The God Who Draws Near: An Introduction to Biblical Spirituality

The word spirituality can be used in a Christian context and can rightly remind us of something very basic about the Christian life. The word spirituality comes from a Latin term, spiritualitas, which, in turn, is derived from the word spiritus, the Latin word for spirit. Spiritualitas appears to have been coined by Latin-speaking Christians in North Africa in the second century AD to describe all the activities in a believers life that are prompted and inspired by the Holy Spirit. These believers rightly discerned that the Holy Spirit is at the heart of all that can be genuinely called spirituality. True spirituality is intimately bound up with the Holy Spirit and his work. It is the Holy Spirit, for example, who is the one who makes Gods love real for us God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5: 5). And it is also he who enables us to embrace Christ as Saviour and Lord no one can say, Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12: 3).