Michael,

Thank you for posting this up. I am very sensitive to this particular subject as I was one of those that was relying on a prayer to get him into heaven. You see back in 1984 I prayed the sinners prayer and was convinced that I was "right with God. The sad truth is that shortly after praying this prayer I soon fell back into the old habits that I had and actually intensified my efforts in them. With out realizing it I soon became the worst sinner that I could be. The problem was that I would have died and gone directly to hell had the Lord called my number. It wasn't until many years later when I was married and had children that I started to realize that perhaps all the time that I thought I was a child of God I was really on the side of the Satan. He had firmly convinced me that I did not need to do anything else and that I would go to heaven. The only problem was that the Holy Spirit was working overtime in my life and exposing some very sensitive areas of my so called Christian walk. I started to wonder that if I was really a christian then why was it that my life was not bearing any fruit. It wasn't until the spring of 1994 that I came to a place that I new I needed to be saved and trust in Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. It was during an evangelistic meeting that i went forward during the altar call. I gave my life to Christ and asked Him to be Lord of my life. Shortly thereafter i had the blessing of leading about 15 people to the Lord, the right way. I was finally bearing fruit for the kingdom. I urge all of my brethren to make there calling and election sure and to work out their salvation with fear and trembling. I am not fully in the camp of losing one's salvation but I am also not a hyper calvanist either. The way I see it if a person professes Chrsit and then willfully goes against Christ and leads a life of deliberate sin against the holy Spirit, I will question whether the person was ever truly saved or not. the scripture says that when are born again we become a new creature old things are passd away and all things are become new. The truth of the matter is that if you are telling people that you are a believer and living like the devil you will pour judgement upon yourself. That is a very dangerous place to be in. Woe unto you if you grieve the Holy Spirit in this way. You will be ushering curses into your own life and that would be truly tragic. I am so glad that the Lord gave me an opportunity to truly receive Him into my life. I beg you turn from your ways if you are heading in the wrong direction and trust in Him or you may find yourself standing before the Lord ashamed of not having lived as righteously as possible or in fear of the judgement that will come upon you.

In Christ-

Walk in Wisdom Toward Them That are without Redeming the Time. (Col. 4:5)

http://walkonbendedknees.blogspot.com/