Day 8: Evidence of the Holy Spirit at Work

We have seen that Jesus gave the example of the Holy Spirit as the wind. He says, "The Holy Spirit is like the wind. Nobody tells the wind where to blow. It comes into our lives; we don't know where it comes from and we don't know where it's going to." And Jesus says, "That's what the work of the Holy Spirit in the new birth is like." We don't know where the Spirit comes from, we don't know where He goes to, but we know what He does.

None of us has ever seen the wind. I was talking once to a man who was very argumentative, and he said, "Well, I don't believe in anything I can't see!" I said to him, "That is ridiculous! You have never seen the wind, but you believe in the wind, don't you?" And he was stumped for an answer.

How do we know where the wind is working? Not because we see the wind, but because we see what it does. We see the clouds scudding across the sky; we maybe see the dust rising up in the street; the trees bending; maybe a lady has a hat or a scarf that's blown off her head, and she goes running after it. All these and many other events indicate that the wind is operating in a certain area. Well, that is how it is when a person is born again. The Spirit of God comes into his life, he doesn't know where the Spirit comes from, he doesn't know where the Spirit’s going, but he's aware that certain things happen.

I remember once, many years ago, when I was a pastor in London, a young lady from Denmark who was just, I would say, a nominal churchgoer, came to our home to find out more about this experience, and my first wife and I instructed her and explained to her what she had to do to be born again. And then I led her in a very simple prayer in which she did what God required of her. Now she was a rather formal type of person, not in any sense emotional, and after she had said the prayer, sitting in a chair in our living room, she sat up and two large teardrops appeared in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. So she dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief, rather self-consciously, and two more tears appeared and trickled down her cheeks. And she said, "I don't know why I'm crying." And I said, "You see, the wind just started to blow." So, there's one of the evidences that the Holy Spirit is at work. A sense of tenderness, a sense of relief, a sense of joy that she couldn't explain, she didn't understand. She was almost embarrassed. But it was so real, she couldn't hide it.