Don’t Drag People to the Altar
Too often I’ve seen well-meaning people drag someone they care about to the altar. If they don’t do it physically, they’ll exhort the person, “Go up! Go up!” so that the person is embarrassed if he doesn’t go up. Or else they’ll call out in front of everybody, “Jimmy needs to go up!” It could be a call for salvation or a call for healing.
Although they are doing it from a genuine desire to see the person get saved or healed, pushing someone like that really does more harm than good. If someone responds out of embarrassment, he may not be in any mood to receive anything, as his actual main sentiment is anger against the pushy person, though he may not want to express that publicly at the moment.
There is a real danger that a person could repeat a sinner’s prayer not from the heart but just out of a desire to please others, or from the motive, “If I just do this, this person will stop nagging me.” I know this from personal experience. I repeated a “sinner’s prayer” word for word because I knew that was what someone wanted. However, I was not saved by doing that! How could I have been unsaved when I had just confessed Jesus as Lord? Simple – it came from my head, not my heart. I knew in my heart that I didn’t really mean it. Romans 10:9 says you have to believe with your heart, not just confess with your mouth. I confessed with my mouth but I didn’t mean the words in my heart. Nothing happened. I was still just as much a sinner when I was done as when I started. (I did say similar things and actually mean them from the heart later, by the way!)
This has made me quite aware that there is the potential for false conversions when people are pressured into going forward. We don’t want to see anyone go to hell or stay sick, but if a person is not ready to make a decision, it is better to wait until he is.
Likewise, if someone is not really ready to believe that he receives his healing when hands are laid on him, it is better for him to wait until he knows he will be in faith after he hears and reflects on the Word more. We sometimes get in a rush to “close the sale” by getting people to the altar for healing. But if they are properly instructed from the Word first, they will have a much better chance to get healed and stay healed. It will be harder to get someone to receive healing eventually if he just had the experience of going up and not getting anything because he didn’t really know how divine healing is supposed to work.
Many of the successful old-time healing evangelists did exactly the opposite of rushing people to the altar. They would pass out “healing cards” to people who came to hear the Word for one or more services before they came up. You weren’t even allowed in the healing line if you hadn’t already been to such services to hear the Word preached about divine healing. The evangelists rightly did not want people to get in line with the attitude, “Oh, well, what have I got to lose; let’s try this and just see if anything happens” because they knew such people were not going to receive anything – they weren’t in faith. They wanted people’s faith to be built from hearing the Word before they came forward.
I don’t see anywhere in the gospels where Jesus begged and cajoled people to follow Him. If anything, He gave them opportunities to NOT follow Him. He would tell of the hardship that could be waiting if you followed Him. Consider His approach, which is the opposite of trying to beg people to come:
Matthew 8:19-20:
And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.
And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.
John 6:66-67:
From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.
Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?
Jesus’ response to the scribe was very different from saying, “Yes, follow me, and life will be super-easy for you from this moment forward.” Jesus’ response when many disciples left was very different from saying, “No, wait, come back! I promise I’ll avoid that hard topic of eating my flesh and drinking my blood from now on. Sorry I offended you. You twelve who are left, please don’t leave too.”
If He didn’t beg or push people, we should not do so either if we are walking in His steps.