The resistance of sinner to Holy Spirit

The sinner resists the work of the Holy Spirit in his life. Charles Finney says that on many occasions people were so gripped by the Holy Spirit that they thought they were going to die. Why ? They resisted the Holy Spirit. He also tells that he saw with his own eyes, and several times, a brave Christian come to this kind of person and reassure her, stopping the work of the Holy Spirit. The sinner got up, half reassured, and went off as sad as he had come, but the conviction was gone : he had been given false consolation, and this person was as lost as he was when he arrived.

It took me a while to understand what the conviction of the Holy Spirit was. I remember that after giving testimony to my father-in-law, the Holy Spirit began to work on him. My spiritual father had taught me about this by explaining to me that the conviction of sin is like a heavy burden that comes upon the sinner, until he breaks and succumbs to the work of the Holy Spirit, thus forsaking his peach. This kind of burden can remain on someone for several weeks, then, if the sinner does not want to repent, closing his heart to the work of God, the conviction of sin will disappear.

As I gave him news about my father-in-law about three weeks later, he tells me that the time when a person is under this belief is the perfect time to lead him to Christ, and that he should not be missed. I met my father-in-law and saw that he was working hard. He had a vision of the cross and he had lost his inner "peace" in the face of his spiritual condition. He prayed with me in his garage and was gloriously saved. What would have happened if I had encouraged her to pray a few weeks earlier for the "sinner's prayer" ? That would have created a false hope : "Here I am Christian," he would have thought.

Jeremy Sourdril