Wednesday 7 April 2010

“I was arrested…!”

I’m always amused whenever I hear Christians in Ghana share their conversion experiences and often describe the significant turning point with such words, “The Holy Spirit ‘arrested’ me and I gave my life to Christ that day.” Hehehe!

Can you picture Mr. Holy Spirit as a police man holding a BIG stop sign at the end of a dead end street? Hehehe!

And then I remember it used in a context where an aggrieved party was asking for prayer for the person who had stolen from her so that the person would come and confess his/her sins to her. “I want God to arrest the person so that the thief will come and confess to me.” Uh….Oh-uh… I had a bit of a problem with such a request. I’d prefer that we pray that the LORD leads the ‘thief’ to repentance that leads to salvation first, then the person would be led to deal with specific sins at the Cross and the way God requires.

Oh…. I digress… we were talking about a Police Man and how He does a wonderful job of ‘arresting’ people, eh? The beauty of it all is that He doesn’t take his ‘suspects’ to prison, lol! Instead, He does a beautiful, life-changing work in them that liberates them to live to please God all their lives! Huh…there is a famous account of a man named Saul (Acts 9:1-31) who got arrested on his way to Damascus and had to make a U-Turn! His name later became Paul (Acts 13:9).

I prefer to use these phrases, “I got convicted by the Holy Spirit,” “was touched by the Holy Spirit,” “the Holy Spirit brought me to repentance” and lately “the Holy Spirit wooed me to Christ.”

So I did get ‘arrested’ sometime ago, lol! Have you been arrested before?

God bless ya,
Akofa.

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