Page 49 Should I save? Invest? If so, how and using what method? What bank should I use? Should I use credit cards? Which and how often? How should my spouse and I divide up the division of labor in our household? (E.g., who’s going to cut the grass, wash the dishes, take out the garbage, etc.?) Should I buy or lease a car? What type of car and how many? Christians have gone bonkers trying to find ,the perfect will of God in these matters. And they don’t need to. I repeat: As long as you are in God’s moral will, the above decisions are left to your choice. That statement alone should remove a load off your shoulders. Let’s take the question of ,which job should I take? An illegal job that would compromise your honesty would be outside of the parking lot. We can safely say that to make your career selling illegal drugs is outside of God’s will, for instance. But the many jobs that have no immoral implications associated with them are all within the parking lot. The choice as to which one to take is left to you. Now that still leaves us with a question: By what criteria should we choose between parking spaces? Do we expect God to give us some special revelation on these matters? Or do we just throw up a coin and choose based upon which side the coin lands?
Saving faith is not a decision that is made, and it is not a mouthing of a certain formula. Even if the formula is recited in prayer, this is not saving faith. Manipulating a person to say go through certain motions and say certain words does him no good whatever. This is not saving faith. This is dangerous indeed. Can a man really be saved by saying 'yes' to a series of questions? Have we done them any favor by allowing them to think so? This is a misunderstanding of saving faith. It is a confusion of professed faith with true saving faith. This mistake has resulted in the unprecedented number of false converts which this century of evangelism has produced. Decisions and numbers there are, but the 'converts' are notoriously unconverted. This is a direct result of confusing decisions with true faith, and it is a blight on the church. It is also inevitable. And it is shameful. And it is harmful, for we have convinced unconverted people that they are safe.
Fred Zaspel