Anyone have this experience as a Baptist?

I’m going to pray the sinner’s prayer again. I prayed it two years ago, but I didn’t really understand it, the importance of Christ’s death and it’s relationship to my sin…. Of course, that was why I prayed it two years ago. A year and a half earlier I prayed it. But i wasn’t even done with kindergarten back then so there’s no way I could have meant it. That’s why I got baptized that second time. Which reminds me: I’m going to need to talk to my pastor about scheduling a new one.

I hope it takes this time. It gets awfully scary wondering when the prayer will really be acceptable.

Extreme, I suppose, but I’ve run into it more than once.

Preaching an accurate Gospel is a great thing and I’m all for it. But, since Rick has no comments, I will ask it here: how do we avoid and paedobaptist version of this spiritual cul-de-sac? Paul exhorts us to treat the weak, the weak in faith even, as those for whom Christ died. He is, in context, talking about how we should treat professing Christians. If we go around worrying about them as those for whom Christ did not die, how can we possibly follow the Pauline exhortations?

9 thoughts on “Anyone have this experience as a Baptist?

  1. JATB

    I am reminded of a comment a woman once made to a friend of mine. She had just finished the first of the infamous Left Behind books, and she said, “It was so scary, after I finished it had had to pray the sinner’s prayer a couple of times just to make sure.”

    Just to make sure. A couple of times. The sinner’s prayer. THE sinner’s prayer. What is this “sinner’s prayer”? Where did it come from? Who wrote it? It’s not in the Bible, like the Lord’s Prayer. It’s not in the BCP, like the Prayer of Humble Access or the Collect for Purity.

    So, whence this “Sinner’s Prayer”, and who made it the sine qua non of conversion?

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  2. Paul

    As I read the first part and thinking about my baptist upbringing, it wasn’t so much the introspective part that stands out to me as the fact that the subjective, “are you REALLY sure” stuff was taught and preached over and over and over. But that just backs up you overall point.

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  3. DavidF

    THE LIFE OF JOHN DUNCAN, A. MOODY STUART.

    Banner of Truth 1991 (first published 1872)

    John Duncan – ‘The Baptists’ way of it would never do with me’, he used to say, ‘I would be aye be coming back another time and saying to them, I was not a right believer yon time.’ 200-1

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  4. thehiers

    I grew up United Methodist, but would attend many services, youth meetings, camps of a local Baptist church. I got saved LOTS of times and came close to getting “re-baptized” once, maybe twice. Thank God I’ve been freed from that hell of uncertainty.

    Richard H.

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  5. Justin Donathan

    I can relate to the post as well, and have many friends who prayed “the sinner’s prayer” lots of times and were baptized more than once. Especially after our youth pastor preached to us all that we should consider being rebaptized because it was so important to get your baptism and “getting saved” in the right order. Baptism was your first act of obedience so needed to come after your conversion – strange logic I know.

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  6. Josh S

    But of course part of treating people as those for whom Christ died isn’t saying and believing Christ actually died for them. That would be silly.

    BTW, check out my latest post. You might get something out of it.

    Reply

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