Yesterday, the high school where I used to work had an "incident" - as school was letting out a student left the building, took a handgun out of his back pack and fired it into the air.
Today a different student was caught with a sawed-off shotgun in class.
I heard more of the Gospel from Michael Savage tonight than I did in church on Sunday.
I joined twitter so that I could post my eating in my sidebar. I'm not sure anybody cares and I said in a forum yesterday that I don't tell people certain things, including what I had for breakfast...I take that back...look in my sidebar for what I had for breakfast.
I saw this and thought it was beautiful.
Here is one example:
“Father, I know that I have broken your laws and my sins have separated me from you. I am truly sorry, and now I want to turn away from my past sinful life toward you. Please forgive me, and help me avoid sinning again. I believe that your son, Jesus Christ died for my sins, was resurrected from the dead, is alive, and hears my prayer. I invite Jesus to become the Lord of my life, to rule and reign in my heart from this day forward. Please send your Holy Spirit to help me obey You, and to do Your will for the rest of my life. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.”
Most often (in my experience) the invitation to pray this prayer is in response to a sermon in which the Gospel is presented.
Honesty, the points of salvation are in there.
If a person believes this and prays this...I believe they are saved.
And I believe they are babes. It is the fault of the church who does not feed them milk after they are born and leaves them to founder that is the shame of the church, not that babes are led in this prayer.
the more I get into it, the less I'm sure it matters how we say it.
Gospel: Good News. The power of salvation for those who believe.
(update 1)
I found this: “Ten reasons NOT to ask Jesus into your heart”.
I would submit that it's not the "asking Jesus into your heart" that's the problem. It's the leading an unbelieving person in "the formula" for the sake of following the formula.
The writer says that people who pray this prayer backslide.
I would reply...people who don't pray that prayer may backslide also. You would have a hard time convincing me that it was the prayer that did it, not the idea that perhaps (whatever they said at the time of their "conversion") it was the person that was at fault.
The formula, "I'm sorry for my sins, please forgive me and be my Savior" is just as much a "formula". And it can fail just as badly.
Reason number 10: People who ask Jesus into their hearts are not saved and they will perish on the Day of Judgment.
The writer says that is "scary" to him. To me, scary is judging the salvation of another person based on the specific words they used on the day they turned to Jesus and not what is in their hearts.
There are a few things that I remember from my childhood...one of them is telling my mom that I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart. She asked, "Why?". I was able to articulate that I was sorry for my sins and I wanted Jesus to save me.
And she led me in that "sinner's prayer".
Does that mean that I am not saved and I will perish on the Day of Judgment? Of course not and that's why I think it's important to look at the behavior, beliefs and reasoning of the person...not the formula that they're using.
~~~
Is it important to teach belief and repentance? YES! it is vital.
But to bluntly state that those who pray the sinner's prayer are lost...that smacks so much of 'everybody who doesn't do it just like I do are heathens' that it makes me very uncomfortable.
Let's get all spun up...
or...
Pick your battles, and this is a silly one.
~~~
I read one blogger make the point that if you're expecting your students to be in a public school for 13 years without liberalism having an effect on them...one short speech by the president of the United States...isn't going to make much of a difference.
~~~
On October 1, 1991 George H.W. Bush spoke to a group of students...and it was broadcast into classrooms nation wide via C-Span. This was was in the lead up to the 1992 presidential campaign and he spoke about his education policies. (as much as I dislike using the Daily Kos, that's where I found this C-Span video)
So this is not the first time that a United States president has been broadcast into classrooms.
~~~
On November 14, 1988 Ronald Reagan gave a speech to four classrooms and the event was broadcast by C-Span and Instructional Television Network fed the program “to schools nationwide on three different days.”
Today, to a degree never before seen in human history, one nation, the United States, has become the model to be followed and imitated by the rest of the world. But America's world leadership goes well beyond the tide toward democracy. We also find that more countries than ever before are following America's revolutionary economic message of free enterprise, low taxes, and open world trade. These days, whenever I see foreign leaders, they tell me about their plans for reducing taxes, and other economic reforms that they are using, copying what we have done here in our country.
I wonder if they realize that this vision of economic freedom, the freedom to work, to create and produce, to own and use property without the interference of the state, was central to the American Revolution, when the American colonists rebelled against a whole web of economic restrictions, taxes and barriers to free trade. The message at the Boston Tea Party -- have you studied yet in history about the Boston Tea Party, where because of a tax they went down and dumped the tea in the Harbor. Well, that was America's original tax revolt, and it was the fruits of our labor -- it belonged to us and not to the state. And that truth is fundamental to both liberty and prosperity.
Here is the entire transcipt.
~~~
Get a grip, folks.
It's not the first time.
It's not even the first time that it''s been used to forward a president's agenda.
It's just the first time a Democrat has done it.
Do the people who were in school then even remember?
Do the people who had children in school then even remember?
Please...I'm begging...stop making the rest of us look like idiots.
Nick Vujicic - Life Without Limbs...
and a movie: "Butterfly Circus"
At the height of the Great Depression, the showman of a renowned circus leads his troupe through the devastated American landscape, lifting the spirits of audiences along the way. During their travels they discover a man without limbs at a carnival sideshow, but after an intriguing encounter with the showman he becomes driven to hope against everything he has ever believed. Starring Eduardo Verástegui (Bella), Doug Jones (Pan's Labyrinth, Fantastic Four) and featuring the debut performance of Nick Vujicic.
Watch it...about 20 minutes.
(Sunday is for Reformed)