"The author Warren takes you through a day by day daily devotional realization that there is a God who has a purpose and plan for your life. It has some scripture albeit all new paraphrase type non-translations with questions to consider and points to ponder. It builds up to day 7 (where I got to before I could read it no further) when you are ready to "invite Jesus into your heart". Here is the magic prayer that he includes to "receive salvation" I think it says it all: "Jesus, I believe in you and I receive you." To that he adds: "If you sincerely meant that prayer, congratulations! Welcome to the family of God!" This is not the watered down gospel, it is a false gospel, which is no gospel at all! I am very glad that the staff at Grace is available to review such chaff so that I can spend my precious time reading more profitable stuff." [source]

OK, I was reading a review on The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren (although this post has nothing to do with that book) and he mentioned that it is false that one prays to Jesus to take him into your heart to be saved. But I was always taught that it was that prayer or one like it, plus the repenting of sins that will bring you to God. Am I missing something, here? Is there another special step needed to be fulfilled to become a follower of Christ? If so, what is it?

You see, I was a follower of Christ some time ago but then I fell away (it seems to happen a lot. I seem to be the seeds that grew on the rocks---Matthew 4:5-6) again and now I've found my way back. And first of all, I want to know how you have formed the roots to have a good spiritual crop---and second, what is it that requires one to be a follower of Christ. I'm more or less looking for guidance. I seem to get too passionate and then end up getting wrapped up in my own egocentric pride and then fall away. I want to break that cycle. I need something real. Prayers, guidance, whatever, would be great!

Note: This post has nothing to do with the actual book, The Purpose Driven Life.

Do people still do these? They should. I wrote quite a lengthy testimony that I'll put behind a cut. In a nutshell, I recently (4.5 months) came to Christ out of atheism and LaVeyan Satanism.

The main thing I wanted to get across is encouragement in dealing with difficult non-believers. If you're dealing with some arrogant jerk who wants to argue and mock you and your faith, please stay strong and forgive him. I was that jerk.

If you want to just look at the bottom, there you'll find the rest of my points. Lord knows I love to hear myself talk. I think everything I have to say about this comes from Him...though I'm always ready now to be corrected.

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Just wanted to share with everyone that I spoke to my pastor after church this morning and told him I want to be baptised. :-)

well i'm quite nervous writing this I guess.

I grew up in a christian community but it was a really insular evangelical/charismatic/fundamentalist community and lots of things happened there that wounded me very badly so I gave up on it. its probably been about ten years since I've thought of myself as a christian.

But I think ts the right time for me to go back to exploring Christianity to see whether it is right for me or not. When I left I left because I was scared, confused and hurting not really because I didn't believe. I don't know whether I believe or not but I do feel pulled back to it.

The idea of going to church scares me so I don't know if I'll be doing that right yet (though my best friend who is and always has been a christian is moving to live near me sometime in the next year might go with me to begin with)

Also my views are very left wing and I'm a feminist so I am interested in liberal christianity, women friendly/gay friendly/involving practical activism towards justice and ending poverty/oppression type Christianity.

Currently I am reading the lost message of Jesus by Steve Chalke and I have some other books but does anyone know any books about feminist theology that might be useful?

I just want to kind of meet Christians who are also left wing activists I guess, and people who are willing to support me on my spiritual journey.