My Personal Christian Blog

Thanks for sliding into my blog site. This blog bog is a spin-off from my website at http://www.niteowldave.com/. Call me a Night Owl, as my full-time mission and hobby are jabbering from midnight until 8 a.m.ish with chatter bugs across the world. Hoot, hoot! Being a retired newspaper guy and a Curious George, I've written and assembled a whack of stuff that I hope you'll find interesting and thought-provoking. Check out the Stories bar on the right side, below, for all my articles - from my web site and this blog.




February 5, 2016

THE SINNER’S PRAYER


WHAT DOES CHRIST REQUIRE FROM US?

By Harold Smith 
inchrist@bellaliant.net

QUESTION: Is it necessary for a sinner to pray the “sinner’s prayer” to be saved?

ANSWER: The devil is a deceiver. He will get us to do anything but the right thing. It is not necessary to pray to be saved.

The salvation question is dealt with in Acts 16: 30-31 which states, “And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”

Traditional teachings have deceived many people. They think if they come out in church, or say the sinner’s prayer, they are saved.  I know many that have done that several times and yet they say they are not saved.

The Bible teaching on salvation is, “believe, trust, depend on the Lord Jesus Christ and His atoning blood.” We can pray WITHOUT trusting Christ, and we can trust Christ WITHOUT praying.

If we pray the so-called "sinner’s prayer," and trust Christ at the same time you will be saved. If we say the so called “Lord’s prayer,” and trust Christ we would be saved.

If we sing The Old Rugged Cross and trust Christ we would be saved. It is trusting Christ that we MUST DO to be saved. It doesn’t matter what else we might do, but this is absolutely necessary for salvation.

Search your heart well, because your eternity depends on what you have. Nothing more and nothing less that trusting Christ 100% will do.

RESPONSE TO THIS COLUMN

Feb. 7, 2016

Dear Mr. Smith,

You write useful columns for which I am thankful. However, this column about the “Sinner’s Prayer” falls flat.

There is no mention of acknowledgement and repentance of sin as an element of salvation in what you write.

Further, it is dangerous to dangle the “believe on the Lord Jesus” line despite this scripture sentence “…Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”

Why: Because all the Christian cults preach a “believe-in-Jesus” doctrinal line. Of course, many denominations wrongly add works to the mix, and honor another Jesus whether they know it or not.

I find a correctly-worded Sinner’s Prayer most useful. It gets a person to acknowledge sin, repent of their sin, state who the Lord Jesus is, what He did, and that RIGHT NOW they trust Him alone for their eternal salvation.

As I see it, the “simply believe” acknowledgement is too weak.

Regards,
NiteOwlDave