Did I lose it or did I never have it to begin with.

[samurai_sarah]

Drunken mulled wine recipe. Sorry about that. :embarrassed:

[NotALoserLikeYou]

Two summers ago I sent my kids to VBS (Vacation bible school) at my friends church, a Calvary Chapel. It was nice and their main focus was to get kids to ask Jesus to be their "forever friend" and my youngest daughter brought home her certificate saying she did. Now, I've been a lifelong Christian and I still don't understand it. My daughter had just turned six by the way. It's clear they believed her choice had sealed her salvation for life. I tried to ask my friend, so was she unsaved before, and is she old enough for this decision, and she said well she is plenty old to know between right and wrong. So the day before was she going to hell? Then she refused to answer any more questions because she said she wasn't qualified.

I was raised believing you could lose your salvation, that was the official stance of my Pentecostal family and church. My mom is super fundielicious but no longer believes you can really lose your salvation. Most of the mainstream Christians I know believe you're always saved. I attended a weds night church that did prayer and healing services, praying in tongues, and the minister did not believe you could lose it. So it really varies widely. Personally I feel like you aren't saved in the morning but you lose it after you curse in the afternoon. I think God looks at the whole picture. And now I am like you, questioning everything.

[shedemei]

Maggie Mae: I think almost all Protestant sects believe that works do not lead to salvation.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_fide

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_gratia

[RosyDaisy]

That's not actually true. Some non-denominational sects believe in both grace and and work. Personally, I think Jesus makes this clear with his actions the parables. JMO though.

[Avalondaughter]

Interesting point.

I was born into a Catholic family and for many years attended both the Catholic church (because my family made me) and a mainline Protestant church with an evangelical bent (because I liked it better and really came to love the pastors and members of the congregation). I was a fearful child who worried way too much about hell and the devil and such, so I worried that doing all of the Catholic rituals would help me to go Heaven and keep the devil from "getting me" (whatever that mean). Since I never stopped worrying, I was ripe for picking by the evangelicals who told me the key was to ask Jesus into my heart and then I would be saved.

Between the ages of 10 and 16 I think I prayed and asked Jesus into my heart 4 separate times. Each time I never felt anything. Nothing seemed to "stick". I expected God to take away my fears (He didn't). I expected to automatically feel the need to be a better person. I didn't. I expected to be able to make sense of the Bible and have the words speak to me without someone else telling me exactly what chapter and verse to read to make the right point. I didn't.

I give various reasons for becoming a skeptical secular humanist by my late teens, but the silence of God is probably the top one.

So that does raise a question among those who believe. Was I never saved? Am I still saved? If I was never saved, why didn't God want to save me when I asked? If God still wants me saved, am I saved. If I drop dead right now, will I go to Heaven or Hell? (Oddly enough ,I think deep down there is still a part of me that's afraid of going to Hell, even if I will outwardly claim it doesn't exisit.)

[julie paradox]

And then there's my (still, I believe, heretical) stance:

We are all saved. That was the point.

What you do with that is up to you.