A friend once told me that she knew someone who had “asked Jesus into his heart” as a kind of “fire insurance.” He believed in heaven and hell and figured all he had to do was say a prayer and then he’d be set. He could go on living life any way he wanted and God would still accept him when he came to life’s end.
As you can imagine, this happened many years ago when the topics of heaven and hell were well known and talked of freely. Nowadays? Not so much. Now heaven is sort of a “given” for anyone who “is a good person” and hell is for those who are really evil, like serial killers and terrorists. Any other teaching upsets our sense of collective morality.
So to bring these topics up here might not set well with some. But did you know that Jesus spoke more about hell than he did about heaven?
That Jesus talked about it should make us take notice that it’s important. But hell is not my real purpose for this post. It is tied to it, but not the entire focus. (The article above does a good job of explaining it if you want to read more.)
My point has to do with my topic question.
Is it really enough just to pray a prayer?
The thing is, to become a Christian, a person who accepts and believes that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that He came to earth to die for our sins and rose again the third day and will return in His glory to set up His kingdom, takes faith. And commitment. And a decision that we are trading our lives for His.
A Christian is someone who has been changed by Jesus Christ. Changed how? What’s wrong with who I am now?
In our eyes? Probably not much. In God’s eyes, according to the Bible? Everything.
That doesn’t mean God doesn’t love us or want us, it’s just that the whole of Scripture tells the story of what creation was meant to be and what it became because of one man’s choice to sin/break God’s command. Adam (yes he was a real person as the New Testament affirms him) was created without sin, yet chose to give in to outside forces of temptation (the snake – i.e. satan) and break the one command God had given.
Jesus (yes He was also a real person as history attests) was begotten, not created, without sin and faced the same basic temptation—to break God’s commands. Adam failed. Jesus did not.
Because of Adam, we inherited a sin nature. Because of Jesus we can be free from sin because if the Son sets us free, we are free indeed. But we can’t free ourselves. We have to want Him to do so for us.
When Jesus walked the earth, He didn’t just heal people and die on a cross. He preached. Did you know that? He came to preach and teach people that in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, they needed to repent of their sin. When people came to Him for healing, He often told them their sins were forgiven. Or He did not condemn them BUT, “Go and sin no more.”
In other words, we can’t just pray a prayer for a “get out of hell free card.”
And we can’t say we know Him if we don’t. (We can pretend, but then we are lying.)
Our Holy God wants everyone to be with Him in heaven eternally. That’s why Jesus came—to make it possible for us to meet God’s holy standards. (See my previous post for more on that.)
But when He offered forgiveness and the kingdom to His followers, He told them it came with a cost. And that’s the part we often leave out of our sermons and discussions when we tell people “God loves you.” We don’t tell them, “but you have to count the cost.”
There were a lot of people who turned away from Jesus because following Him cost too much. They couldn’t give up what they wanted to do with their life. They couldn’t part with their money, their belongings, their families, their high positions in society, whatever. They couldn’t deny themselves—that is to deny “self”, not just selfish desires—and follow Him.
Jeremiah stated that our lives are not are own. We can’t even determine our own path. (Jeremiah 10:23) Jeremiah was called of God to be His prophet. He had to deny his right to marry because God told him not to. He was ridiculed and is called the “weeping prophet” because he wept over all of the hard things he knew would come upon his people.
Following Jesus, to be His disciple, is not simply praying a prayer to keep us out of hell or some future judgment that we don’t quite understand, despite Jesus’ many explanations of it. It is a place of separation from the glory of God. A place where God’s love doesn’t exist. A place where we would never interact with the beauty He has planned for us. It’s not a place I want to be because I don’t want to miss an eternity where I can live forever with my Savior and my God.
But that means when I pray that prayer to ask Jesus to live in my heart? I have to be willing to allow Him to transform my life. All of my life for as long as I live. And that’s a tough ask. It may be why the Bible says, “few find it.” Few can be multitudes, but in God’s mind it may still be few because He desires ALL to be saved and to enjoy Him forever.
Someone said, “When a person is changed by Christ, his attitudes will change. He will see real life as if for the very first time.”
That fits well with, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. All things have become new.”
Paul Little says in his book Know What You Believe,
“The sobering truth that we exist forever makes it imperative that we give thought to our nature, condition and destiny while we are still able to do what is needful.
“In answer to the question “Who am I?” the Bible teaches that each of us is a personality created purposefully by God in his own image. It teaches that we have eternal significance in God’s eyes and our souls are worth more than the whole world. (Mark 8:36)”
But that prayer needs to be one of honesty, surrender, and acceptance of His will, not mine. If I’m just saying words others have told me to say…if I’m just praying to cover all the bases so that God will let me into His heaven…if my heart isn’t in the prayer, I’m simply paying lip service with my intellect not my heart, then I am walking on shaky ground.
Perhaps that’s why Scripture tells us to examine our own hearts every time we take communion because before we can go to church and try to show other people what great Christians we are…before we can even sincerely share the good news with another…we need that relationship between us and God to be true. He needs to matter to us in a way that no one else does.
Some people won’t change much once they pray and surrender all to Jesus because they realize late in life that they need Him. And when that happens late in life or on a death bed or even when the Spirit speaks to someone in a coma, we won’t see their transformed life.
But for us who are still alive and breathing and living each day? We need to make sure we understand. Christianity isn’t a religious institution. It’s not even following a specific creed. It’s not saying the right words. It’s “I surrender all I am and have to you, Jesus. My life is in Your hands.” It’s a transformation, not just a testimony.
I pray if you are reading this and you have never made that conscious choice to follow Jesus, despite the cost, that you will consider the cost and find Him worth it. He’s not just about staying out of hell. He’s about getting to know the greatest, most joyous powerful LOVE THAT GAVE ALL FOR US and to spend eternity worshiping and getting to know Him more and more forever and ever. I can’t think of anything better.
He is definitely worth the cost, which is nothing in comparison to any self-seeking pursuit I will ever have.
~Selah
#thebestprayer #theonlyprayerworthpraying #isprayerreallyenough #transformationnotjusttestimony #livegrace #lovetruth #knowjesus
