before i sleep

today I had a very interesting thing happen to me. I guess that lately I've been thinking a lot about that day in the future when each and every person will stand before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ to be judged according to what they have done here.

The problem is that there are so many people who falsely think that saying a sinner's prayer, while a good thing, is all that they have to do to get into heaven. what i mean by this is that the Christian faith is not the prayer. I don't think that saying the prayer should be a goal in itself. Sometimes you can hear Christian workers referring to the effectiveness of their work by making reference to things like how many people said the sinner's prayer, the number of people baptized this month, the number of people a new member's class or some other similar thing.

i guess that I have come to the conclusion that it is the long term fruit that is a better indication of what our impact is for the kingdom. I do not in any way wish to belittle the valuable work and the long hours that many evangelism oriented groups and individuals put into helping people across the threshold of faith. Without these people's dedication we would probably see a lot less people in church these days.

There are a group of young people, mostly boys, outside of our church who can make life very difficult and tiresome. Many people think that they should just start behaving better and start respecting our church and it's property. Sometimes I am so amazed by the fact that many people seem to think that doing right is just a matter of realizing that one is doing wrong and then making the appropriate corrections.

I feel that if I lay on the salesmanship really thick, I could get many of these guys to say a sinner's prayer. And for many people that would be such a great accomplish that it would be worthy of much praise. The problem is that the sinner's prayer cannot effect a changed nature in these guys. For the most part they know that what they have done and are doing are not the kinds of things that gets one into the presence of God for all of eternity. So many of them would, more than likely, say the sinner's prayer as a guarantee against spending all of eternity away from God's presence in hell. Many would wrongly think that they can now do as they please since having said the sinner's prayer forces God to let them into his kingdom.

What would be more fair to these guys is to tell them the whole story and not just inform them about the benefits. They need to know about taking up one's object of death and scorn on a daily basis and then being willing to follow Jesus Christ as their master. They would need to be informed about the cost factor. Once they have considered the cost then saying the sinner's prayer has a deeper foundation. The emphasis of the Christian worker is then to give them a balanced picture of what being a Christian is about. Fewer might make a decision to follow Jesus but more would be willing to live the radial life of a true follower of Jesus Christ.

Yes, I did say a true follower, meaning that there are false followers. Just look at their fruit. A tree can be very easily identified by its fruit. more about that later on.

peace on your head

Edward