Abridged Worship – August 18, 2024

Those of you who have been lifelong Christians, especially in a Western culture, will most likely have heard of the sinner’s prayer.

For those who might NOT know what a sinner’s prayer is, it is an Evangelistic term referring to any prayer of repentance, prayed by an individual who feels sin in their lives and has a desire to turn to Christ, trusting in God’s mercy, forgiveness and promise of renewal through the event of Christ’s salvific action the cross.

These are and were often used to bring new believers into faith. If you can spiritually convict a non-believer into an understanding of their death in sin, then this prayer would ideally, get them to a point of reconciliation with God, solidifying them as faith members of the body of Christ.

If you still are not sure of what a sinner prayer is, let us read one together.

Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sin and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior. In Your Name. Amen.

Now here is the thing, theologically, I have no problem with a sinner’s prayer like that. To me, that is 100% theologically true. However, humanity often has a hard time digesting the truth. And we can get lost in the process.

In the 50-90s many Christians put so much weight on the Sinner’s prayer they didn’t see that people were often losing the point of the prayer, and walking away from the faith because the purpose of the Sinner’s prayer was assumed to be something it is not; the pinnacle moment of faith. Christians became so obsessed with this pinnacle moment of someone saying the sinner’s prayer, that they lost sight of the person truly knew what that prayer meant, and what the life of a Christian after that prayer should be.

I remember my father telling me a while ago, that he had in his ministry years encountered people who once gave their life to Jesus using a sinner’s prayer, but eventually walked away from the faith, seeking other religions, or new-age spirituality as its replacement. When my father would ask them why they left Christianity, they said, that after they said the sinner’s prayer, nothing happened, and there was nothing for them to do as Christians, and many of the churches didn’t take them any further into faith, they felt like they had reached the peak of Christianity in that one prayer. Nowhere left to go, so, they went elsewhere.

But true faith in Jesus is much more than a vain recitation of a prayer, a faith in Jesus is more like climbing a mountain which has no peak; no limit to how high you can go. A faith in Jesus is and lifelong never-ending pursuit. It is a daily feasting on the bread of life, not to hit some sort of benchmark achievement, but to continually, even into your death draw closer and closer to God. A sinner’s prayer, though as I said, I like the theology, is not the peak of the mountain, rather it is the base of the mountain, it is a statement that professes that you are ready to dedicate a life to climbing, working, living, breathing, consuming God in faith, trust, and humility.

The sinner’s prayer in many ways is like a vow of commitment to a new beginning, not an end goal.

Oddly enough people often make this mistake in life. One of the more common ways people make this mistake is with marriage. Many people go into a marriage thinking the wedding is the pinnacle of their relationship. But that is just the start of the dedication and commitment needed to ensure a healthy, love-filled, and prosperous marriage. I love when pastors at weddings use this line at weddings, may this first day of your marriage be the day you love each other the least. That message implies that a marriage is a dedicated act, of building, sustaining, and rejuvenating a love again and again, in hard work, gentle care, and steadfast dedication. It is not just a quick vow, party, and that’s-it sort of thing.

And what happens to people who see the wedding as the pinnacle of their marriage? It ends in divorce or disaster.

It is not just marriage and faith, but people do this with careers. They work hard to get an education and a career, but when they finally get that first job, and the hard work begins, but are heart broken because they were expecting smooth sailing. People do this with children, they have the baby shower, gender reveal party, pick out a name, and even the victory of labor and birth, and then after all that the real work begins, the start of the lifelong commitment echoes forth as parents.

Our faith in Jesus, is NOT just an achievement to be claimed like a grade or trophy, but our faith is our life’s works. It is our daily bread, it is the air we breathe, it is the ground on which we walk. And when we understand that, we realize what the sinner’s prayer is really suppose to engrain into us, a life of dedication, of good work in service of Christ; our King and his kingdom. And in that, we will begin to bear fruit, we will begin to sew seed, we will see life an opportunity to live out the prayer’s which humbled us as we walked into our faith.

Now the sinner’s prayer was often used to help people who were new believers, but the sinner’s prayer is actually for those in faith too, a reminder to bring our burdens, and struggles to God in prayer daily, to continue that climb up that endless mountain of faith, in good pursuit of God all mighty, so to end to day’s reflection we enter into a deep conviction of a sinner’s prayer….

Let us pray…

God our Father, we believe that out of Your infinite love, You have created us all. You know the hearts, minds and souls of each person here in an immensity that we cannot understand. We struggle in our limited capacity to appreciate Your deep and endless love for Your creation, we struggle to embrace Your image that inspired our very existence. In a thousand ways we have sinned against You, in a thousand ways we have shunned Your love. We repent of each and every offense which we know in our minds and hearts we have committed, and we seek clarity and understanding of the ways which we have sinned and shunned against you, which we are not aware. Please forgive us. We thank you for sending us Your Son to die for us, to save us from eternal death, to save us from the sinking ship which was going to inevitably perish us into the cold abyss. This day, we choose to live by the new covenant established by your son, we renew are hearts and place Jesus as the center of our will. We surrender to Him as Lord over our lives. And we ask you to flood our souls with the gift of the Holy Spirit, so that our life may be ever transformed. Give us the grace and courage to live as Your disciples as a body of Christ, and a living testament to your church, for the rest of our days. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.