Praying the sinner's prayer…

I was raised in a denomination that does not pray the sinner’s prayer. I guess you can figure out that I was not raised a baptist! I had a friend tell me that Michael Jackson had met with Andre and Sandra Crouch in the last couple of months prior to his death. So I googled andre crouch michael jackson and found a number of entries. Some praising God that Michael had accepted Christ and others setting the story straight. One quote caught my eye: …”There was NO actual sinner’s prayer however.”
I’ve been working diligently on a tool to use in introducing seekers to following Jesus. This has involved a kind of deep immersion in the first four books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the gospels. Unfortunately, there was NO actual sinner’s prayer by any one of the followers of Jesus in the gospels. I guess we can say for certain that without the ‘sinner’s prayer’ there is no repentance, can’t we? Uh, sorry, but I’m going to have to say, no way! If the quote had been the other way, “He prayed the sinner’s prayer,” I am afraid, after my recent study that I would have to still say, I don’t know. You see, the state of a person’s heart is in God’s hands, and from what I have read, in the hands of Jesus.
Repentance, that heart and mind-change that is motivated by the desire to turn around and follow Jesus, is an action that can’t be measured by human understanding or the performance of a ritual. No matter how proud we are of its effectiveness, altar calls and sinner’s prayers can’t really tell us if a person has begun to follow Jesus. I pray that Jesus found his lost sheep, Michael Jackson. Just as I pray that he finds the lost sheep in many church congregations around the world!