What Does the Holy Spirit Feel Like?

What does the Holy Spirit feel like?” Interestingly scripture never mentions this. It talks a good deal about what the Spirit inspires people to do, such as prophesying or preaching, but the spotlight always falls on the Spirit-inspired actions and not on the Spirit Himself. Having said that, I think the question is still answer-able — partly from scripture, and partly from the experience of believers.

Many passages in the Bible include the words “…and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him/her/them…”. However this quotation is never followed by anything like “…and the people said, ‘whoa, what was THAT?’” Generally speaking, when the Spirit speaks, people recognize the message as coming from God. So the first thing I’d say is the Holy Spirit feels like truth.

The Spirit is described in various parts of scripture as fire, power, faith, peace, joy, fullness, or holiness (the seal of God’s promise in and on us). All these things come from God and when the Spirit makes His presence known we usually feel at least some of these things in some way or another.

In most cases in scripture the arrival of the Spirit is followed immediately by someone speaking God’s word or prophesying. The Spirit of God brings God’s word, and when the Spirit inspires, it feels impossible to keep quiet about the Word.

The Spirit is, truly and literally, God within us. Sometimes a person can sense the presence of a Being far greater than can be imagined; I’m sure when the Spirit touches us, He holds back a great deal otherwise we’d be completely overwhelmed.

In conjunction with healing and other miracles, the presence of the Spirit is often described as “warmth”, “a tingling sensation”, “electrical” or “breathtaking”. These sensations do exist (and they’re quite pleasant) but they should not be looked for as “proof” that a person is feeling the Spirit. Every believer receives the Holy Spirit when becoming a Christian, and always has the Spirit in him or her whether His presence is felt or not. What the Spirit does give daily is deeper insight — eyes to see and ears to hear — or as Jesus said “I have come that they may have life, and more abundantly”. The Spirit gives a deeper, more meaningful life in every sense of the word.

Above all, the relationship between the believer and the Spirit is just that — a relationship, a community of two, in which the Spirit feels like the embrace of a friend, brother, or soul-mate. One then becomes aware that the Holy Spirit has the same community-of-two relationship with every believer on the planet, which defines the family of God, the community of faith, the true Church. And in that sense, the Spirit feels like home.

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Ubuntu 12.10 = Fail x 4

So it's been a while since I posted about Ubuntu and it's progress.  Last week I decided to build my aging mother a desktop system.  My father passed away last year and now she has to do all the banking errands.  I don't like it that she is blind in one eye and driving on busy roads populated with hot-headed jerks and maniacs, she is constantly driving to the bank for cash, and then to the vendors where she pays her bills (really old fashioned).  A tablet didn't work out for her because of screen size, and the cheap Android tablet had very poor performance because her banking site uses a lot of FLASH and JAVA.

Enter Ubuntu 12.10 - System finished and it wouldn't install.  I had never seen ANY version of Ubuntu having so much trouble with the install, and I've been doing this since their first release.  Well I figured it was a hardware problem, and everything seemed to indicate it was either the HD or the HD controller.  After a couple of drives and controllers giving me the same problems, I tried it on 4 very differently configured machines (well working systems) and got the same result.

For me Ubuntu 12.10 was an epic fail.  that said 12.04 works perfectly with every machine I have, and works better than any previously installed Linux versions (Mostly Ubuntu).  Mom's system will be delivered to her house next month when I can take a week to travel, set it all up and train her to use it.  This will be her first rodeo with a computer.  We're both excited...

Unity - I've hated the Unity plugin since day one and I've stopped upgrading my systems because of it.  Well, that has all changed now.  Unity has matured and works well on all my systems with 12.04.

Ubuntu 12.04 = Epic Win x 4 (home run here for me) - There won't be anymore Ubuntu upgrades until the next LTS version.  Then, and only then if the next LTS proves to work as well as 12.04

OUT!

Good things are happening...

Good things are happening in my life. I'd like to be specific but the main focus is on God as it should be. My wife Joy has given her life to God, we are attending church on a regular basis and my life as an individual and our lives together is really improving in every facet. Most of you won't be interested but I'm so overjoyed that I have to tell someone/everyone. Thank you God for all the blessings, in Jesus's name Amen! and Amen!

 

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