Osage Bluestem
Member
What are your views on the sinners prayer?
Is it necessary to pray a sinners prayer to be saved?
Is it necessary to pray a sinners prayer to be saved?
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Sinner's Prayer
- Thread starter Osage Bluestem
- Start date
No. Salvation is by grace through faith, not by saying a prayer. As far as someone saying a "sinners prayer" I look of it more as the first prayer as a Christian of him expressing his faith and truth to his Savior.
Osage Bluestem
Member
I agree with you.
Tom Butler
New Member
The use of the Sinner's Prayer is not the problem. It's the abuse. Too often, it has been reduced to "say these magic words," or "repeat this prayer after me."
I'm looking forward to hearing someone say to a lost person, "if you want the Lord to save you, ask him." And then SHUT UP and wait.
Oh, the answer to the OP question is No.
I'm looking forward to hearing someone say to a lost person, "if you want the Lord to save you, ask him." And then SHUT UP and wait.
Oh, the answer to the OP question is No.
freeatlast
New Member
It's a man made doctrine that is totally false and has no doubt led multitudes into a false sense of security. Salvation requires repentance towards God and faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ. If the church would focus on what is given instead of what is not given many of the false conversions would be greatly limited.
I think the problem is that God's grace is being offered on a level way below what He offers it.
I've actually done this on a few occasions, especially when I was in college and was given to full-blown (and sometimes unreasonable) idealism.
My reasoning was that if I had provided enough information regarding the gospel and the Spirit was providing the faith, then the person responding to the gospel didn't need me to feed them lines.
The first time I did this, I had just shared the gospel with a former high school classmate who had had a long history with drugs and debauchery. I was in college then and his life had gone off into a haze of chemical dependency.
I prayed alongside him silently, but let him form his own words to express the intent of his heart. He started praying and described his life rather vividly to God using the colorful popular expression for human manure and dropping the f-bomb to describe how wretchedly he had rejected what he knew to be the right thing. Some of the more pious church members who were praying with us were shocked and offended, but to their credit they did not interrupt that holy moment.
For that former classmate, the moment marked the beginning of a long road of recovery and he checked himself into a substance abuse program a few weeks later because he decided he didn't want to do drugs anymore even though his body violently craved them.
I've softened my view since then and will sometimes suggest what people might want to pray, but stress that the words aren't magic and that they shouldn't pray anything they don't completely mean in their hearts. God knows our hearts, no matter what our tongues may say.
I believe the sinners prayer is actually the first prayer said of a saint if done in sincerity.