In what ways does the Holy Spirit act in you?

I just went by what the Holy Spirit told me in response to my question about dreams and visions. He told me I didn't need dreams and visions because I had the reality of Christ in me through the indwelling Holy Spirit and I had the written Scriptures that contains everything God has said to us. That was good enough for me, and has been since 1969 when the Holy Spirit told me that. I have lived by faith in the Written Scriptures ever since and have witnessed many remarkable things as a result, in terms of guidance, provision, and people being healed when I have prayed for them.

Here is something I have just read in a commentary by a major Reformed Bible commentator.
"There are two types of believer: (1) the believer who needs experiences and emotions and if they don't get them their walk with God comes to a halt until they have their next sensory experience. This is because their faith is not strong enough to just trust the written Word of God in order to continue walking in the Spirit. (2) Those who have total faith in the written Scriptures and continue walking in the Spirit regardless of how they feel or any sensory experiences they may have. They may be afflicted, depressed, confused, and feel that Christ has deserted them; but they continue on in faith, trusting the written promises, not allowing their negative experience to hinder their walk with God in the Spirit.

So....where does communion with God’s Holy Spirit fit in....

....and like John on the island of Patmos being “in the Spirit” on the Lord’s day and writing the book of Revelation....or Phillip being translated just to minister to an Ethiopian eunuch reading the book of Isaiah 53....

Let go of human logic and reasoning.....God’s Ways are MUCH higher!!!! Let go and soar! God has much to show you!

He keep you from sinning?

@PaulChristensen - What is the most incredible miracle you've witnessed, or what is the most powerful experience, or encounter, that you have had with our Powerful God?

In a Christian camp, I had a word of knowledge for a young woman which had a very dramatic effect on her, and found out afterward that she had been counselled earlier in the day concerning that very thing!

I prayed for my work supervisor for her arthritic knee. All I prayed was "Jesus heals you." Three weeks later she had a subsequent Xray and the arthritis that was seen on her first Xray had totally disappeared.

In an equipping meeting I prayed for a nurse who had strained her back while lifting a patient, and was in serious pain. The next week she was to give me a lift to the meeting and she bounded across the road saying that after I prayed for her, all the pain disappeared and her back was totally healed.

In another equipping meeting I prayed for a wife who had been diagnose with a medical condition with a "tongues" like Latin definition, that stopped her being able to conceive. I put my hand on her shoulder and prayed, "Jesus heals you" and three months later her husband told me that she conceived the very night I prayed for her.

In the course of a healing conference that I led, there was a woman with a chronic back condition that had caused her pain for years stopping her sleeping at night. I put her in the "hot" seat at the front and invited members of the congregation to come and pray for her. I told them to pray simple prayers like "Jesus heals you" or "I cast out this spirit of infirmity". 30 people came up and prayed for her. The next day, the pastor emailed me to say that all her pain disappeared and she had the best night sleep she had for years!

During my mature student years, (32 years of age), I used my savings because my student allowance just paid my board. Halfway through my second year I got down to my last 100 dollars. I told the Lord that I had always had a good job and never had to pray for money, but now for the first time I needed help if I was to continue my studies. Two days later I received a phone call from a local postmaster (I worked for the Post Office before I started university) offering me a part-time job. This provided enough funds to get me through the year until I was able to become a qualified typing teacher and got a part time keyboarding teaching job at a local secretarial college. That got me through the rest of my university time.

When I left teaching after 19 years, I got a job with the District Court. My salary went right down from $40.000 a year (in 2004) to $35,000 which didn't pay the mortgage and bills. At the very same time, my wife's sister sold her home and moved to Australia. My wife had lent her $50,000 to buy her home and was paid back. That supplemented our income for two years.

At a conference around two years after that, the Holy Spirit told me to put my lunch money in the offering. I don't usually contribute money to offerings because I'm a miser. However, on this occasion I obeyed the prompting of the Spirit, expecting to have to fast over lunchtime having no money to buy lunch. As a result, I was offered two lunches, received around $300 as my share of the ministry love offering, and my District Court salary went up $12,000 per year which enabled my mortgage and bills to be paid with money left over.

When I retired and went on Superannuation, which covers only essential expenses (I had paid my mortgage off by then), I had been chairperson of a local budgeting agency since the late 1990s. I volunteered at the office as management support, and after six months I received wages for three days a week which amounted to $400 per fortnight. This provided more than enough to continue paying the bills. By the way, I continued to work at the Court for three years after I started receiving the superannuation (it is not means-tested and everyone gets it when they turn 65), so we lived on my Court salary and banked the Super. As a result on leaving the Court in 2014, we had a very healthy bank balance in our savings account.

Is that enough? It shows that God always provides for His saints. I have been made redundant three times during my teaching career, and never had a time when we didn't know where our next meal was coming from. One year I was relief teaching and on unemployment benefit, and quite a number of times I earned enough to have the benefit suspended for that month and reinstated when my relieving teaching earnings went down again.

The wonder is that I was once a young man and now I am old and I have never been forsaken and none of my children have ever had to beg for food.

I would think that these experiences have left a profound effect on you. If so, have they strengthened, or supported your Faith?

@PaulChristensen - What is the most incredible miracle you've witnessed, or what is the most powerful experience, or encounter, that you have had with our Powerful God?

Yes they have. It shows that because the Holy Spirit dwells in us, we can be always prepared to minister to people anywhere. We don't have to wait until we get to a church meeting in order to see the Lord's healing power working. After years of going to local Charismatic healing meetings and seeing no one healed, I became a skeptic for many years; not because I didn't believe that Jesus could heal people, but in the way these Charismatics were going about it in their very theatrical healing meetings.

I learned that Jesus didn't do it that way. He healed most people in the street, or in someone's home. There was only once when He healed a guy of a withered hand in the Synagogue and that made the folks angry because He did it on the Sabbath.

My faith was increased in that I can believe that if I touch someone's wrist and say, "Jesus heals you." there is the distinct possibility that they will get healed.

When the Spirit of the eternal living God infused my soul within Himself.

Ok, so what I was doing was showing that you actually agree with me, and likely, Lafftur, regarding the things we were saying. Just as your spiritual experiences have enhanced your Faith, so too have ours.

I don't think that Lafftur was ever trying to say that she puts Faith and Trust into her experiences alone. Just because I have felt the Raw, Almighty Power of God, this does not mean that I think about this Power each second of the day, nor do I process each Word of Scripture through that experience. Rather, I take each Word of the Bible and stack it against itself . . . not of myself or that experience that the Lord allowed me to share.

Now, with your being a pastor, I was a bit surprised to see that you were not understanding something that was being explained rather clearly. I'm not trying to hurt your feelings, but I do think that it is wise to perhaps slow down with Pastorship, and maybe allow your ears to be opened a bit. I realize that you've been doing this for a very long time, but don't make your tenure your downfall. People who feel that they have the Bible "down" can easily fall victim to "I have the Favor of the Lord" or, "What I say has been established by the Lord!" or, "I am a prophet of God!" - I tend to run when I hear that. Why? Because their ears are Fort Knox shut . . . total waste of time. They think that have such a direct connection with the Wisdom of God, they rudely shut a person down simply because they themselves hadn't been aware of such foreign knowledge. I've seen it so much . . . it's difficult to stomach.

I don't agree with all that Lafftur says, nor is there any human alive that agrees with all that I believe. Such thinking is illusory. But I do want to say that there [are] plenty of smart people, here. They may be few, but they're here. I keep waiting until someone eventually shows me something that seems right and worthy . . . and that might happen for you should you be a little more receptive.

I am not a pastor now. I am just an ordinary Joe Palooka fellowshiping in a small Union church with six elderly ladies and one gentleman. If I ever came across high and mighty, God's man of faith and power, my wife would be quick to bring me back down to earth. believe me!

I asked my daughter whether I was different at church than I was at home. This was because I was aware that some church people are like angels at church and devils at home. She said, "You're just the same at church as you are at home. Crazy!" She said it in a nice way, to show that she didn't think I was a hypocrite and that I didn't suddenly turn into a holy Joe when I turned up at church on a Sunday morning. She knows, because I was her Sunday School teacher for a number of years so she saw what I was like at church. But I think I was a bit too much down to earth for some religious folk at church though, and I got told off once about my crazy sense of humour, that "God's work is serious and you have to take it more seriously". My view is that life is so serious that we shouldn't take it seriously at all.

So I need to assure you that I am not some high and mighty pastorial type, and, quite frankly, I don't have time for people like that. I had one pastor tried to tell me to come under his authority and I gave him the bum's rush before the whole congregation and walked out of the meeting. I believe in pastoral ministry, but not in pastoral "authority'. Jesus never gave authority to any person. He gave authority over sickness and demons. He kept His authority to Himself. When I led the church for those few years, I led from so far behind, that no one would have known that I led it at all. But when the buck had to stop, it stopped at me, and there were times when I had to make important decisions, and I did.

What an amazing set of three paragraphs. Truly. What I like about what you've written, and it has nothing to do with what I wrote, is what your daughter had to say about your while at home verse at Church. I began to see the value of such living late in life . . . around 50 years old. Anyway, I appreciate the good model that you provided.

never had a time when we didn't know where our next meal was coming from

Be careful about praising me up too much. I have just finished watching the movie of Pilgrims Progress, and noted the warning "beware of the flatterer" where a character leading Christian and Hopeful off the right track lulled them into not seeing the danger by telling them how good they were in that they had come this far along the journey. Then they got caught in the trap of their own pride resulting in being flattered.