{"id":32677,"date":"2022-09-10T16:18:52","date_gmt":"2022-09-10T21:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/should-we-stop-asking-jesus-into-our-hearts\/"},"modified":"2022-09-10T16:18:52","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T21:18:52","slug":"should-we-stop-asking-jesus-into-our-hearts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/should-we-stop-asking-jesus-into-our-hearts\/","title":{"rendered":"Should We Stop Asking Jesus into our Hearts?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By J.D. Greear<\/p>\n

If there were a Guinness Book of World Records record for \u201camount of times having asked Jesus into your heart,\u201d I\u2019m pretty sure I would hold it.
By the time I reached the age of 18, I had probably \u201casked Jesus into my heart\u201d 5,000 times.<\/p>\n

I started somewhere around age 4 when I approached my parents one Saturday morning asking how someone could know they were going to heaven.<\/p>\n

They carefully led me down the \u201cRomans Road to Salvation,\u201d and I gave Jesus His first invitation into my heart.<\/p>\n

Both my parents and my pastor felt confident of my sincerity and my grasp on the details, and so I was baptized.<\/p>\n

We wrote the date in my Bible, and I lived in peace about the matter for nearly a decade.<\/p>\n

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One Friday night during my 9th grade year, however, my Sunday school teacher told us that according to Matthew 7:21\u201323 many people who think they know Jesus will awaken on that final day to the reality that He never really knew them.<\/p>\n

Though they had prayed a prayer to receive Jesus, they had never really been born again and never taken the lordship of Jesus seriously. They would, my teacher explained, be turned away from heaven into everlasting punishment with the disastrous words, \u201cI never knew you! Depart from Me, you lawbreakers!\u201d<\/p>\n

Would I be one of those ones turned away? Had I really been sorry for my sins? And could I really have known what I was doing at age four?<\/p>\n

So I asked Jesus to come into my heart again, this time with a resolve to be much more intentional about my faith. I requested re-baptism, and gave a very moving testimony in front of our congregation about getting serious with God.<\/p>\n

Not long after that I found myself asking again: Had I really been sorry enough for my sin this time around?<\/p>\n

There were a few sins I seemed to fall back into over and over again, no matter how many resolutions I made to do better. Was I really sorry for those sins? Was that prayer a moment of total surrender?<\/p>\n

So I prayed the sinner\u2019s prayer again. And again. And again. Each time trying to get it right, each time really trying to mean it.<\/p>\n

I walked a lot of aisles during those days. I think I\u2019ve been saved at least once in every denomination. I\u2019ve been baptized four times. Honestly, it got pretty embarrassing. I became a staple at our church\u2019s baptism services. I got my own locker in the baptismal changing area.<\/p>\n

It was a wretched experience. My spiritual life was characterized by cycles of doubt, aisle-walking and submersion in water. I could not find the assurance of salvation no matter how often, or how sincerely, I asked Jesus into my heart.<\/p>\n

I used to think I was alone in this struggle, but as I\u2019ve shared my story over the years so many have come forward to tell me that my experience was theirs (usually minus the baptisms and the OCD tendencies) that I\u2019ve concluded this problem is epidemic in the church. <\/p>\n

The Falsely Assured<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Scripture indicates there are a vast number of people who seem assured of a salvation they don\u2019t actually possess.<\/p>\n

My Sunday school teacher was telling us the truth: according to Matthew 7, Jesus will turn away \u201cmany\u201d on that last day who thought they belonged to Him. There\u2019s no doubt that many of those will have prayed a sinner\u2019s prayer.
In His parable about the different types of soil, Jesus spoke of a group who heard His word and made an initial, encouraging response of belief, only to fade away over time.<\/p>\n

These are those, Jesus explained, who hear the gospel and respond positively to it\u2014pray the prayer, walk the aisle, get baptized, or do whatever new converts in your church do.<\/p>\n

They remain in the church for a period of time. But they do not endure when the sun of persecution comes out and will not in the end be saved (Luke 8:13).<\/p>\n

These sobering stories teach us that many are headed into eternal judgment under the delusion of going to heaven. They were told that if they prayed the prayer, Jesus would save them, seal them, and never leave nor forsake them.
A 2011 Barna study shows that nearly half of all adults in America have prayed such a prayer, and subsequently believe they are going to heaven, though many of them rarely, if ever, attend a church, read the Bible personally, or have lifestyles that differ in any significant way from those outside the church.<\/p>\n

If the groups described in Matthew 7 and Luke 8 are not referring to them, I don\u2019t know to whom they could be referring. <\/p>\n

An Unhelpful Gospel Clich\u00e9?<\/p>\n

I have begun to wonder if both problems, needless doubting and false assurance, are exacerbated by the clich\u00e9d ways in which we (as evangelicals) speak about the gospel (i.e. \u201cask Jesus into your heart,\u201d \u201caccept Jesus as Lord and Savior\u201d or \u201cgive your heart to Jesus.\u201d)<\/p>\n

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See also  The Power of the Ordinary Moments<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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These phrases may not be wrong, but the Bible never tells us, specifically, to seek salvation in those ways. The biblical summation of a saving response toward Christ is repentance and belief in the gospel.<\/p>\n

Belief means acknowledging that God told the truth about Jesus, namely that He is Lord and that He has finished forever the work of our salvation. Repentance means acting on that belief\u2014reversing your direction based on who you understand Jesus to be.<\/p>\n

Repentance and faith are fundamentally postures of the heart toward God. You can \u201cask Jesus into your heart\u201d without repenting and believing, and you can repent and believe without articulating such a prayer.<\/p>\n

Salvation is not a prayer you pray in a one-time ceremony and then move on from; salvation is a posture of repentance and faith you begin in a moment and maintain for the rest of your life.<\/p>\n

Conversion to Christ is like sitting down in a chair. If you are seated right now, there was a point in time in which you transferred the weight of your body from your legs to the chair. You may not even remember making that decision, but the fact you are seated now proves that you did.<\/p>\n

When you first assume that position, you might express it in a prayer. Or you might not. The posture is itself a cry to God for salvation, whether you articulate it or not.<\/p>\n

But just because you prayed the prayer doesn\u2019t mean you assumed the posture, any more than telling a chair you\u2019re about to sit in it equates to actually sitting down.<\/p>\n

So, when it comes to assurance, the only real question is: Are you seated in repentance toward Jesus\u2019 Lordship and faith in His finished work now? <\/p>\n

Two Things I Am Not Saying
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I\u2019m not saying that asking Jesus into your heart is heretical. <\/p>\n

When we are \u201csaved,\u201d Jesus does indeed \u201ccome into our hearts,\u201d at least in a manner of speaking (Romans 8:9\u201311; Ephesians 3:17; Colossians 1:27\u201328; Galatians 2:20).<\/p>\n

\u201cAsking Jesus into your heart\u201d is among the more biblical summations of salvation, if the concepts behind the words are understood. \u201cHeart\u201d in the Bible (Proverbs 4:23) is the seat of the person.<\/p>\n

Having Jesus come into your heart, in that sense, would mean that He fuses Himself into the deepest part of who you are\u2014that you rest your hopes upon His righteousness, lean on Him for strength, and submit to His Lordship at your core. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m also not saying we should not press for a decision when we present the gospel. <\/p>\n

The gospel is indeed an invitation and each time it is preached that invitation ought to be extended in some form (e.g., John 1:12; Matthew 11:28; Revelation 22:17). In fact, if we do not urge the hearer to respond personally to God\u2019s offer in Christ, I do not believe we have fully preached the gospel.
Ultimately, my concern is not on what words or actions we might use to express our faith in Christ but that we don\u2019t substitute those words or actions for repentance and faith.<\/p>\n

For many, \u201cpraying the sinner\u2019s prayer\u201d has become something like a Protestant ritual we have people go through to enter heaven. Above all else we must emphasize the absolute indispensability of repentance and faith for salvation.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to say to those who, like me, have asked Jesus into their hearts thousands of times, that they can \u201cstop asking Jesus into their heart\u201d and start resting in the finished work of Christ.<\/p>\n

Salvation comes not because you prayed a prayer correctly, but because you have leaned the hopes of your soul on the finished work of Christ.
Shorthand phrases for the gospel can serve a good purpose, insofar as everyone knows exactly what they mean.<\/p>\n

But in light of the fact that so many in our nation seem assured of a salvation they give no evidence of having because of a prayer they prayed, and so many others are unable to find assurance no matter how often they pray that prayer, I believe it is time to put the shorthand aside and preach simply salvation by repentance toward God and faith in the finished work of Christ.
Or, at least, to be careful to explain exactly what we mean when we call for a response to the gospel.<\/p>\n

J.D. Greear is lead pastor at the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, and author of the book <\/em>Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved (B&H) from which this article is excerpted.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Related posts:<\/h3>\n
12 Truths of Building a Culture of Prayer in Your Church Stop Making Jesus Seem Boring 3 Ways to Reach Non-Religious People in Your Community <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By J.D. Greear If there were a Guinness Book of World Records record for \u201camount of times having asked Jesus into your heart,\u201d I\u2019m pretty sure I would hold it. By the time I reached the age of 18, I had probably \u201casked Jesus into my heart\u201d 5,000 times. I started somewhere around age 4 … Continue reading “Should We Stop Asking Jesus into our Hearts?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}