Simon Ponsonby - God Inside Out: An in-depth study of the Holy Spirit

GOD INSIDE OUT

Simon Ponsonby is in my view one of Britains finest Christian communicators: he is thoughtful, insightful and passionate. Get ready to be inspired and challenged to go deeper with God.

Amy Orr-Ewing
European Director of Training,
Ravi Zacharias International Ministries

For a church that seems to insist on separating the work of theology and the person of the Holy Spirit, God Inside Out is a much needed response. Simons logic is enviable, but for all that he is as passionate as someone in the first flush of charismatic enthusiasm.

Revd Dr Ian Stackhouse
Senior Pastor, Millmead Centre

This is a masterly and wide-ranging study of one of the most vital doctrines for the Church today mind-stretching, heart-warming and faith-challenging. An immensely readable piece of serious theology at a time when there is so much muddled thinking about the Spirit.

Canon David MacInnes
Former Rector of St Aldates and university missioner

Simon is a most gifted theological communicator. He thinks with rich understanding and writes with piercing clarity. This book gives great handles enabling us to wrangle with and grasp the vast subject of the Holy Spirit. And as a close friend, I can tell you his writing is consistent with his Spirit-filled living.

Joseph Steinberg
CMS Director and author of The Y Course

Writing from a Charismatic perspective Simon Ponsonby maintains the emphases of the Bibles teaching, stressing the intimate relationship of the Spirit with Gods Word and his work of salvation through Christ. Many of the differences between Evangelical Christians would be kept in perspective if we all followed his example of faithful and passionate engagement with Scripture.

Vaughan Roberts
Rector, St Ebbes, Oxford

Simon has both an informed mind and a warmed heart, and he has drunk deeply of the God who satisfies. Reading this book will provoke thirst, thinking and theology! It is a rare read in an age in which there is no end of the writing of books. Here, at last, is one which is essential to read and think about. Read it and grow!

Canon David White
Diocesan Missioner Cornwall & Rector of St Austell parish

Simon Ponsonby is one of those rare men who, without contradiction, has wedded a keen intellect to a simple faith in Christ, and thus is able to stand with his feet firmly planted in the twenty-first century, while hungering in his heart for union with Christ.

Eliot Tepper
International Director of Betel Ministries

Simon is zealous for the Truth! I have seldom met anyone who is so passionate about digging to find every nugget hidden in the Word. As a Spirit man, this makes him fascinating to listen to and read. He has that rare combination of being such a pastor, and such a strong communicator of truth, and able to prepare the word in such an easily accessible form. Come to the Banquet!

Gordon Hickson
Parish Vicar, St Aldates Oxford

Not only is Simon a man passionate about people, people who are sleepwalking away from God and Christians who live in mediocrity, but he is also a man who is passionate about Gods word and how we can effectively make sense of it in and for our generation, in the light of those who have gone before.

Revd Lis Goddard
Tutor in Ministerial Formation, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford

Simon is what we would call a peoples theologian. Someone once said to communicate something simply, you have to understand it profoundly, and Simon thoroughly fulfils that in his excellent teaching.

John and Debby Wright
Senior Pastors, Trent Vineyard, Nottingham

Simon is a perfect combination of head and heart working together. He will amaze you with his knowledge and understanding and then challenge you with his humour and insight. This book will be deep and wide because that is who Simon is a man who digs deep and finds treasure and then stretches wide, makes you laugh and gives you many practical answers to life!

Rachel Hickson
Founder of Heartcry Ministries, London Prayernet

It is rare to click with someone heart, mind, and spirit.... This book reads like an evening with Simon engaging, thoughtful, devotional and informed. The man, and his book, are highly recommended!

Dr Guy Chevreau
Author of Catch the Fire

This is simply the best contemporary book on the person and work of the Holy Spirit of which I am aware. Simons style of writing is accessible and easy to understand, but his topic and his content are both deep and rich. Here is a masterful communicator addressing the third person of the Godhead in a way that will inform, challenge, comfort, and inspire.

Revd Dr Bill Johnson
Professor of Philosophy, Husson University;
Senior Pastor of Pittsfield First Baptist Church, Pittsfield, Maine

God Inside Out

SIMON PONSONBY

Muddy Pearl Books, Edinburgh.
www.muddypearl.com

Simon Ponsonby 2015

Simon Ponsonby has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published 2007 by Kingsway
This edition published 2015

The author will permit up to 400 words of prose to be extracted for non-commercial purposes or for review, subject to full acknowledgement being given to author, title of work, and date of publication.

Bible quotations are the authors own translation except where the Revised Standard Version (RSV) or the English Standard Version (ESV) are indicated.

The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, copyright 1952 (2nd edition, 1971) by the division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001, by Crossway, a division of Good News Publishers.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Lyrics from Cousin Jack by Show of Hands.
Used with permission.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-910012-23-9
eISBN 978-1-910012-24-6

Typeset in Minion by Waverley Typesetters, Warham, Norfolk
Printed in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

CONTENTS

PREFACE INSIDE THE VEIN

L ast Pentecost I was invited by my dear friend David White to speak at a weekend conference on the Holy Spirit at his thriving church in Cornwall. We both share a love of folk music, and as it happened, my favourite folk band, Show of Hands, were playing just a mile away on the evening before the conference. We all joined in singing along to their classic song about a Cornish miner, Cousin Jack. Set in the mid-eighteenth century, the lyrics are profoundly moving, speaking of John Wesley giving the miners a voice, and of the miners being sustained underground by visions of heaven. The chorus goes:

Where theres a mine or a hole in the ground,
Thats where Im heading for thats where Im bound
Look for me under the lode or inside the vein.

In many respects, the doctrine of the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit that valuable ore, that beautiful vein, that precious divine deposit has somehow been buried under years of Church tradition and theological debate. That Pentecost weekend, as I sought to teach those Cornish Christians about the Spirit, I felt rather like that Cornish miner working away under the lode, inside the vein.

This book is my mining of that golden vein of the third Person in the Trinity. It began life as a series of lectures given at the St Aldates School of Theology. Within the limits of my ability, it attempts to be a comprehensive summary of the Person and Work of the Spirit. Framed by three criteria: