Should We Encourage People to Pray the “Sinner’s Prayer”?

Ongoing Repentance

We should always, in our evangelism, encourage people to confess their sins to God, to cast themselves on God’s mercy, to ask God to save them. We should always encourage people to pray that God would have mercy on them in response to the gospel that we’re sharing. The problem is when we reduce that response to a form of words, sometimes known as “the sinner’s prayer,” all of a sudden people feel like, Well, I said the prayer, so I’m good, right? As long as I say the right words, I’m saved.

That’s not at all the way the Bible talks about our response of repentance and faith. Repentance and faith might be expressed the very first time in a prayer, but repentance and faith is not something that you just do once and never think about again. Repentance and faith is an ongoing act.

When Paul talks about the Thessalonian response to the gospel, he points to them as a model for other people. He says everybody can see how they turned from idols to serve God and then wait for Jesus, who saves us from the coming wrath. People weren’t hearing about a prayer that the Thessalonians prayed, though they probably did initially.

Rather, what they were hearing about was an ongoing life of repentance and faith, and this is what we want to call people to. So definitely ask and encourage people to pray, but then explain to them what it means to repent and believe. That’s so much more than just a one-time prayer prayed and never considered again.

Michael Lawrence is the author of Conversion: How God Creates a People.

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