There’s an interview of Stephen C. Meyer by Terrell Clemmons (“Faithful Knowledge,” 42, 45) in the September/October 2024 issue of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, in which the former says (emphasis in original):
…. Someone once said that the work of the Holy Spirit is to make subjectively real to the individual believer things that are objectively real in history—that there is a confidence that one gains about, for example, the testimony of Scripture; it’s a kind of knowing that can’t be unknown. And you don’t know exactly how that comes.
We call that confidence faith. I think this is what friends who are nonbelievers can find very frustrating about talking to Christians—that convinced Christians are really convinced. And they may have very good evidential reasons; they may have very good presuppositional arguments; they may have very good philosophical and rational arguments. But in addition, there is something that I think believers experience when they have the experience of God coming into their lives that’s hard to explain until you’ve had the experience. And I believe that is the work of the Holy Spirit. I really empathize with nonbelievers who are having these frustrating conversations with Christians who can’t explain why they believe what they believe or why they feel so confident, and get across that worldview divide.
I think the evidential and scientific and philosophical arguments can help with that, and I’ve seen people’s minds open to the reality of faith, but eventually, when you’re led to the point of prayer and actually actively asking God to come into your life, or Jesus to come into your heart, if God is personal in the way that the Bible describes, and if he’s a reality in the way the Bible describes, and I believe he is, then there is this subjective encounter that people can have with him. And this is real, too.
On this blogsite, I frequently mention Pascal’s Wager and how it ought to persuade people to “cultivate their faith.” See, e.g., this post and the two embedded links in its penultimate paragraph. I quote the passage above because it suggests that the Holy Spirit plays a role here in this cultivation. And, what’s more, by prayer we can ask for that.