I was working on a post about an evagelist I had heard about coming into town and making people doubt their conversion. But, Rae has posted something along the same lines and says it 10x better than I ever could. Here is his post, and go check his blog out! This is a great guy who loves the Lord and his family….
Check his blog out HERE
A scenario to consider:
- A particular evangelical church is in the plateauing/declining stage.
- Said church hires young, handsome, dynamic new pastor.
- Said pastor preaches a sermon to his new flock on the assurance of salvation.
- Said sermon has as one point (among others) that to be assured of salvation, one must be able to point back to a particular moment in time when he “asked Jesus into his heart”.
- A woman who’s been a member and leader in the church for years is shaken by this point, as she can’t remember a definitive moment that she came to believe. She proceeds to pray the “Sinner’s Prayer” right there as the pastor preaches.
- She informs the pastor after the service that she had done this, and a few weeks later, she’s baptized.
- A few weeks after her baptism, the woman is informed by the church’s elders that, after meeting about the matter, they’ve decided that it would be best to remove her as Head Deaconess (and from the deaconesses altogether), because she’s a “new Christian”.
- She is more than a little put off by this decision and withdraws almost completely from the church.
This actually happened recently at a church around here (and before anyone starts wondering, no, not my church). This scenario probably plays out at least monthly in countless evangelical churches, honestly. I was bothered when I heard about it — horrified and disappointed, actually. It’s never made sense to me that so many otherwise solid churches teach that one’s salvation can be judged by whether or not one has prayed a particular prayer (and remembers it). Scripture teaches that faith in Christ is a gift given by God (”I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” – Ezek. 36:26-27), without regard to whether someone has prayed a prayer, signed a card, raised a hand, or has responded to an “altar call”, and without regard to how “good” someone has been. Assurance doesn’t come from any of these things. A better question would be “do you believe at this moment? Do you trust and treasure Jesus now?”
Back to this (now former) deaconess at this church for a moment. Let’s entertain the notion that the elders are technically right in removing her from her position of leadership. Scripture does indeed warn again giving positions of office in the church to new converts. Let’s say that she really was a new convert who’d previously had no real faith in Christ. Fine. Why, then, has she been a member of your church for the past ten years? What did you miss in the membership interview process? The whole “credible profession of faith” thing, maybe? That’s kind of important. Or did she give a credible profession, and now you think that she was just full of crap (or “mistaken”)?
(I find it much more likely that she did indeed already have saving faith in Christ and that she just had no remembrance of exactly when that began. As it stands, the church has lost a valuable leader and her faith is shaken, probably unnecessarily.)
Now, don’t get me wrong; there can be great value in remembering a time and place that you first consciously trusted Christ. Great value. As a matter of fact, I remember my own “moment” like that . . . I was six years old. It was a hot summer night in Mobile, Alabama, and I was on my grandfather’s front porch with my Dad and my Aunt Lily. They talked to me about Jesus, about how everyone needs him and that being a “good boy” isn’t enough, and asked if I wanted to be “saved”. I said yes and we prayed together (actually, I think my Dad did all the praying). I was happy to be headed to Heaven, and spent the rest of the night trash-talking the Devil and shooting him with pretend Jesus Ice Beams from my newly justified fingertips. It’s a precious memory for me, and God used that time to draw me to him.
What I’m saying is that the occurrence of such a moment (or its remembrance) isn’t a ground for reconciliation to God. While it may encourage some believers if they can look back on such a moment (as it does me), binding someone’s conscience by making it a litmus test is wrong and baseless. Not only that, but I can’t even enumerate the number of people I’ve heard say “well, I know I’m going to Heaven because I prayed a prayer/went forward/signed a card when I was little!”
Pastors . . . teachers . . . Christians: stop believing this lie. Then, stop lying to others. You’re spooking many true believers and damaging their faith, and you may be giving false assurance to people who actually don’t believe anything. Just preach Christ and him crucified. He’ll draw those who he will, when he will, and he may not do it with a “Sinner’s Prayer” or an altar call. It’s okay. Really. Jesus isn’t a formula.
