Why don't I feel the Spirit?

We have seen the truth of the work of the Spirit and seen his great power. Why don’t we FEEL it when we would expect great power to change us?

Feelings are not great indicators of our reality the book of Malachi warns about that. By contrast the Bible calls us to understand our relational reality and live in the light of it. My hunch is that if you ask my two boys if they feel like I am their dad that they would look at you like you had gone out, they wouldn’t have a clue what you were on about. But if you were to watch them you would see that they relate to me as their dad. They ask me things, they try to please me, they are disciplined by me, they come to me when they are upset, and so on. So it is with us and the Holy Spirit, he is at work in us in everything we do.

What is it that you expect to feel? Is it just a longing for an experience? The Spirit moves every time we pray because he enables us to speak to God. The Spirit moves by making God’s word live for us – when we get something from the Bible and it begins to change us it is not due to our intelligence but the Holy Spirits working. We also underestimate the way the Holy Spirit is changing us, often it is others who see the Holy Spirit at work in us, or we can discern it over a period of time.

Perhaps part of the problem behind the question and a very real danger for us is that we resist the Spirit – Acts 6:8-7:60.