Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: Book Review

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

 Matthew 7:21-23

I’m starting a new series where I review Christian books I've read, and I wanted to kick things off with Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved by J.D. Greear.

This is a relatively short book centered on a struggle many believers face: assurance of salvation. Greear opens by sharing that he's actually been baptized four times because he kept feeling convicted that his faith during the previous baptism was not legitimate enough. And with each baptism, he prayed a new prayer of asking Jesus into his heart.

If you've ever read the passage from Matthew 7 above, it’s easy to worry and think, “I hope that's not me on judgement day.” Greear digs into exactly who Jesus is talking about in those verses, and I'll just say that for me personally, it felt like Greear was like "Yeah... that passage is not really talking about you."

JD then talks about how to get salvation, we need faith and repentance. And then he spends a few chapters breaking down what both of those really mean.

One thing that really stuck with me from this book is his definition of repentance. He said that repentance is

"The absence of settled defiance."

It’s not about achieving sinless perfection. It’s about a posture of surrender versus a posture of rebellion.

All in all, I liked this book. Personally, assurance isn't an issue I’ve heavily wrestled with in my own faith, but reading this gave me two major benefits:

-I didn't previously have the vocabulary to comfort someone who does struggle with assurance. Now I do.
-It gave me a much better lens for understanding friends who claim to accept Jesus, but whose lives and trajectories don't quite reflect that anymore.