Welcome to Tim Minut Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Keith Simon.

And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now we're learning how to follow Jesus

by working our way through the Gospel of Luke. If you've never seen the satirical

website the Babylon B either on Twitter or Facebook or wherever you see that kind of stuff

you really should take a look at it it's pretty funny they poke fun at everyone

especially Christians and in one recent headline it said this

this Bible lacking sinners prayer returned for full refund and in this fictional article there's a disgruntled customer that says,

I searched the Bible through and through and couldn't find anything about a magic prayer

I could lead people to say in order to get them instantly into the kingdom and forever more secure

and their eternal salvation no matter what their life looks like afterward.

Obviously the point is that

this disgruntled customer couldn't find the magic prayer in the Bible because there isn't one.

But there are a lot of people who believe that

magical prayer is there.

A lot of us have been taught to think of a Christian as one who has

prayed a prayer, confess their sins, ask Jesus to be in their heart, and while that's not entirely wrong, I'm not sure it's entirely right.

That kind of thinking leads us to ask, what's the minimum amount you have to believe so that God will let you into heaven?

And that kind of thinking makes the rest of the Bible's teaching optional, at least as far

as being a Christian is concerned.

But can you imagine Jesus ever say anything like that?

Can you imagine Jesus saying, hey, you don't really have to do anything I say,

...