For a couple years, people have been telling me about this sermon on YouTube by Paul Washer. It’s an hour-long message he gave at a youth conference that was shocking and disturbing to thousands of people. Why? Because he told them that even though they prayed the “sinner’s prayer,” they still might not be saved.
I could never find an hour to sit down and watch it (YouTube doesn’t work on an airplane!)… until I found myself on the Superferry today for a 3-hour journey back from Maui, and discovered it had Internet access even in the middle of the Ka Iwi channel.
Here’s my take: basically, Washer is unearthing the old Lordship-salvation debate from a few decades ago. He’s confronting the way most American Christians try to bring people to Jesus: get ‘um to a church service or crusade, have ‘um walk down the aisle, make ‘um recite a certain prayer, then tell ‘um they’re good to go. Even if their lives look exactly the same after that experience as they did before.
To illustrate the difference Christ should make in a person’s life, he gives an example of being late for an appointment, and trying to use an excuse that you were run over by a 30-ton logging truck in the middle of the highway. If you said that, it would make you a liar or a madman. He says, “It is impossible to have an encounter with something as large as a logging truck and not be changed. My question to you is this: what is larger, a logging truck or God?”
It’s a message that will challenge you to examine the basis of your salvation: a magic incantation you recited at one point in your life, or an ongoing relationship with God that brings continual transformation? If you can find a spare hour, watch the YouTube version below.
Or download the MP3 here and toss it on your iPod for the commute.