Hey there. Thanks for listening to the Greg Laurie podcast, a ministry supported by Harvest Partners. I'm Greg Laurie, encouraging you. If you want to find out more about Harvest Ministries and learn more about how to become a Harvest Partner, just go to harvest.org. Welcome to the 35th Harvest Crusade. I'm Greg Laurie, and I'm glad to be here with all of you tonight. Over the years we have seen over 350,000 people come down on this field and pray a prayer and make a public stand to follow Jesus Christ.
350,000 people. And I'm going to talk about that tonight and my message that is titled, The Sinner's Prayer. But first I want to start with a story about a guy that needed some work. He was looking for employment and he heard they were hiring down at the local zoo. So he went down and said, I heard you were hiring here.
Maybe a janitorial position is open. And the zookeeper said, sir, I am sorry. We just filled that position. But noticing you are kind of a big dude.
And I don't want you to be offended by what I am about to say. But our gorilla died the other day. And we have ordered a new gorilla. He is on his way. But we need somebody to take his place temporarily.
So here is what we are asking. If we had a custom gorilla suit designed just to fit you, would you be willing to pretend to be the gorilla for the next week or so until the real gorilla arrives? And when they told him how much they would pay, the guy quickly agreed. So the next day he felt kind of foolish there in his gorilla suit in the gorilla cage. He thought, no one is going to believe I am an actual gorilla.
But people were believing it. They were enjoying it. By day two he is beating on his chest. He is kind of having fun.
By day three he is swinging back and forth on the vine really enjoying this whole masquerade pretending to be a gorilla. And he got a little too excited and swung a little too far and landed right in the lion's den. And a lion starts walking toward him and he thinks, oh no.
If I cry out for help everyone will know that I am a fraud. But if I stay silent this lion will attack me. The lion got closer and closer. And finally the guy in the gorilla suit cried out, help!
And the lion said, shut up or you will get us both fired. You know there are a lot of people pretending to be something that they actually are not. There are a lot of people that say they are Christians who actually are not Christians. 74 percent of Americans say they believe in God. 63 percent identify themselves as Christians. But are they really Christians?
You know the Bible says, chuck up on yourself. Are you really Christians or are you just pretending to be Christians when you actually aren't at all? Now I know most of you in this stadium are believers. You are followers of Jesus. But some of you are not. And you might be wondering, why would I want to even become a Christian?
They are not the most popular people around obviously. And what is in it for me? Well let me just answer that for a moment. If you become a Christian you will discover the meaning of life. Because everyone gets around to asking, why am I here on this earth? Why do I exist? What is the meaning of my life?
And when you put your faith in Christ you will find the answer to all those questions because God created you to know Him. He created you effectively with a hole in your heart that only He can fill. Dennis Quaid mentioned that while we were talking a few moments ago. Dennis had everything Hollywood had to offer. He had fame. He had success.
He had money. But there was a big hole in his heart. And that hole was filled through a relationship with God in Jesus Christ.
And so you will discover the meaning of life if you become a Christian. If you become a Christian God will forgive you of all of your sins. Some of you are wracked with guilt. You wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the things that you have done. The people you have hurt.
The devastation you have caused. But God can forgive you of your sin and remove your guilt. The Bible says that we will confess our sin.
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And if you become a Christian and this is the most important one of all. You will know that you will go to heaven one day. That is the most important.
What matters more? Every one of us is going to enter into the afterlife. The statistics on death are really impressive. One out of every one person will die. And so the question is where are you going to spend the afterlife? Well if you put your faith in Christ you can know for sure that you will go to heaven when you die.
Jesus said, I am the way the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father but by Me. Your life will go from hopelessness to hope. From black and white to color when Christ comes in your life. And in a little bit I am going to give you an opportunity to do what many have done over the last 35 years. I am going to ask you to pray a prayer that we call the sinner's prayer that I will talk about in a moment. A simple prayer we use simply as Christ to come into your life. And I will ask you to come down on this field and make a public stand to follow Christ. So you be thinking about that because I am going to ask you to make that stand in just a few moments. Let me tell you how I became a Christian.
It was the last thing on my mind. Age 17. 1970. Going the wrong way in life. I was raised in an alcoholic home. My mother was married and divorced seven times. Had a lot of boyfriends. She was living the partying, drinking lifestyle. She drank to excess every night.
Basically passed out. I had to grow up fast. I had to take care of her. In many ways I was more the parent than the relationship.
I didn't want to follow in her footsteps before I knew it. I was in high school. I was partying with all my friends. Drinking. Getting drunk. I am thinking I don't even enjoy this.
Why am I even doing it? But then the whole drug culture came along. We were told drugs would make us more aware. There was some truth to that because as I began to experiment with drugs I became more aware of how empty I was inside.
It was almost like a process of elimination. I didn't want to live the lifestyle of my mother and the other adults I knew. I didn't want to live this druggy lifestyle that I had found myself in. Where was the answer? I transferred from one high school to another because on the school I was transferring to they had a strong drug culture.
Meaning that the people in charge kind of looked the other way. So I went there to change but instead of finding a drug culture I found a Jesus culture. On my first day of school some of my friends said, Greg watch out we have a lot of Jesus freaks on this campus. I said the last thing Greg Laurie will ever do is become a Jesus freak.
Famous last words. Of course I heard the gospel for the first time in a way that I understood. I prayed what is sometimes called the sinner's prayer.
This can happen for you tonight. Your life can be changed by Jesus Christ. We talk about the sinner's prayer. Some people say there is no sinner's prayer in the Bible. There actually is a sinner's prayer in the Bible. It is in a story that Jesus told us found in Luke chapter 18. Jesus says, Two men went into the temple to pray. One was a Pharisee. That would be a religious leader. The other was a despised tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and he prayed this, God I thank you I am not like other people.
Cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I am certainly not like this tax collector over here. I fast twice a week.
I give a tenth of my income. And the tax collector stood at a distance. He dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead he beat his chest in sorrow saying, Oh God be merciful to me a sinner. Now Jesus offers this conclusion. I tell you that sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For those that exalt themselves will be humbled and those that humble themselves will be exalted.
We will stop there. God sees things differently than we see. We look at the outside. God looks on the inside.
The Bible says that people judge by outward appearance but the Lord looks on thoughts and intentions. And we are such a culture that is absorbed with the way that we look. I mean every time I turn around I am reading a new article about someone who dies taking a selfie. Right?
They are at the edge of a cliff or standing on the railroad track. I want to get this selfie. Yeah.
Crazy. And when someone takes a picture and you are in the group of people you always want to see it first. You say, don't post that. I don't like the way I look. I look too fat. Right? We put so much emphasis on the way that we look.
Sixteen billion dollars a year is spent on cosmetic surgery in America. And that is Newport Beach alone. It is really. I am just kidding. The mayor of Newport Beach is here.
He is probably not happy with me. But this is funny. A study showed that babies as young as one day old were drawn to more attractive faces. So you say, what?
Yeah. A baby wants to look at an attractive face. So if you want to find out if you are attractive or not look at a baby. If they turn away you are unattractive.
If they smile maybe you are okay. Right? But things are not always as they appear. You know people take their dogs with them everywhere.
You probably noticed that. And they have all these doodles now. All these versions of poodles and other breeds that are mixed together. And I have read about a person who actually was ordering what was described as a dog of his dreams. It was a specialized poodle so he ordered two of them and it turns out they looked a little different to him. He took them to his vet. They actually weren't poodles at all. They were actually giant rodents that had been put on steroids.
Okay. So not good. Kind of gross too.
Though I would like to see one of these rodents on steroids. God sees things differently than we do. Two men are praying. One appears to be devout and religious. The other appears to be wicked and sinful.
But actually things are not as they always appear. My son Jonathan who you saw appear a little bit ago has an older brother. Had an older brother.
Still has one. His name is Christopher. He has been in heaven now for 16 years. And he took Jonathan to a church.
A church of recovering addicts. And Jonathan was a clean cut kid. Jonathan dressed well.
He put on a clean shirt. And he goes to this church and he was kind of shocked by the people that were attending. The guy that greeted them in the front had a patch over his eye and a skull and a crossbones tattooed on his head.
Right? And so this is kind of a rough bunch and Jonathan's kind of judging them. Even though he's not walking with God at this point in his life like his brother Christopher was, he's kind of judging these guys because of the way they looked on the outside.
Because they looked like the way they used to look. You could tell where they had come from. But then as the service went on and they saw these people worshiping God it dawned on him. They're the ones that are pleasing to God.
Not me. And sometimes we think oh I'm a good person and I go to church or I read my Bible and I do these certain things. I've been baptized. Those are all great things. And every Christian should do them.
But sometimes we can be good on the outside and not be right on the inside. We think by living a good life we will find ourselves getting to heaven. But you're not gonna get to heaven by living a good life at all.
If you wanted to sum up all the religions of the world you could do it in one word. Do. Do this and maybe you'll get to heaven. Do that and maybe you'll reach nirvana. Do this other thing and maybe God will accept you. But Christianity can be summed up in one single word.
Done. Salvation is done. It's given to you as a gift from God.
Purchased by Jesus Christ on the cross when he bore the sin of the world and he said it is finished. Let me tell you something that might surprise you. There's gonna be some bad people in heaven and there's gonna be some good people in hell. I know I lost some people just then.
Like what are you even talking about? I thought heaven was for good people. No. Heaven is not for good people. Heaven is for forgiven people you see. Forgiven people. There could be a good person in hell meaning that they lived a good life. They thought they were moral. But they fell short of God's standards. But there could be a bad person that makes it into heaven because if they will admit their sin and ask Christ to forgive them he will. Listen. No matter what sins you have committed God will forgive you tonight if you'll admit those sins and turn your back on them and start to follow Jesus Christ.
It's true. Think of that man we call the thief on the cross. Remember Jesus was crucified between two criminals. Actually the crimes he committed were probably far worse than stealing. He probably was a murderer because Rome would not crucify a thief but they would certainly crucify an insurrectionist so maybe he rebelled against Rome.
I don't know what he did exactly. But he was being crucified for it. As Jesus is hung on the cross the whole crowd begins to mock him saying if he's really the son of God let him save himself. That thief joined in with the other thief and said the same thing to Jesus. Then Jesus gave a statement that changed everything. The first words of Jesus on the cross were Father forgive them for they know not what they do.
The hardened heart of that criminal melted. He realized that Jesus was the very son of God. He turned to Jesus and said Lord remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus said truly truly I say to you today you will be with me in paradise. A bad person got into heaven. Do you see how it works? And God can do that for you because when you become a Christian you become a different person on the inside.
The Bible says if any man be in Christ he is an altogether different kind of person. Old things pass away. Behold everything becomes fresh and new. I love it when it rains.
Everything is clean. Everyone gets a free car wash. You might even see a beautiful rainbow and that is what happens when you put your faith in Christ. I mentioned the sinner's prayer. Here is this guy that says God be merciful to me a sinner. Here is the prayer I lead people in. I don't always pray it exactly the same way but this is the gist of the prayer. This is the prayer that I will lead you in if you choose to pray it with me.
It starts with these words. God I know that I am a sinner. God I know that I am a sinner. God I know that I am a sinner.
That is what this man said. He said God be merciful to me a sinner and a better translation of that would be God be merciful to me the sinner. This guy was a mega sinner. A sinner on steroids if you will.
He knew it. God has given us the Ten Commandments. Some people say I live by the Ten Commandments. That is all the religion I need. What are the Ten Commandments? They don't know.
Let me tell you some of them. You shall not have any other gods before them. You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain. You shall not lie. You shall not steal. You shall not commit adultery. Every one of us have broken those commandments. The Bible says if you offend in one point of the law you are guilty of all of it. You are a sinner.
You have to take responsibility for your sin. Another definition of the word sin means to miss a mark. Think of an archery contest. The objective is to get your arrow into the bulls eye or at least hit the target. One person may fire ten arrows and all ten of them hit the target but none of them hit the bulls eye then I may fire ten arrows and none of them hit the target. I hit a cow over here.
I hit a tree over there. If we both miss the mark then maybe I miss the mark more than you miss the mark but it doesn't matter because if you fall short of God's standards you have sinned. Jesus said be perfect as my Father in Heaven is perfect.
Someone says well what are you perfect? No. That is where Jesus comes in. That is why I need Jesus.
I have to admit my sin. I heard about a gorilla named Coco. By the way that is two gorilla illustrations in one sermon. Do you know that I give many sermons with no gorilla illustrations but somehow I have ended up with two in this one plus a story about rodents injected with steroids.
Ok. So there is a real gorilla that was named Coco that knew sign language. This gorilla could sign one thousand words. Another interesting thing about Coco is she loved cats. So she had a few cats as pets.
She was very gentle with them. And one day Coco the gorilla that knows sign language got upset about something and ripped the sink off the wall of her pen that she was living in. Just ripped that sink right off the wall. Someone came in and they signed to Coco why did you do this? And Coco signed back the cat did it.
Even gorillas lie. We do the same thing. It is not my fault. I am not responsible. It is the way I was raised.
It is my childhood. It is the fault of my teacher. It is the fault of my boss. It is the fault of my dog.
It is the fault of the cat. I have to admit that I have sinned. Every sinner needs a savior. Broken people need healing. Captives need freedom.
Hopeless people need hope. And the guilty need forgiveness. We need a savior. So when I lead people in a sinner's prayer I say pray this after me. God I know that I am a sinner. And I am sorry for my sin. And I know that you are the savior. A sinner needs a savior. And Jesus is the savior of the world. Jesus will save you from your sin tonight. Your sin tonight. The Bible says, whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. And I love the word saved. We save it for dramatic situations like maybe when a firefighter rushes into a burning building and brings someone out. Maybe a child. And we say the firefighter saved the life of the child.
And certainly that is the appropriate word to you. We all know that last Saturday there was an assassination attempt on President Trump. And miraculously he was only wounded. He himself said this. He himself said it was God himself who stopped the unthinkable from happening. And then he said I saved you. I saved you. I saved you. And then he said I stand here today because of the grace of God because I shouldn't be here. He knows that God saved him.
Applause. By the way if President Biden had been shot I would be saying the same thing about him. Because we don't want to see violence against people running for office in our country.
tablets, not bullets in America. But I am thankful God spared President Trump's life. But another man died that day. As you know he is a firefighter.
His name is Corey Compatore. And as the bullets began to fly he threw his body over the family that was with him. His daughters and his wife and he was shot and killed. He took the bullet for them. He saved them. And Jesus took the bullet for you at the cross when he died for the sins of the world.
Jesus came to pay a debt he did not owe because we owed a debt we could not pay. A sinner. That is you.
That is me. That is the Savior. That is Jesus. And what does He save us from? He saves us from hell. Oh yes hell. You know sometimes people say, I don't like all these hellfire and brimstone preachers. Really I haven't heard any lately.
Where do you find them these days? Seems like we want to skirt the subject of hell. But Jesus spoke more about hell than all the other preachers in the Bible put together. Hell is real. And the last thing that a God of love wants is for any man or any woman to spend eternity separated from Him in this place called hell. Hell is isolation.
Hell is separation. And there are people that say, I don't want God in my life. I don't want God involved in anything I say or do.
And one day when you pass into eternity you will get what you wanted. You didn't want God. You won't have God. You don't want to go to hell. That is why Jesus died on the cross for you.
So you don't have to. He is a Savior and a Savior will save you from a future judgment if you put your faith in Him tonight. You say well I will just clean my life up and come to Christ. You don't clean your life up and come to Christ.
You come to Christ and He will clean your life up. You come as you are. You come with your sins. You come with your weaknesses. You come with your addictions.
You come with your questions. You just come to Jesus. Jesus says, come to Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. You come to Him and you watch what God will do. So when I lead people in what I call the sinner's prayer I have them pray, God I am sorry for my sin. Thank you for sending Jesus to die on the cross for my sin and rising again from the dead. And then I have that person pray, Jesus come into my life right now and be my Savior and my Lord.
And that is what this is all about. Christianity is a relationship with Christ Himself living inside of you. Sometimes people will say, I need a little religion.
Listen friend. You don't need a little religion. You need a lot of Jesus and He wants to come into your life right now. Jesus says, behold I stand at the door and I knock and if you will hear my voice and open the door I will come in. So a little while ago I was hanging out with Jonathan Rumi and Jonathan played the role of Lonnie Frisbee in Jesus Revolution.
He also plays the role of Jesus in the chosen. So I said to Jonathan, hey would you like to come over to our house for dinner? He said, sure. What is your address? I gave him my address. I call my wife Kathy.
That is Jonathan playing the role of Jesus there on the screen. So I call my wife Kathy. Hey Kathy Jonathan Rumi is coming over to my house or to our house for dinner. And so she is cooking something. I think she was cooking fish as a matter of fact.
That seemed appropriate. And she said it was so weird because our kitchen faces the street in front of our house. She said, it was so weird I am at the stove. I am cooking the fish and all of a sudden this car drives by and it is Jonathan driving the car but he looked like Jesus. And she said it was like Jesus was driving a car in front of our house.
Looking around Jesus trying to find out where you live. And then he comes and he knocks on the door. We know he is not Jesus. We know he is an actor that plays the role. But it was just kind of funny because he looks so much like him.
And so this is the idea. Imagine if Jesus was driving by your house and he was knocking at your door. I mean the real Jesus. Would you let him in? It is your choice. See you have a choice if Christ is knocking at the door of your life, which he is.
Which he is right now. I either open the door and I welcome him in or I leave the door shut. It is sort of like this. You invite Jesus into your house. Welcome in Jesus.
So glad to have you. Can I get you something to eat? He says sure. He takes a seat. You go into the kitchen.
Open the fridge. Oh devil's food cake. I can't serve him that. What do I serve him? And you are thinking of what to make Jesus and suddenly you hear noise in your front room.
What is going on? You walk into your front room. Jesus has the front door of your house open and he is throwing your furniture out on the front lawn. Excuse me. Hello.
Jesus. What are you doing? That is my furniture that I bought at Sears and I don't know why you are doing that. He says just stand back. He is taking down your wall covering. He is ripping up your carpet.
Lord I have had that since the 70s. That shag carpet. He is tearing it up. He is throwing out your lava lamps. You probably don't even know what that is.
Google it later. He is changing everything and you are saying well isn't this great. You ask Jesus to come into your house and he takes everything away. Jesus says would you just stand back for a moment. He lets out a loud whistle. A huge moving van backs up into your driveway. Written on the side of it are the words Father and Son Moving Company. They roll out beautiful new carpet. Whoa. That is beautiful.
I have never seen that before. He puts up new wall covering. He brings in handcrafted furniture.
Beautiful paintings are placed on your wall. You say Lord you have really good taste. He says I know I did create the universe.
And then it dawns on you. Jesus only got rid of the old stuff to put something far better in its place. See.
So listen. You asked the question tonight Greg do I have to give up anything to become a Christian. Do I have to give up anything to follow Jesus.
As a matter of fact you do. You have to give up hell for heaven. Emptiness for fulfillment.
Hopelessness for hope. It is God's trade-in deal and it is here for you now. Lord Jesus I know that I am a sinner but I know that you are the Savior who died on the cross for my sin and rose again from the dead. Jesus come into my life right now and be my Savior and my Lord.
I choose to follow you from this moment forward. Who wants to pray that prayer with me tonight. There is no magic in this prayer. You could pray this prayer and not mean it and absolutely nothing would happen. But if you really want to know God and you pray that from the depths of your heart I am telling you that God in heaven will hear this prayer and He will answer this prayer and Christ will come into your life tonight and everything will change for you.
You can take that to the bank. You have God's word on it in the very word He has given to us the Bible. That is why in a few moments I am going to ask you to make that public stand to follow Jesus Christ. You have to realize you are a sinner. You have to recognize Christ died on the cross for your sin. You have to be willing to turn from that sin. The Bible says we need to repent and be converted. The word repent means to do an about face.
It is a military term. It is like I am going this way and now I am going this way. You repent of your sins. God will forgive you but you must turn from that sin. Then you receive Christ into your life and then you must do it publicly. Jesus said, if you will acknowledge Me before people I will acknowledge you before My Father and the angels in heaven. But if you deny Me before people I will deny you before the Father and the angels. That is why I am going to ask you to do something that might be a little challenging but it will be worth it.
I am going to ask you in a moment to leave your seat and come down on this field behind this platform and make your public stand to follow Christ. This is a moment that is very special. In fact you may never have another moment like this again in your life.
Don't let this opportunity slip by. Let's pray that prayer. Let's see what God will do in your life. Because God loves you. And God has a plan for you.
There is someone I am speaking to right now that has thought very seriously of taking their life. You have thought nobody cares about me. Nobody would miss me if I were gone.
You couldn't be more wrong. Before people care about you then you realize you would be deeply missed. But God loves you. And God has a plan for you. And I don't want you to give up hope. This is what you have been looking for.
This is who you have been looking for. Jesus will come into your life and He will change you. But you must come to Him.
And I am going to give you an opportunity to do that right now. Alright let's bow our heads and pray. Pray this after me. For Jesus I know that I am a sinner. But I know that you are the Savior who died on the cross for my sin.
And rose again from the dead. I turn from my sin. I repent of it.
I am sorry for it. I choose to follow you Jesus from this moment forward. As my Savior and my Lord. As my God and my friend. Fill me with your Holy Spirit. Thank you for hearing this prayer. Thank you for answering this prayer. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. God bless you. God bless you. Hey everybody thanks for listening to this podcast. To learn more about Harvest Ministries follow this show and consider supporting it. Just go to Harvest.org. And to find out how to know God personally go to Harvest.org and click on Know God.
