Sinner's prayer

I don't disagree with that...and unless we have access to each other's minds, it is opinion when one becomes regenerated.

Second verse, same as the first

 

Food for thought, all right.

I wonder, though, why Spurgeon directed people to an inquiry room. Who was there? What went on in that room. Of whom was he inquiring and what was he inquiring about? It doesn't sound as if the inquirer was in there alone, just he and God.

And I'm also curious about his remark about the keys of the Kingdom. Didn't Jesus give his disciples the keys to the kingdom? (Matt 16:19) Don't we as believers have them? Seems to me that Jesus' Great Commission was a commission to declare the keys--that is, to declare the terms of entry into the kingdom.

I don't think anybody who is witnessing to a lost person considers himself a priest, or doing priestcraft. Paul certainly didn't, not did Peter or Philip.

I don't think I'm with Spurgeon on this one.

 

Read enough Spurgeon and you will eventually find a place where he contradicts himself -- same as all the rest of us. :laugh:

 

Now, that part I can agree with.

 

It's more or less like you described.

The hymn will finish and one of us will give a brief explanation of the Gospel, a call for repentance, or just an invitation to come and ask for prayer.

The congregation is bowed in prayer, the person comes up, I explain the Gospel to them and ask them if they understand. If they ask me to or if they're just genuinely confused about how to pray, then I'll pray with them. But typically, I tell them that they need to go to a private place, get alone with God and cry out to Him.

Then the elders and I will pray with other folks who come up, I'll tell the congregation that we'll be staying afterward for counseling and prayer, and depending on whether or not we think we can still beat the Methodists to the Cracker Barrel, we may sing one more hymn. Then, one of us will give the closing prayer.

 

It is as the glorious old hymn says

O that I had some secret place,
Where I might hide from sorrow
Where I might see my Savior's face,
and thus be saved from terror.

:godisgood:

Humbly a simple country preacher

Jeff

 

That's how it's done in my church as well.

 

I use the sinner's prayer but it's not used as a magic formula "say this, and you are saved." Every aspect is explained. I make sure they understand what is said and why it is said. To me it is a way of helping the person formulate what has happened in their life.

 

The man went from casting the same insults as the other thief at the Lord to seeing Jesus as King of a kingdom and desiring to be part of it. Something changed and what changed is pretty clear.

 

More from Spurgeon on the "see a clergyman later" method:

 

I think it's done that way far more often than he thinks. I don't want to speak for him, but it sounds like he's just discouraged about it because that's all we ever seem to hear about in the watered down pop-Christianity that's so popular these days.

I don't blame him a bit. It's easy to think that and I get down about it myself, sometimes. But like Porgy said to Bess, "'t'aint necessarily so".

 

I don't disagree with that. What I disagree with is how and what caused this change.