Pastor Al Q&A - Sinner's Prayer

I have a question.

Great.

So you know how we, I don't know, especially in our church, and a lot of other churches, we kind of emphasize the sinner's prayer a lot, and different things that we go to and have people raise their hands and say it. And at camp we do that too with little campers. They'll say the sinner's prayer if they want to become Christians. Lots of time, kids will do this, when they're younger, and they say this prayer, and we're like, "Oh, you're a Christian, yeah." And it just seems like it's just some magical thing that's supposed to happen. But lots of times people will go to camp or something, when they're really young, and then completely go away from that. What if they, "said that prayer" and then didn't ever return to a life of "Christianity," what does that mean? Did the prayer mean anything? Does that make them a Christian or…

Well, I said a prayer like that when I was five, and something happened to me. In fact, that's about the only thing I can remember about being five, is that incident. God did something in my life that I knew nothing about. I was a totally ignorant five-year-old. I just knew some really simple things. On the other hand, how can you tell?

Frankly, we can't tell. I was talking about Alex. If he suddenly became a Christian right here, who could see it? How would you know he became a Christian? Well, he said so. We'd have to take him at his word and say, "Yeah, praise God. I hope that's true." But, how would we know he became a Christian? Well, he'd have to change, but in what way? What would be fundamentally different about his life if he became a real Christian? Who would be in charge? God.

Not just perfect in the sense that he'd suddenly become this great saint, but his life would generally be concerned with God being in charge, even though from time to time, I'm sure Alex would screw up, just like all the rest of us. I do. You do. We all mess up. But his general life would be saying, "I want God to be in charge of my life because He's my heart, He's in my heart. He makes me want to follow Him." Right? And there might be times when I might get rebellious and turn away from Him, but my heart won't let me. And I end up coming back and saying, "God, I'm sorry I walked away from my Life. I don't want to walk away from You; You're my life, live in me."

That's the general tenor of what it means to be a Christian, is a guy has Jesus Christ in his life, so that his life is changed fundamentally, from the inside. So that even though he struggles with stuff on the outside, his heart says, "No, Christ is the answer. I may not understand everything. I may not know everything. I may not be able to accomplish everything in my life that I want to. But I know one thing: I can't get away from Christ; He's my life."

That doesn't happen to everybody. In fact, I would suspect, there's some people here tonight, it hasn't happened to them. How can you tell? Well, it's hard. I can't say, "Brad, I know for sure it's happened to you, or it hasn’t." I don't know. Look at Brad one day, and you might think, "I don't know," and another day you might say, "Man, that guy's really going." We're kind of up and down. So where am I going with my life, over time? Am I following after Christ, even though I have ups and downs? Or, am I just playing a game, showing up because Mom and Dad come to church, it's a good thing to do, we have a good youth group, we enjoy it and all that kind of stuff and I believe, you know, this kind of surfacy stuff, but nothing has changed in my heart to make me passionate about Christ, that makes me want to follow Him, because I know Him in my life.

Chances are, there's a number of you here today, that that's where you are. And what's the solution for that? God, help me. Change my heart. Don't just have this as some kind of surface, religious bologna. Do something miraculous inside of me. Make me a different person. Come, take over, be my God. You think He'd do that if you asked Him? Sure. You want to give your life to Christ, let Him be King, He's ready.

You don't have to say a certain prayer. You don't have to go through a certain formula, although sometimes that's helpful. But you have to mean real business, and want God in your life and want Him to be your life, and want Him to be your Lord, and if you don't have that, you've got nothing except religion, something somebody gave you, rather than having a relationship with God Himself. So I just challenge you, this is something so incredibly, eternally important, make sure, make sure you're following Christ, you believe in Him, not just as a solution, but as your life. He's more than willing to have ya. It's a gift. You don’t have to earn it, but it has to be real.