Hey everybody, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And normally what we do here is every weekday we take 10-ish minutes and talk about the gospel of Matthew, and we just work our way through it one little chunk at a time. So if you are here for the first time and you're like, I heard they talk about the Bible straight through, and then this time we're not, that might weird you out. But every now and then we do step aside if there's a question that comes up in subreddit or a question that comes in from a patron at patreon.com/slash the TMBH podcast. I'll just grab that and kick it around. And usually I like to bring a friend in for these kind of conversations. And so I've got my buddy Aaron Utect who hangs out with me a lot here. Aaron, hello. Awesome to be here. Thanks, man. Thank you again for being willing to lend your brain to good questions that people who listen to this podcast ask. And this one is from somebody who goes by the Reddit handle, Rome LPIS 1212. We're just going to call you Rome for the sake of quickness. And the uh the heading here is what are your views on prayer and specifically the sinner's prayer? And the sinner's prayer part is what I'm interested in. And it's a really good post. They say a lot of stuff. You can find it in the subreddit, but let me just pick it up here. When Matt was talking about the sinner's prayer, it also kind of brought up some feelings. I grew up thinking that was a magic prayer that made you a Christian. It wasn't until years later that I found out that no prayer like that exists in the Bible. All I found in my multiple readings of the Bible is the repeated theme of quote, confess and believe, unquote, and you will be saved to become a Christian. Okay, Aaron, uh just to bring everybody up to speed, what is this guy talking about when he says the sinner's prayer? Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
SPEAKER_01I think he's talking about like if somebody handed you a track, you know, like they've uh done at the mall or college campuses or things like that.
SPEAKER_00You can make a fake $20 bill instead of a tip when you're a waiter. Yeah, love that. Nothing says love of Jesus more than depriving you of fair wages for your work.
SPEAKER_01Yes. So it at the end, it you know, at the end of those tracks, there's a, you know, if you if you believe this and you want to become a Christian, repeat this prayer. Or I've been in some congregations or gatherings where they'll even say, you know, repeat after me. And and it's like almost like if you say these words, it's a bit of a magic formula.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell So what's in the sinner's prayer in your experience? How does that go?
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell It usually has something to do with I'm a sinner, I know that I'm a sinner, I know that I've offended you, God, I know that Jesus died for my sins, and I accept you and I invite you to come and live in my heart now.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00So if somebody's outside looking in, though, and they're like, well, I might like to sign up to be a Christian, should they not pray that to sign? I mean, is that the stuff that you have to assent to in order to become a Christian? Is it wrong?
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell It's not I wouldn't say it's wrong, but it could be potentially misleading. Uh if if we give people the impression that if you recite these words, this is the formula, this is the incantation. I think it's you know that that's all there is to it. Uh I in my church I tend to use the word, the language of follow. That's Jesus' language, follow me. And uh that implies that the journey is beginning, not ending.
SPEAKER_00I did a video on that a while. Did you see the stick in the string video I think?
SPEAKER_01I did, I really like that.
SPEAKER_00I wanted to go fish that hole myself. So, well, I can take you there. So I got this fishing rod, and it's real, real fancy, real lightweight, 2.6 ounces. That number six in my head. But all it is is a no-real fishing rod. It's just a long stick and has a tiny little string that goes on the end, and all you do is just flip around the stick and the line goes out there and it works on fish, the trout. It works on trout specifically, really, really well. Well, you've fished with me, you've seen the results. And so on the surface, the stick and the string are incredibly simple. You don't need to know anything about fishing or how things work to just take the stick and throw the string in the water and maybe you catch a fish or whatever. But the engineering to make a rod that seems so simple is incredibly complex. And there's a whole lot of depth that goes into it. And so I made this video a while back where I was like, oh, you know, following Jesus is like the stick and the string. It's incredibly simple. If you want to follow Jesus, the thing to do is follow Jesus according to the Bible. And if you want to really understand all the theology and mechanics and everything behind that that makes it even possible for someone to follow Jesus or what's going on there, then you can do that and you'll get into it as you go along. And there's an infinite wealth of theology and philosophy and thought that goes into the Christian understanding, the biblical understanding of the world. But some people got real mad. Did you read the comments? I didn't. Tell me. They were mostly good, but some people were like, nah, this is a fake gospel. This is wrong. You have to do this, this, this, this, and this to sign up. And this is like liberalism, follow Jesus is soft and squishy. My response to them, I didn't respond to very many of them, but my response to them would be, Well, how does Jesus invite people to follow him? What does that look like in the Bible? And I guess I'm asking now, off the top of your head, when Jesus invites people to follow him, what does that look like in the Bible?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's the beginning point. And there's the assumption that people will come in and they're gonna bring whatever garbage or mess or difficulty that they have in their lives. That comes along with when you when you go on a trip, you bring your baggage with you, uh, you don't leave it behind. And Jesus knows that and he welcomes people in. And so the New Testament is starting to clean Paul and other writers are kind of coaching people on how to clean up some of those things, but they never imply that this is what you have to do, or you're not in the family. So, what do you mean by this?
SPEAKER_00You mean they never imply that you have to do the prayer?
SPEAKER_01Or what do you mean by that? Oh, I I'm sorry, the so I was I was responding to your comments on the about your fly fishing your rod and ribbon. Yeah, what I heard back from the comments. Yeah, what you heard back from the comments. Well, that's too simple. You know, people complaining like m Christianity, you you know, you can't just let people do whatever they want. Well, we didn't say that. We said the beginning point of following Jesus was simple. It's uh following Jesus. It's following. And so if the the that's why I think the language of following is more helpful, it's not the only language uh in the Bible. Um repent and believe, um, confess and believe. The that language is used all over. Um, but it's always couched in terms of well, how do I initiate this relationship? I come to trust in him, and following implies trusting, and I want to see where this goes. I want to see what this guy does.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so on the following front, though, that word could mean a lot of things. And so I guess I get the appeal of the sinner's prayer, which really caught on during the second Great Awakening, which is this movement in America in what's called the Rust Belt, stuff around the Great Lakes. Guy named Charles Finney is one of the key characters in this, and he figures out a way to kind of weaponize pressure and revival meetings and events to get people to a place where they feel guilt about their sin, which is biblical, that we feel sorrow and brokenness about our incompleteness and the stuff that we get wrong, the stuff that gets done wrong to us. And once they feel that guilt, then you get them to make a public profession and confession. That pressure helps seal the deal, helps to consummate the deal, if you will. And they pray certain theological things, and in doing so, they have publicly assented to these things. Now, all of those things, from what I've read from that era, are Bibley. And I guess what's maybe advantageous about that is it it really simplifies everything down to you just pray these things, you believe these things, and then you're in, and there's this clear point of demarcation that a person can point to and be like, I am a Christian. That is the moment at which I'm saved. And that happens a lot in the Bible. And there's this moment where people are like, all right, I'm in. Why shouldn't I be baptized? And then they just roll with it, right? But then the just following language, you know, maybe the downside of that is people might not be able to point to that date or that moment where they prayed the prayer. And if they just nebulously started following Jesus, you know, couldn't that keep somebody in limbo forever?
SPEAKER_01Potentially. It also, I think it meets people where they're at. My experience personally is if you try to force people into shoehorn them into uh something at a certain moment, that might not be their timeline. That might not be where they're at spiritually in that moment. Maybe they're more curious or you know, they're they're on board, but they're feeling their way out yet. Being in process resonates with uh a lot of people. And some people will be able to point to that very specific moment. It seems like culturally that is less and less common all the time on my experience.
SPEAKER_00Which is really convenient because well, the more biblical of the two versions of how to sign up to be a Christian is the more nebulous it is.
SPEAKER_01It's follow Jesus. And I think people don't like it, like your comment section, because I can't know if my kids are really Christians for sure. Yeah. Uh I can't. And that's a big deal. I can't poo-poo that. No, yeah, it's fair. But w none of us are really working God's work. He's the one doing the work, which is curious that you bring up the example of Charles Finney because he said the exact opposite.
SPEAKER_00I think I got his book sitting right there on my shelf. He said he could do it without the Holy Spirit. I can do revival without the Holy Spirit. He got to a point where he believed it was about the show and the mechanisms and the pressure points and how to apply that pressure. Get somebody the front row, put them in the anxious seat. That's the on-deck circle. Once the bright lights are on you, you're gonna convert, man. It's gonna happen. But that's not super Bible-y either. Like what we see happening there doesn't seem to involve a lot of pressure. It really does seem to be as simple as Jesus or the people who came after Jesus being like, well, obviously that's the king, and there's a truer, realer kingdom than the world kingdom in which we all normally live. And you're gonna want to make that the thing that you do and follow. That really is it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's interesting as you look through the examples, the most of the examples we have are from the Gospels or Acts. The letters don't really tell us like how these people became believers, how they decided to become followers of Jesus. But as you go through the story of Acts, they have different speeches for different audiences. They'll speak to Jewish audiences, and and there will be pressure. Peter's very clear at some points when he's speaking to the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00Well, he's talking to people who literally weaponized the Roman government to murder Jesus. Oh, totally. Yeah. So that's a little different conversation than I've had with like the guy on the street corner.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But they but they knew. You know, but even in Acts 2, when he's not talking to the to the people you killed the author of life, you know, he's not talking to the the people guilty of Jesus' murder, he's still pushing fairly hard on the Jewish crowds. This is the Messiah. You know, our leaders act in ignorance, but this is the Messiah. As he comes later, you compare his speech to Cornelius and to the Gentile audiences. It's a it's a very different tone. People that have no backstory on who this Jesus guy would be and what role he was fulfilling in God's story. So there's pressure, but it's also, I don't think, I don't believe personally, we can just say, oh, this is exactly how it happens for everybody for all time. Should we pray the sinner's prayer? I think it's useful, but we should not lead, you know, lead people to think that it's just a a formula, a magic incantation, and now it all happens.
SPEAKER_00I think this is uh really important because all of Matthew's gospel, I mean, why does the book exist? It's meant to get people to sign up to identify Jesus as the King, as the kingdom is the truer and realer thing, and to follow Jesus. If we're doing this whole Matthew thing together with everybody's sitting here listening in on this conversation, we got to be forthright about what the objective of the book is. You or I may come at that, the audience may come at that more casually and more as a distant observer, just trying to understand what the thing is about. But the author had an objective, and it was to convince you to follow. And because of that, I I've got a follow-up question that I want to ask. Would you mind hanging in for one more round of this? Absolutely. Okay, cool. I'm gonna hit pause there. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon, but