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Rushing Commitment in the Land of Belonging
Once upon a time, a friend and I had the first Bible study ever with a friend and new co-worker. It was a great time focused on hearing each other and answering keen questions about what Jesus is about and what does following Jesus mean? Towards the end of the time, my friend asked, “Have you ever met Jesus as your personal savior?” The new co-worker replied, “Well, no I guess not. But what does that mean?”
My friend explained it meant saving a prayer and inviting Jesus into your heart and promising to make him Lord. He asked if the co-worker wanted to say the prayer. He said, “Sure. I guess so.” And we said the prayer together.
About a week later, this co-worker was going to a New Christians class with another person in our community. They spoke in more depth about these questions he had. He said, “I kinda feel like I was rushed into it. Saying the prayer.”
A couple of points:
- Our practice of the sinner’s prayer as the point of salvation is not in the Bible. That doesn’t make it wrong, but we need to recognize it comes out of the Solo Fide idea of Luther’s Reformation and evolved in its current form in the Twentieth Century (see Sinner’s Prayer on Wikipedia). This should make us do some more work if we treat it as “the point of salvation”.
- The Biblical indication of a person’s readiness to follow Jesus is they confess, seek, or ask what they must do. Jesus modeled this (Matthew 3:13-14). See John 1:35-50; Acts 2:37, 8:36 and many other scriptures. Commitment is do, say, go, not a passive “receive”. It naturally follows a conviction that compels a response. We receive a lot for free from our allegiance to Jesus, but we must do the committing. This means that — in my The Journey Map framework — the transition from Revelation Rhythm to Immersion in someone’s first journey with Jesus is (1) they ask what they should do now, or (2) they start doing what Jesus says, or (3) they go after Jesus in some way, all because of the Jesus they see revealed to them.
- When people haven’t belonged, we must be careful with belonging and commitment. Some people have a story of being separated from family and community. They find belonging with us, and given enough time, they begin to see who they could be and who Jesus could be to them. But if we push or rush this process too fast, they may “commit” to fit in or keep access to us. Such a commitment is not on an identity level. It’s on a survival level. Therefore it’s not “baptizing them into the name [identity] of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” It won’t always stop their journey, but it certainly will leave something that needs cleared up later.
#Belonging #Immersion #RevelationRhythm
