While half pressing the shutter button you should see the image steady itself in the viewfinder. Use a longer focal length to accentuate the effect.
VR is useful while hand holding slower shutter speeds. It depends on your technique on how slow you can go
VR doesn't help much if you use very fast shutter speeds, faster than 1/500s. Assuming you are shooting normal focal lengths (up to 300mm)
And doesn't help at all if you are using a tripod. I turn it off in this case since it's unnecessarily using battery life and I've heard it can actually introduce blur, but I've never seen it actually confirmed.
Hope it helps, I'm sure you could find articles written about VR if you search google