For example:
Has the Holy Spirit helped you understand the Bible when you read it?
Has the Holy Spirit convicted you of sin?
Has the Holy Spirit helped to remind you of Scripture?
Has the Holy Spirit changed your heart?
Amen, so much.
I can personally testify of the experience of the outpouring of the Spirit. Once when I began to minister, I had no particular feeling. However, after I began to minister, I had the sense that a cloud came down upon me to encompass, encircle, and cover me. At that point my ministering changed very much. To have that kind of realization was a unique experience in my whole life. To be sure, that was not my imagination; it was something real.
On June 2000, I met a man of God called Apostle Stanley Ndovie from Malawi, in a conference belong to my church.
When I saw him, I felt in my spirit that he has the solution of my case & he knows the practical answers for my questions. He is different from all of the ministers that I met.
I sat with him & after I told him about my story of failure, I wept & I was amazed that he began to cry with me, he felt the sour pain that I was in, and when he began to answer, he taught about something that I didn’t hear about in my church it was " the Infilling of the Holy Spirit " . He said, " this is your solution Ramez, to be filled with the Spirit "
All of that was secretly because of our church leaders in the conference prevented him to speak about any charismatic (Anointing) teaching.
He didn’t pray directly for me to be filled in the Holy Spirit, but before that he prayed for me and spoke words of knowledge that no one knows about me, he said things that were the cure for my depression disease, He said the Lord is saying to you Ramez " Don’t say about yourself that you are not useful you are useful my son……"
I wept under his hands.
No one knows those words, this was my lifestyle to say that about myself, so it was a shock for me. And it was a PERMANENT solution for my depression.
This is the true work of the Holy Spirit He always bring results.
I woke up one night last week to see the moonlight edging through the curtain in my bedroom. Unable to drift back to sleep, I decided to read for a while to get my sleepy brain to override again. So I read Simon Fry’s article on Being Filled with the Holy Spirit. Guess what? My sleepy brain completely flew the coop after I read that.
Lying in the dark, I thought back to my experience of being baptized with the Holy Spirit. As long as I can remember, I wanted to follow Jesus. Sure, I went through tough times, but following Jesus was never a question for me at the deepest levels. I was always hungry for spiritual truths; even as a young child I soaked up everything I could get and felt frustrated if church seemed shallow to me.
Yet my walk with Christ took a sharp turn about five years ago. For so many years, Will and I had poured everything we had into our church community. We loved the people so much (and still do) and cherished the Mennonite tradition of taking the Bible and Jesus seriously, along with the values of family and togetherness. But through a series of events, the community let us down in ways that seemed unimaginable formerly. What we gave our lives for backstabbed us. What I depended on to give us protection and purpose, did neither.
It’s hard for me to write this, but what I knew in my mind—the fact that people could not protect us or give life meaning—became painfully real through the hand of experience. We can try to know and do the right things and sincerely wish to honor Jesus in everything; but without the experience of our best efforts being stripped away, truly understanding grace is difficult.
During that distressing season, Will and I sat through a choir program with tears in our eyes as the choir sang Come to the Water. The song says, O let all who thirst, let them come to the water, and all who have nothing, let them come to the Lord. We were tasting what it was like to have nothing. Nothing but the Lord.
Out of that crisis began a new search for identity and purpose. One day Will and I were talking with a godly older man about our hurts and our newly-forming dreams, when I confessed to this brother that I wanted to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. I also told him about a certain spiritual gift that I really longed to have. Without hesitation, he laid hands on me and prayed for me to receive the Spirit.
Of course I felt spiritually charged by our interaction with this man of God, but the proof of a deep change surfaced over the next months. For me, the most significant changes were freedom from fear, the ability to hear God’s voice, and a new awareness of God’s church.
I’ve always been a people-pleasing person. To do something drastically different from the others around me wasn’t on my radar before. Respecting others was more important than listening to God if the two happened to clash. Oh I might be slightly radical, because I always did like to think critically about issues and push the status quo if it didn’t feel life-giving to me. But to follow Jesus in drastic ways regardless what others thought, especially people close to me? A totally new step.
God’s voice began coming to me much more regularly after that experience of receiving the Spirit. I would be sitting in church, washing dishes, or hoeing my garden when out of the blue God would tell me something about myself or someone else. And His voice was so beautiful to hear—it never brought condemnation on me or anyone else. I began to be able to love people in a way I couldn’t love before.
Also, I started noticing God’s family everywhere. His people were not confined to my denomination! And yes, I I knew that before, but suddenly I really knew it and was able to feel that instant connection with others who had the Spirit, even if it was a Dollar General clerk whom I had never met before! That terrible Us/Them mentality began slipping away.
How did these things alter my life? The change surfaced in our family’s move to a town where we knew nobody and where no Mennonite church existed. I was so attached to our little house in the country with our goats and chickens and fruit trees and my huge garden. I loved my community and friends (even though some of them had hurt us so much). At first, when I sensed the calling to move I felt so sick about it that I would lie in bed and try to wipe the idea clean out of my mind. But Will and I had no peace until we obeyed the call—and the last two years have been the best ride of our lives! We are constantly stretched and challenged and blessed. Oddly enough, we have made many new connections through a move that could have seemed isolating.
Am I perfect because I’ve been filled with the Holy Spirit? No. I still struggle to grow, to learn more about radical obedience, to relate well with other people, to show kindness in daily life. And yet, the joy-factor has increased a hundredfold. Being a Christian is fun! Without so much fear, Will and I are always up for an adventure with God.
And now I am profoundly grateful that God lowered Himself to bless me with His Spirit. More than anything else, I want to bring His presence everywhere. I want that Presence in me to draw everyone into the same joyful existence.
While I write these things, I do not wish to exude an air of spiritual superiority. I don’t feel that way at all. Christians who may not have experienced the filling of the Holy Spirit but who are earnestly seeking to follow the Lord are just as precious to Him. I have a hunch that we all need more grace than we can even imagine. And it is there for us. Grace is there for us, and so is the Holy Spirit, if we will but ask.
I think it’s safe to say that, when we hear the story about Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:1-4), most of us have this kind of reaction: “Well that’s cool, I guess. Good for them, with all those flames above their heads, and the Holy Spirit stuff.”
That was my reaction for a long time, anyway. I knew the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, was real, and that He gave the Apostles courage to do really intense evangelizing. But I never thought much more about it than that.
Weirdly, we Catholics don’t talk too much about the Holy Spirit and who He is in everyday conversation. Jesus we understand better; the Holy Spirit, less so. And any kind of talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit just weirded me out.
Until I met the Holy Spirit as a real Person…and He did something very similar in me.
Without getting into every single detail of what happened, I’ll give you the nutshell version of my experience: I went on a retreat in college called “Fan Into Flame” (I ended up going on four of them), which was focused on encountering the Holy Spirit in a new and deeper way. As we got into who the Holy Spirit was on this retreat, I was uncomfortable at first — but throughout the retreat, I found myself opening up a little more, despite my discomfort. As I came to understand how the Holy Spirit works in our lives and grew more comfortable with worshipping God through song throughout the retreat, the idea of surrendering my life to Him in a deeper way didn’t scare me as much.
At one point in the retreat, our small groups prayed together to intercede for each other for particular requests: to be freed from things that kept us from God, to receive the Holy Spirit in a deeper way or to receive His gifts. I don’t remember what I prayed for — but I do remember that, as I was being prayed over, I had this gentle urge to rest, to just let go — and I experienced an overwhelming peace within me that resonated through my whole body. I couldn’t stop smiling because I couldn’t contain the joy inside me. It was bursting!
Words fall entirely short when I try to communicate what this experience actually was. All I can say is that I met the Person of the Holy Spirit in that moment.
When I stood up after what felt like hours, the time of prayer was over and, from what I could tell, almost every soul in the room had experienced the same thing I had, or at least something very similar.
We had just experienced our own Pentecost.
This it wasn’t just a one-time thing, though. Since that first encounter, I have on other occasions experienced the Holy Spirit in powerful ways, and I experience Him in a quieter way on a daily basis.
Pentecost was a real thing. The Apostles receiving the Holy Spirit was a real thing. But this outpouring of the Holy Spirit wasn’t just for the Apostles. We were all meant to receive the same thing. We are all meant to know Him, to walk with Him and to receive the graces we need for our daily lives from Him.
We all receive Him at baptism, and then again in a deeper way with the sacrament of confirmation. But often, the potential for the graces we could have lie dormant until we give Him the permission to come into our hearts.
When I am praying and listen to the world of God, I can feel the Holy Spirit. I feel God saying to me, and realize how God loves me.
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Yes, exactly, that is what I want to testified to others. I experienced a lot of work of holy spirit.
Yes, the Holy Spirit helped me understand more truth in the Bible day by day.
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when everything can go on very smoothly, i can feel the Holy Spirit work.
For me, I feel the Holy Spirit work when everything goes wrong! It’s when things are toughest that I reach out for God the most, and read my Bible more and therefore have more of God’s Word in me and a chance for the Holy Spirit to convict me or encourage, make me think twice or comfort me. That’s when I feel it most.
Holy Spirit guides me everyday through God’s words, and He convicts me or reminds me whenever I need.
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