Hi there I'm Jeff and this is the 10 minute Bible Hour podcast.

Today's episode features Matt in the third part of a conversation with his friend Aaron Uteck.

Parts one and two can be found in episodes 205 and 2006.

Without any further ado, let's get to that intro music. I'm Matt, this is the 10 minute by mile hour podcast. I'm hanging out with my buddy

Aaron Utect. We had a really good question from somebody who goes by the

Reddit handle Rome, LPIS 1212, about the idea of the initiating prayer,

the initiating moment at which somebody's like, you know what, I think there's something to the Jesus thing and I think I want to sign up and follow Jesus.

And so how do I do that?

Well, for a long time, there's been this idea that you pray this prayer that is drawn from different parts of the New Testament. It's all

Biblei, but it is a relatively recent innovation. Prior to that, one might enter

the church by going to the high church and having them

baptize you and then that initiates your relationship with the church and

having a relationship with the church is how you have a relationship with God

or enter into following God. But in the age of

Protestantism there's a little more skepticism about that mechanism of having that

all funneled through the church and so inevitably there comes a moment where this idea of an initiating prayer

surfaces. This becomes very popular starting in the early 1800s especially in

America and in evangelicalism and as maybe come under appropriate scrutiny a little bit more

here in recent years and that is what I think the question that Rome for short is asking us here

this individual rightly points out that they can't find any evidence of a

sinners prayer in the Bible but that rather following Jesus seems to be the

rather nebulous formula for how one starts as a Christian, how one gets in.

...