Here's what I mean: I prayed to receive Christ at the age of 9. My cousin, Jason, shared the gospel with me one summer when I was in Arizona visiting family. He explained to me, essentially, that I was a sinner and that because I didn't have Christ in my heart, I would go to hell when I died. Well, that was enough to scare me into some kind of action and he prayed with me to receive Christ. (Side-note here: I am a very visual person and so to tell a 9 year old with an active imagination that Christ is going to come into my heart, you can only imagine what went through my head!) I'm not sure what I expected to happen after we prayed together, but I honestly have to say it felt kind of anti-climactic. There were no big flashes of light, the choirs of angels didn't start singing....my aunt bought me a real Bible (not an illustrated one) and after that week, I flew home to Minnesota where I received no instruction on how to live out this so-called faith.
So here's issue number 1 that I take with this whole asking Christ into your heart thing: Becoming a Christian is about repentance and relying on God's grace to help you through it. At age 9, I'm not even sure I really grasped what sin was, let alone how to repent from it. Second, I think that when people use this terminology, they need to be really careful to tell the person they're reaching out to what being a Christ-follower means. It isn't easy. Without God, it's impossible. I don't mean that we should scare people away from following Christ, but I do think that a lot less people would walk away from the faith if they understood what they were getting into at the outset. Most people, upon trying something new, try it because it looks fun or easy, but once they realize how difficult something really is they give up. But we also need to show them that for every hardship there is abundant blessing. That God's grace is truly enough for our every need. That God has so much more for us than what we will ever give up for Him.
I'm going to end by quoting Jeff's blog
