I was listening a message today about 'Faith' in Jesus for salvation and for the Christian life; sanctification, service etc.But the guy preaching mentioned 'the sinners prayer', something which I have to admit I'm not overly keen on & haven't been for years now.
He said that the sinners prayer was like a witches incantation; 'just say these words and...'
Often I've described it myself as being like SuperTed's (if you remember him as a kid) magic words; "Just repeat after me..." Because for years that is exactly what it was to me, a magic phrase that eased my conscience and made me right with God. The problem came when I realized I wasn't a Christian and that my heart was far from Him, & that these prayers had meant nothing to Him. Thankfully after this the Bible revealed Christ and I fell in love with Him, trusting Him for salvation.
I could go into a few of my reasons for not liking it, such as my experience with people who believe that they are Christians because they've said 'the magic words' yet who's lives clearly show unchanged hearts and a total disregard of Christ.
That people tend to place their faith & trust in words they once said rather than in Christ.
But my main reason is that it is simply not in the Bible!
Nowhere have I read about a sinner's prayer (or altercalls etc for that matter).
The clear teaching of salvation in the Bible keeps coming back to faith, to believing in Jesus, (or maybe I'm confused about the reformational teaching of salvation through faith alone).
Sure, we see people pray in the Bible, even getting a snapshot of the 'publican' praying "Lord forgive me a sinner" but it cannot be denied that the we don't read of Jesus or the Apostles saying "Just repeat after me..."
No, they say: "Believe"!
I realize the sincerity and motive of people who do use the sinners prayer in the appeal or evangelism & so forth, & I don't want to be harsh against them. Yet I do believe that we should stick to telling of the Biblical call to 'Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ'.
So what do you think?
