Arrested by the Holy Spirit | 05/17/2026

Welcome to the message time of our service, also known as Pastor Pete's story time.

When I say that I can't see my wife.

And uh so I don't care what she how she rolls her eyes.

Praise God.

Today is a very special day beyond our church.

It's actually nation and beyond.

When we, with many dignitaries, including our president, rededicates this nation to the Lord.

Praise God.

We agree.

We agree.

It makes some people uncomfortable to say that we're a Christian nation, but simply all that doesn't mean that you have to be a Christian to be a part of the nation.

As a matter of fact, we welcome all kinds of people.

But what it does mean is this nation was firmly established by men and women who firmly believe Jesus Christ, Son of God, resurrected, coming again, offer salvation.

And all those values that we find in the Bible were have been enshrined in virtually every aspect of our life.

So we praise God for that.

It's going to be a great day.

It already is a great day.

Does it say what I wanted it to say?

Yes.

Arrested by the Spirit.

I'm going to talk to you about being arrested.

And I want to start off with a story.

We had a Bible study.

I'm going to put this in my pocket.

I hope I didn't activate anything.

We had a Bible study on Wednesday, every Wednesday at 10 o'clock.

It's phenomenally popular.

So you've been there, eh?

Praise God.

So at any rate, we were sharing various things as we talked about some scriptures.

And I may I made in a comment.

Let me mention this.

I made a comment.

I said, I always wanted to be led by the Holy Spirit when preparing to preach.

And I've tried to hold myself to that commitment for almost 40 years now.

And what that means is I don't go to sermon.com.

I don't preach from the latest book that I've read.

That I really do allow the Holy Spirit to plant a seed.

This is how it works with me.

Plants a seed, normally highlights a scripture, and then the Holy Spirit waters it throughout a series of time.

And so I shared, I said, it's very important always listen to the Holy Spirit and let the Holy Spirit guide.

Amen.

Now there's a scripture, I want to put it up on the board up here.

It says Malachi 3.16, another famous 3.16.

Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other.

And the Lord listened and heard.

There was a result of this.

A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name.

How many of you know God is listening?

His conversation, our conversation, excuse me, releases affirmation from heaven.

God loves when our conversation agrees with heaven.

And many times, not every time, but according to his will, an affirmation is released.

In other words, when we say something that lines up with his will, that honors him, that affirms what we believe, oftentimes he will respond with a with a with a response that affirms what we just said.

Do you understand that?

Good, praise God.

So I shared with the group on Wednesday morning that I plan to preach a sermon that I've been working on for some time.

The seed is in the ground.

The Holy Spirit is watering it, the wind and the rain and the fire and the oil.

And I said, I'm going to preach this sermon on Sunday morning.

That's my plan.

And the title of it was Restoring the Authority and Responsibility of the Local Church.

And that gets people excited.

Got me excited.

And then about Thursday morning, I get up early, so I spend my time with the Lord.

The Lord arrested me.

Say arrested.

The Lord arrested me, and he took me in a different direction.

So I put that sermon back in the oven.

And it's cooking.

It's cooking, and we'll add a few spices to it as time goes on.

We'll watch it closely.

So we're going in a little different direction.

I want to talk to you today about being arrested by the Lord.

So we're going to go to Acts chapter 9, verse 1.

Acts 9:1

This is probably the longest scripture I'm going to share today.

Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing murderous threats against the Lord's disciples.

You're familiar with this story.

He went to the high priest and asked them for letters to the synagogues in Damascus so that he, if he found anyone there who belonged to the way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.

As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.

He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?

I think most people know this.

But did you know this?

When someone persecutes the church, Jesus takes it personally that they're persecuting him.

I love that.

Who are you, Lord?

Saul asked.

I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, he replied.

Now get up and go to the city, and you will be told what you must do.

Now I want you to understand, Saul thought with every fiber of his being that he was pursuing the will of God.

Did you hear me?

He told his story of conversion three times himself, and then Luke shares the same story another time.

So four times, four times, that story is shared.

Now I'm not the Apostle Paul, nor do I claim anyone near his prominence, but I too have stories.

He was arrested.

In other words, when he was knocked off that donkey on the road to Damascus, in a paraphrase, the Lord says, You're under arrest.

You're under arrest, Paul.

Now let me tell you a little bit about Paul.

And he told this story often.

I've already mentioned that.

And I'm going to tell a few stories as well.

Can I have an amen from my wife?

Silence in the house.

Well, Paul was a storyteller.

He really was.

He told his story quite a few times.

Okay, so, but listen, let me listen about Paul was focused, say focused.

He was committed, he was an organizer, he had vision, and he was successful.

I believe he was young and zealous for the Lord.

Now it says there at the end of chapter 9 that I'm sorry, at the end of chapter 7, that they laid their cloaks at the foot of a young man named Saul.

Okay?

So he was I think he was young and he was zealous.

I think he had the best intentions, and I think I think contrary to the Pharisees that Jesus condemned, that Paul probably was a pretty good guy.

I think he was not yet sullied by age and experience with the Pharisee community.

This is my opinion.

So he had all those things we admire today: focused, committed, organized, influential.

You hear?

Successful.

He had a vision.

Remember that word vision.

But the Holy Spirit still said, You're under arrest.

Let me ask you a question.

Have you been arrested?

I've been arrested.

Oh yeah.

I'll talk about that in a minute.

I'll talk about a well, let me just mention it now.

To be arrested is a painful and scary proposition.

And I don't want to take make light of the fact that there are people in this room that have been arrested.

And I know it was a difficult, a difficult experience.

It's scary to be hauled in to the police station.

And the things that follow that.

Well, what happens when one is arrested?

Let me just go over a few things.

When one's arrested, one is no longer under their own authority.

That's pretty obvious, right?

Someone else calls the shots.

Someone else takes complete control.

And the definition of arrested is to be seized by someone in authority.

To be seized by someone in authority.

Now, I counted four, there may be more, four types of arrest in the New Testament.

The first one I'd like to mention is in Romans 13 and 1 Peter chapter 2, where someone's arrested for legitimate reasons.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

They violated the law.

They should have been arrested.

But then there are those that Jesus warned us about being arrested, like Jesus.

Arrested for their faith.

That's Jesus.

That's Peter.

That's Paul.

That's Silence.

Silas.

Arrested for their faith.

There are those that are arrested by the Holy Spirit.

There are those arrested by the Holy Spirit.

But then there also is one more arrest.

That arrest is what I call self-arrest.

When we find ourselves bound by our own decisions, we're under self-arrest.

There are times, and boy do I have a testimony, as a pastor, as a man, as a father, as a husband, sometimes the Holy Spirit will arrest us or remind us, hey, you're under arrest.

Sometimes they'll do that.

I want to give you a couple examples since I have all kinds of time.

Amen.

I want to talk to you about you well, first of all, it's not about me.

Amen.

But like the characters in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, testimony confirms the move of God.

So I'm going to give you a testimony, a couple of testimonies about one about, I could give you a lot of them.

I mean, I could give you ones that blow your mind.

But I'm going to give you a couple.

One about me personally and then one about the church.

I want to talk to you about my call to ministry.

I thought I was focused, committed, organized, successful, right?

Visionary.

Who laughed at me?

I want you, whoever it was, you're right.

Praise God.

Thank you, Jesus.

For me, for me, and I'm not saying this was an idol, it was a result of my experience.

I really enjoyed making money.

Some of y'all know exactly what I'm talking about.

But that enjoyment came from also another experience of being successful, of seeing hard work rewarded.

You see that it's a good feeling.

It's a good feeling.

Somehow or another, God introduced me to making money at an early age.

I worked at my neighbor's restaurant in the seventh and eighth grade.

The bow and arrow cafe at the William, at the at the at the Robin Hood Motel.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

I cleaned dishes, I bust tables, I made salad, I cooked rolls.

All you could eat, fried chicken, dollar fifty.

Now that was the place.

For a typical ship from five o'clock to closing, I made four dollars.

On Sunday, I worked from 12 noon to close for five dollars.

I thought I died and gone to heaven.

Bought me a bicycle with a banana seat.

You know what I'm talking about.

Nobody in my neighborhood had that kind of bicycle.

Praise God.

I enjoyed, I don't know,$15 maybe.

I don't know.

I enjoyed making money.

In high school, I worked the entire high school every year.

I had the state of Georgia paying me money to maintain the grass at the port of Columbus, Georgia.

And that check came in every month, even when the grass wasn't growing.

I had it made.

And I worked at Southeast Terminals all through high school.

I worked all through college, never not, never not having a job.

I worked at the bank, I worked at U.S.

Gypsum making construction materials.

I worked at McDonald's.

I worked for the police department.

All through college.

I enjoyed making money.

I was committed.

I was organized.

I was successful, right?

I had a vision.

And then I went in the army because the army paid for my schooling.

And I showed up at Fort Benning as a second lieutenant, and I was very successful.

Very successful.

In the midst of all that, the Lord spoke to me because I got baptized in the Holy Spirit.

Are y'all following this story?

I got baptized in the Holy Spirit.

You see, so I had a I had a thing going on in my mind.

And my mind said that when I finished at Fort Bragg, the army was going to send me to graduate school, which they wanted to do, and another great assignment.

But I was sitting in my easy chair in our little house right outside Fort Bragg one time.

Sharon was in there.

We were married by then.

And I looked over and I said, The Lord just stole told me to get out of the army.

After I revived her.

No, I didn't have to.

We did that.

But I was very successful.

I was hired by a company.

Long story.

I entered the company to do a certain task.

I ended up being president of the company.

Amen.

Praise God.

Very successful.

That company was sold, and I started to go in business with another company.

And we were praying one day.

Are y'all following me?

Is this not too long?

Okay.

We were praying.

I'm going to shock you by being arrested by the Holy Spirit.

Committed, organized, focused, visionary.

And I didn't say this.

Satisfied.

See what I'm saying?

So in this new endeavor, we were praying one night.

I'd become an elder.

I'd become an elder.

So I was successful.

In a church that was growing.

We had three services on Sunday morning, super duper place.

And I asked the elders to pray for me in this new business venture.

Big mistake.

Because the sheriff was in town and he had a warrant out for my arrest.

And he was about to execute that warrant.

Randy was there.

Now you can't modify this story, Randy.

Okay.

Because I don't think you really remember it as much as I do, as well as I do.

Praise God.

Thank you, Jesus.

So the Holy Spirit, the elders began to pray for this particular request, and the pastor got up and walked out of the room.

Then the associate pastor got up and walked out of the room.

And a few minutes later they came back and they said, The Lord just spoke to us and said, We're not supposed to pray for his success in business.

We're supposed to call him into the ministry.

That'll make you start talking in tongues.

Amen.

Oh yeah.

Because I was very successful, very looking forward to the future.

And so, can can I just add a few more things?

Okay, so the Lord, I said, Well, I'll get this thing straightened out.

You know?

He's obviously not as organized as I am.

Amen.

So I said, I went, I began fasting, praying, and seeking the Lord.

And I went, some of y'all have heard this story, but others haven't.

I went out and I went out way in the woods by the Flint River down there near Meriwether County, way back up in the woods, and got all spiritual, took my legal leap pad, my legal pad, I still have it today.

And I sat down by the Flint River and I wrote out my plan.

Why?

Because I was organized, committed, I had a vision, I'd been successful, and I was ready to straighten the Lord out.

So I wrote down this thing.

I wrote down this thing, this plan.

And I still have the quote today, I still have the legal pad, and this is what the Lord spoke to me.

Are you ready?

Heaven and earth was about to be moved, shattered.

I was about to hear the voice of God.

He said, Your plan stinks.

Paul says there's an aroma of the presence of the Lord.

Some it's an aroma to life, others it's an aroma to death.

So what the Lord was telling me is your plan is gonna lead to death.

He said, But my plan smells real good.

Say arrested.

I was arrested.

So I immediately went home and told my wife that we were about to take a 78% pay cut.

I've never seen her stop rejoicing.

No, she how many days did you cry?

Three days.

She wept for three days.

You see, let me just say this.

Can you follow with me a little while longer?

There are different kinds of arrest.

Every one of us in here needs to ask God for an arrest.

Now some arrests are felonies.

Don't like those.

That was a felony arrest.

Okay?

That was a big arrest.

Some arrests are just misdemeanors.

Some are just tickets.

Did you know when you get a ticket you're actually placed under arrest?

Yeah, no, most people don't know that.

When that police officer writes you a ticket, here's what he know that I used to work there.

This is what he used to say on the radio when he got off.

Such and such a unit released on a copy of charges.

The ticket is a the ticket is a is a privilege given to you by that police officer.

He has every right to put you in handcuffs, put you in the car, take you to jail.

But he says, released on a copy of charges.

You see.

So some here you hear me.

David did a great job yesterday with this.

See, here's a Thing.

God wants to arrest all of us.

Some are for minor offenses.

Some are just saying, hey, start serving.

See?

It's just an arresting by the Holy Spirit to say, start doing something.

And David made the point yesterday that many Christians come into church and it really has not changed them.

An encounter with God really hasn't changed them.

And one of the ways you can know it changes you is that you do something.

And so we got these bracelets to say, do what Jesus did.

He became a servant to all.

You see, that was a good message yesterday.

Some of us get well, the by a lot of us can get a lot of arrests before we get the message.

Amen.

Oh, everybody.

There's some people that can identify with that.

Amen.

Praise God.

Now here's the thing.

Y'all follow me?

Here's the thing.

I got a ticket in 1972.

Driving from Panama City to Disney World.

In my 1968 Rambler Rebel.

Oh, yes.

Oh, it was a sweet car.

I mean, I had people trying to buy that thing from me.

Praise God.

But you know what?

That Florida Highway Patrolman, we were traveling two cars together.

And I was the trailing car, the one behind.

I saw them pull my buddy off.

I said, Woo! We made it.

And then the next thing I saw was a big old hairy arm standing by the side of the road with that telling me to pull over too.

You see.

But you know what?

I've never gotten a speeding ticket since then.

Because I was arrested and I changed my behavior.

See what I'm talking about?

See, these arrests by the Holy Spirit, these encounters with this redirection of behavior, of mindset, of opinion, of point of view, that's a direction of the Holy Spirit because God loves us.

Did you hear me?

So some of you are due for a felony arrest.

That's a major change.

Don't be afraid of it.

It's a work of the Holy Spirit, and don't try to manufacture it.

Just be available and God will do what He wants to do.

Don't make up any story.

Just let God write the story.

Amen.

Praise God.

Can I tell you one more story?

A couple of years after we started the church, we came to a crossroads.

No pun intended to crossroads, church.

We came to a crossroads.

There was a simmering dissatisfaction in my spirit, but in mostly in my wife's spirit and others in the church.

Because some of our leaders, most of our leaders who were good people still are.

Some of them have passed.

Good leaders, had a mindset that was wed, in other words, connected to vision, success, influence, organization.

You see that?

And what we would have called that back then was the seeker service, seeker church mentality.

In other words, look at the congregation and the public as a customer.

The leader of that church movement had a sign beside his office, and it said, Who is our customer?

What do we have to do to meet their needs?

Hundred and eighty degrees off from what God says in his word.

We could never make an apology for the kingdom of God.

We never should apologize for the presence of the Holy Spirit.

We should never back down and diminish the need for the manifestation of Jesus in our meetings.

Sometimes it's uncomfortable, sometimes it's messy, sometimes it's misunderstood, sometimes it's not communicated correctly, but it is the will of God is what I'm talking about.

So we have this problem.

And I preached a sermon on a Sunday morning.

I still have it somewhere.

If you're interested.

No.

Seven things that every church meeting should expect from the presence of God.

Seven things.

Did you hear me?

Worship, praise, prophetic freedom, preaching of the word.

Amen?

Real community.

Bible teaching.

So here's the thing.

Almost all our leaders left that Sunday morning.

All of them, except two, I think.

And they're good people.

Absolutely good people.

One of them even came to me before this happened and said, Pastor Pete, one of the elders, he said, I appreciate what you're doing, but I don't believe in this.

I believe in his his example was Willow Creek.

I believe what they're doing.

And I and I've always admired his integrity for doing that.

Rather than, but here's the thing.

Can I say one more thing?

Besides a few more things.

It hit me like a ton of bricks when we had an elders' meeting.

And I had already been very concerned about the lack of prayer at our gatherings.

So we had this elders' meeting, and and to this day, a great friend of mine, still in contact with him, a wonderful man of God, loves the Lord with all his heart.

Got in there and got his paper charts out and began quizzing everybody in the room.

What's our five-year plan?

What's our ten-year plan?

What's our mission?

What's our vision statement?

Organized?

Committed?

Focused?

But I'm telling you today, we need the Holy Spirit.

We need the Holy Spirit.

And when I said that on that meeting, on that very popular study, my Bible study meeting Wednesday morning, that here's the thing.

We need to preach where the Holy Spirit leads us.

You see.

And I am absolutely convinced that the senior pastor here now, David, is absolutely in that river.

Praise God.

Now I'm going to tell you this.

Don't get a big head.

Because an arrest.

Woo! She's there.

That's mama-in-law.

She speaks the truth.

Amen.

But you gotta be careful because arrest is coming.

Arrest is coming.

So, so the key, as we say, is to invite the Holy Spirit.

Amen?

Now listen, inviting the Holy Spirit into one's life, and I'm not talking about baptism of the Holy Spirit, even though that's critically important.

Inviting the Holy Spirit is both a normal and extraordinary event.

Did you hear me?

It's normal.

Now, here, let me just say this.

It's normal.

The early church's normal expectation of new believers is that they would be baptized in the Holy Spirit.

It was the assumption.

Did you hear me?

They understood that they were born again, that they'd been baptized into the Lord Jesus Christ, but they needed the anointing of the Holy Spirit of power, right?

In order to become the witnesses God wants them to be.

This was an assumption of the early church.

If the apostle Paul walked through those doors right now and he said we were gonna, and I said, Well, we're gonna have a series of messages teaching people about the necessity of the Holy Spirit, he would say, Why?

Why?

It's assumed that you've already covered that.

That every believer, every believer is totally connected, totally in tune, totally intimately aware of the need for the Holy Spirit.

Did you hear me?

So it's a normal expectation, but it's also an extraordinary.

I'm not talking, I'm not talking about just the baptism.

I'm talking about an encounter with the Holy Spirit.

It's a normal thing.

It should be an ongoing thing in our lives where God makes, He writes little tickets.

He says, You got a violation here.

Oh, I want to make an adjustment here.

Oh, I want to encourage you here, but you're going.

No, excuse me.

I think they can hear me.

Praise God.

Amen.

Real quick.

Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

The Holy Spirit fell what?

With tongues of fire.

Did you hear me?

And here's the thing.

This is what Proverbs 30 says.

See, we're talking about fire.

And the whole and Proverbs 30, verse 15, the end of it says, fire says, never enough.

Proverbs 30:15

So we don't get a portion of the Holy Spirit, have an encounter with the Holy Spirit, have an experience with the Holy Spirit, and say, that's it.

We're done.

It's a river that never stops flowing.

It's a fire that never should stop burning.

You cannot listen to me.

You cannot dabble with fire.

There's no such thing as sticking your finger in a fire just to say, ooh, how's that feel?

Fire is consuming.

There's a song, All Consuming Fire.

All consuming fire.

Baptize me.

Baptize me.

So the Holy Spirit is fire.

And we can't, we cannot limit God because we've had an experience before.

So we may be focused, we may be committed, we may be organized, we may be visionary, we may be successful.

I would say that that is setting the stage for an arrest warrant from heaven.

Not to say any of those things are bad.

They're all good, all necessary.

Matter of fact, all of us have a certain measure of those things operating in our lives.

And we need each other.

We need the one that's organized.

We need the visionary.

We need but listen.

What we need more than anything else is fire from heaven.

We need a direction of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

That's what we need.

So I want to ask you to do is stand up right now.

Remember what I said.

It may be a misdemeanor arrest.

It may be a felony.

That's up to God.

Like you, every one of you, have a different destiny in your encounter with God.

But he desires to encounter every one of us.

Today, just today, if you're listening online, just today, if you're in this room, the deputy sheriff from heaven may have a warrant for your arrest.

It may be for a minor infraction, an adjustment, a tweak.

It may be for a major move of God.

But here's the thing whether it's visible to others or invisible, whether it seems important or notable or it's not, it's the ministry of the Holy Spirit to arrest us.

To arrest us.

Would you invite the prayer team to come up?

Because here's what's important.

I'll invite can I invite the prayer team to come up?

Oh, absolutely.

I would like to invite the prayer team to come up.

The altar team.

Come on up here, real quick.

Just take a few moments, folks.

This is what I'd like to do.

They're coming up here, not to counsel, really, not to even pray so much for you, but they're coming up.

How many of you know there is unbelievable power in the power of agreement?

Oh man, I just read about that in Genesis the other day.

Tremendous power.

So, what I'm asking for the altar team is to be a point of contact of agreement.

And if it would just take a moment.

We're not talking about counseling or or or casting out demons.

We're talking about an agreement.

If you would agree with me, regardless of where you are, what you've done, where you've been, that you would like, would you just agree that you would invite the Holy Spirit to arrest you?

I want you to come forward right now.

Just take a minute.

It won't take long.

Just if you just want to say, Holy Spirit, just come and arrest me.

And it may be just the teeniest little thing, but it may be a major thing.

It may be, we could have right now today another Mario Murillo.

Or we could have a silent person who's just helping pick up the trash.

Or maybe minister in the neighborhood.

So come on up here, folks.

Just take a minute.

And when you finish doing that, you're released to go.

Okay?

But if you want, if you just want to say, God, God, God, arrest me by your spirit.

Arrest me by your spirit.

That's what we want to see happen.

Now, if you're not up here and you want to agree with that right now, I'm going to pray for you.

This room.

We need an encounter with the heavenly sheriff, the Holy Spirit.

Every one of us, God.

We pray whatever you want to do, big or small, visible or invisible, we pray right now and in Jesus' name that you would come and arrest us.

Make the adjustments, turn the tide, release the power, whatever you need to do, Lord, wherever you need to go, whatever you need to say, in Jesus' name, we say yes and amen.

And we say, Come, Holy Spirit.

Now, if you'd like to come up here before you leave, you're welcome to do that.

Otherwise, God bless you all.

We love you so much, and we'll see you next.