more than 1,000 patients per year. As part of this caseload, his practice has veered into the disturbing new territory of non-binary surgery, which includes castration, eunuch, and nullification procedures, which Crane describes as the process of “removing all external genitalia to create a smooth transition from the abdomen to the groin.” Crane has also designed and performed hundreds of non-binary surgeries in which he fashions together both male and female genitalia for a single individual. That is, he creates an artificial penis for a woman, while retaining her vagina; or creates an artificial vagina for a man, while retaining his penis.
Crane recounted the story of performing his first non-binary genital surgery in a question-and-answer session for potential patients. “In the beginning of my practice, within the first year, I’d say, I had a trans man come to me, and he wanted a phalloplasty, but he wanted to keep his vagina,” Crane recalled.
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