It’s common to hear preachers and everyday Christians alike speak about the need for unbelievers to “accept Jesus into their hearts”.<\/p>\n\n\n
“When I was 17, I accepted Jesus into my heart.<\/i>“<\/p>\n\n\n
“At Vacation Bible School we had 13 kids accept Jesus into their hearts!<\/i>“<\/p>\n\n\n
“If you are ready to accept Jesus into your heart, come to the altar as the worship team plays.<\/i>“<\/p>\n\n\n
It’s a phrase you hear on many lips.<\/p>\n\n\n
But never see in the Bible.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
How do we justify that?<\/p>\n\n\n
And what does it even mean to “accept” Jesus “into your heart”?<\/p>\n\n\n
Does anybody know?<\/p>\n\n\n
As I have read slowly through Matthew and now into Acts, it’s hard to miss this fact: the push is never to “accept”.<\/p>\n\n\n
The key word is always “repent”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
It seems to me that in a modern American church, it might be possible to be a member for years – even decades – without ever being challenged to repent.<\/p>\n\n\n
But is it possible to even begin an authentic Christian journey without repentance?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s common to hear preachers and everyday Christians alike speak about the need for unbelievers to “accept Jesus into their hearts”. “When I was 17, I accepted Jesus into my heart.“ “At Vacation Bible School we had 13 kids accept Jesus into their hearts!“ “If you are ready to accept Jesus into your heart, come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5709,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5708\/revisions\/5709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}