Sinner's Prayer

John 9:31 says that God doesn’t hear sinners. Isaiah 59:2 says that our sins have hidden God’s face from us, that He will not hear. Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned. We can conclude from this that we are all sinners, and, as such, God cannot respond to us. God doesn’t hear the prayer of a sinner.

That sounds pretty bleak, doesn’t it? If God won’t listen to us because we are sinners, then how can we even get forgiveness? Yet we know that God is a merciful and forgiving God, so, somewhere in there, something has gotten convoluted. Let’s look at some other scriptures.

In Luke 11:11-13, Jesus talks to a group of fathers, and asks them if their children asked for food, would they give those children stones, serpents, or scorpions? He goes on to make the comparison that God knows how to give good gifts to His children. Obviously, Jesus wouldn’t have made the comparison between children asking their natural fathers for things, and the fathers taking care of their children, and God giving gifts to His children, if God wasn’t listening to us.

John 3:16 says that God so loved the world… Every one of us. Even the sinners. Jesus didn’t come to earth to be sacrificed for our sins so that God would ignore us. Jesus would have never been born if God wanted to ignore us.

In James, we are told that we have not because we ask not. What kind of sense would that make if God wasn’t listening anyway? James goes on to say that when we do ask, we ask amiss, that we ask for things just for the sake of satisfying our own lust. Now that sounds like the prayer of a sinner.

Remember Janis Joplin? A lot of you are probably not old enough to actually remember her, but you have probably heard of her, and maybe even heard some of her music. She sang a song many moons ago called, “Oh, Lord, Won’t You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz?” In this song, she talked about a number of things that she would like to have (and probably could have bought for herself with the money she earned as a rock star), but that she allegedly wanted God to get for her. Of course, the song was satirical, but it seems to me that is the ultimate sinner’s prayer.

In any case, you have probably heard of the Sinner’s Prayer. The idea of the sinner’s prayer is to express repentance, and ask God’s Spirit to come into your life, to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. I’m not a big fan of rote prayers, myself, and I’m not sure who it was that decided that we needed one for a person just coming to know Christ. I should explain: I believe that God is a one size-fits-all-God, but, with that one exception, one-size-fits-all just doesn’t. There are a lot of one-size-fits-all solutions that work for most people in most situations, but any two people coming to know Christ are in two different situations. Yes, the basics are going to be the same: Express repentence (hopefully the individual already has actually repented), ask for forgiveness, and direction and help to do what God would have you to do. Some people, though, are going to need other things besides. To be honest, I think that each individual needs to decide for themselves what they want to pray for, with the understanding that the basic needs have to be in there, but then let them pray from the heart, and not recite some prayer that was written by somebody else.