Welcome

Hello Visitor,
Thanks for visiting my blog site. I pray that you are blessed, encouraged, and challenged by what you read.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Sinner's Prayer/Altar Call; Is it Biblical?

I have been thinking a lot lately about the practice of 'sinner's prayer' and 'altar call'.
I have read some history,  and found out that it was a practice developed in the church to facilitate people becoming born again.
I have also been seeing in scripture that it was never so.
When Jesus met the Samaritan woman, she believed in Him. Simply. She believed who Christ told her He is. Simply. No songs, sinner's prayer, nor an alter call. She called people from her village,  and they believed in Christ too. Simply. No sinner's prayer.
The villagers begged Jesus to stay with them, and He did for 2 days. Even more believed in Him. Simply. No alter call, no sinner's prayer.
(Read John chapter 4)
When Jesus taught the thousands of people, He did no altar call. He didn't play music and asked who all wanted to believe in Him to come forward or repeat a sinner's prayer. He taught them. Simply. The people choose to believe in Him. They choose to receive His words.
Whenever I think of a person giving their lives to Christ, automatically I think of sinner's prayer. That I will have to lead them in it, or check if they prayed it. That prayer has become the way to verify that a person is truely born again. Again, from scripture, it was not so.
In Acts, when Peter gave his first sermon, this was the response,  and his response:
Act 2:37& 38& 41 'Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Then those who gladly received his word were baptized. There were added that day about three thousand souls.
The receiving of God's word, and the believing in God's word is the door to being born again.
We hear God's word, we are convicted, we confess sins and repent of them, and we believe in and receive Christ.
Joh 1:12, 'But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become God’s children, to those who believe in his name:'
Do we truely believe this? This is God's word. Are we going to hold on to religious traditions and practices, or are we going to believe God's word and obey and follow Him.
(To be continued. ....)

Monday, November 6, 2017

Repentant Life

Repentance is not just confessing of sin and turning from our sinful life, it requires bearing fruit that repentance has happen. My life must show after repentance that I have repented, otherwise repentance didn't truely happen.
Most of us confess, and turn away from our sinful life, as should be done:
Pro 28:13 (NHEB) says: 'He who conceals his sins doesn’t prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.'
But, where is the fruit? How does your life now, after repenting, shows that you have repented?
Mat 3:6 (NHEB) 'and they were baptized by him ( John) in the Jordan river, confessing their sins.
3:7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for his baptism he said to them, “You offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
3:8 Therefore bring forth fruit worthy of repentance,'
Mat 3:8 (NET) 'Therefore produce fruit that proves your repentance,'
Repentance must be proven, it must show.
There is this story in Luke 11:24-26 about this man that was freed from the possession of demons. However, after the demons wondered around looking for another person to possess, and finding none, returned to the same man and found him all free and cleaned up. So they call some more demons and promptly took up residence again.
Forsaking our sinful live is not enough, we must produce fruit/proof that we repented. To do that, we must replace that life we once lived with Christ's life. Otherwise, not knowing how to now live, we will revert back to what we are use to, and it will be worse than before.
It is Christ that saved us and died for us, we must therefore now learn how to live His way. That is the only way we can produce fruit/proof of our repentance.
Being religious like the Pharisees is missing the mark completely. Making rules and guidelines for ourselves is also missing it.
We must learn from Christ Himself.
Who are you following to learn how to live a repentant life daily? Doctrine? Manuals? Rules?
Let us follow Christ.