The Sinner’s Prayer can be very simple, “Jesus, I believe
you died for my sins, please come into my heart and be my Lord.” It can be even
simpler, “Lord Jesus, I need your forgiveness. Please come into my heart." And even simpler, "Jesus, I need you." And the most simple of all, "Jesus, please help." What matters is the intention of your heart when you say it. If we're just asking for a quick fix and then are going to go back to the way we always were - something I did many times - there's no salvation moment. But if you really know in a deep part of yourself that you're willing to open your heart to Him, He'll understand what you're saying, even if you don't know the words. The
ideas can be combined and enlarged upon, “Lord Jesus Christ, I am sorry for the
things I have done in my life. I ask your forgiveness, and now turn from everything
which I know is wrong. Thank you for dying on the Cross for me to set me free
from my sins. Please come into my life and fill me with your Holy Spirit and be
with me forever. Thank you Lord Jesus, Amen.” “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 sins 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.” The prayer is based on the idea of Roman’s 10:9-10, “That if thou shalt
confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thine heart that God raised
Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” That is the King James Version, and in
the NIV it is, “If you declare with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in
your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with
your heart you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you
profess your faith and are saved.” You can say it any number of ways, and in
your own words. The most important part is to let Him know that you believe He
died for your sins and that you know you need forgiveness. When He hears that,
He’ll come running.
As with everything else I write about, the Lord told me to
start writing about this, and I thought it was going to be very simple, but
then when I started to look up the Sinner’s Prayer, I found that once again
there is so much theological discussion and argument going on around the topic.
Some people think it’s a pointless and ridiculous addition that is not needed
at all, others think it’s the only way we can be saved. Some people are in
between and say we can be saved without it but people can be saved with it. One
thing that I didn’t see anywhere is what I believe and experienced on my own,
which is that Jesus Himself is the only one who can save anyone. At the
appointed time and in the appointed place, He orchestrates salvation. It can be
in a church or it can be as mine was, in an upstairs room above an Irish Bar on
the lower west side of Manhattan. You can be with other people, you can say the
prayer or they can lead you in it, or you can be on your own, as I was, and just
start talking to God and he answers.
I was born again by the power and grace of God. The words
that He used were a direct conversation He had with me about forgiveness, first
in the pages of a tract I’d found on the street the night before, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do," (Luke 23:34) and then my
own direct confrontation, “I know you could forgive when you were on the Cross
but I’m not you,” and then His gentle answer, “You’re not on the Cross.” And then,
just as simply as that, I was filled with such a powerful knowledge of the
presence of God, of His love and mercy and forgiveness, I was so filled with the knowledge that I did need His forgiveness and that He loved me and was willing to forgive right then and there, that I broke down
weeping, saying "I understand, I understand, I understand." That was my sinner’s
prayer, and the moment of my salvation.
Six months later, I met a graffiti artist and clothing
designer at an event for Christians in the fashion industry. He was the coolest
guy I’d ever seen, and we had a beautiful conversation that night. I kept
thinking the whole time, “I want to see the church he goes to!” He invited me
to visit his church because I was looking for one and hadn’t started attending
one yet. I went that Sunday. I was running late, and I missed the entrance the
first time I walked by. It was in a part of town I’d been in for years, hanging
out, going to bars and parties and clubs, but I’d never noticed the church,
even though it was right on the corner with a big Cross out front. I walked by
the entrance and heard some awesome party music, conga drums and keyboards and
great singing drifting out of the open windows, and I thought, “I wish I was
going to that party!” and the Lord answered, “You are.”
At one point during the service, the Pastor asked people to “turn
to their neighbor and pray together." A woman in front of me turned around and
took my hands and started to pray. I found myself weeping those same cleansing
and healing tears that I had cried on December 12 in that upper room above the
Irish bar. She spoke about things that only I could know about, asking God to
heal my heart. When Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well, after He
speaks to her, she runs back to her town and says, “Come see a man who told me
everything I ever did.” (John 4:29) I felt like that woman and knew I’d come
home.
The next day I called the designer up to thank him for
inviting me to his church and to let him know I wanted to continue to go there.
I had been so full of joy that day. At the time I was living all the way up at
the top of Manhattan, and the designer lived in Brooklyn. He asked me if I had
ever said the Sinner’s Prayer, and I didn’t know what it was, so he told me and
asked if I wanted to say it that day. I said yes immediately, thinking we’d do
it over the phone, but God bless him, he said he felt a prompting of the Holy Spirit
to come to my apartment and that he’d be there as soon as possible. He arrived with his Bible in hand, and took me through the
prayer. I don’t remember exactly what he said that day. He read some scripture
with me and we prayed a prayer, and when we finished the Sinner’s Prayer, all
the dogs in the area let up a howl. The designer said, “There’s such a big
party in heaven right now!” And I knew he was right. That same designer gave me my first Bible, a beautiful hard cover copy of the Life Application Study Bible, and suggested that I start reading the Book of John, and when I finished that to go back to the beginning of the New Testament and read all the way through and then go to the Old Testament, and then just keep reading through again and again and again. It was great advice that I share with people all the time when I give them Bibles now. I have other translations now, but that Bible is still an important one to me, because of the person who gave it to me - the Lord Himself, working through someone who took the time to share his love to show me the love of God.
I started attending that church, and worked in the soup
kitchen and with the youth ministry. In October of that year, October 5, I
was baptized in that church, in a pool underneath the altar in the sanctuary.
It was a full immersion baptism, and up to that point, the happiest day of my
life. The joy that I was filled with that day by the Holy Spirit was like
nothing I’d ever felt before. I felt like I could fly.
According to Wikipedia, October 5 is a day of lots of
firsts. The first James Bond film, “Dr. No,” was released on that day in 1962,
The Beatle’s first single, “Love Me Do,” with “P.S. I Love You” on the flipside
was released on the same day. In 1969, the first episode of Monty Python’s
Flying Circus aired on BBC One, and in 1970, PBS, the Public Broadcasting
Service, was founded. All things I’ve loved and enjoyed over the years, and
things that have brought me great joy. But the most joyful first I have ever had was going into that
pool of water fully dressed and with the help of a Pastor, having my head put
under, then coming up soaked to the skin and free from sin.
Water baptism is something else that there are so many
discussions and arguments about. This one does it this way, this one does it
that way, this one immerses, this one sprinkles, this one does it at birth,
this one does it at rebirth. As far as I can tell from my own life experience,
God will show each and every one of us what it is that He wants us to do. He
led me to that designer and through him led me to that church, and led the
designer to offer to come to my apartment to pray. I ended up in that pool by
His design, not mine or anyone else’s. Jesus is the one who does the saving.
All we have to do is show up.
We all have our own appointment with God. 2 Peter 3:9 tells us, “The
Lord is not slow concerning His promise, as some count slowness; but is patient
with us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to
repentance.” There’s a saying we have in church, “You can come in peace or in
pieces.” I came in pieces, and I don’t advise it, though it definitely made an
impact on my life in a way that I can never forget. I’d say it’s better to come
in peace, though, to ask Him to come into your heart before your heart is
broken. But if you’re like me and you do come in pieces, with a heart that is
broken and nowhere else to go, He will always heal you, because He makes all
things new.
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
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