Salvation question? A time and a place.....

That is a very astute observation. The New Testament does not give what we call "The sinner's prayer." It spends its time talking about faith in Christ alone, God's grace alone, and being an object of God's grace, placing faith in Christ, etc. We do not find people praying to receive Christ in the New Testament. Remember the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. He is not shown as having prayed to receive Christ.

The idea of the sinner's prayer is certainly not unbiblical. After all, Scripture does say we should confess and believe and that we should call on the name of the Lord. My point is that we should be careful we do not restrict ourselves to saying that persons must remember their salvation experience or that it is absolutely necessary for them to say some version of "the sinner's prayer." No prayer saves without the faith that it expresses. That faith itself would not be there but for God's grace.

There are those who may, in the privacy of their own minds and hearts, be given faith in Christ and "make a decision" much the same way as people "decide" on many things without talking about them openly. Like I cited earlier Ruth Graham is a prime example of just such a person.