Look Out For Humanism! It Will Undermine Your Prayer Life.

We must avoid a positive, humanistic view of the human will, or else we will underestimate the need for prayer for people's hearts. Here is what I mean...
 

1. Humanism teaches that human beings are either basically good, or at least born as blank slates. Neither statement is true. The human soul is born spiritually dead -- that is, lacking the Holy Spirit of God,  spiritually unclean, guilty in Adam, and powerless against the inner sin-nature.  See Paul in Ephesians 2:1-3.  Even if a person's moral conscience is instructed well, that doesn't mean they have inner power to do what they know is right. 
   
2. One deep, serious fault in humanistic Christian theology is a weak, wishy-washy view of the human race's inborn sinful state.
3. The human race, outside of Christ, is under Satan’s sovereignty. 1 John 5:19.
   1. Let us be clear: Human beings are still human beings. We were not turned into demons by Adam’s sin. We're still made in God's image (James 3:9). Our God-created human natures remain intact, even though its in a defiled, powerless state. I've read some wild teachings that claimed that human beings literally have Satan's nature in them, but this is untrue 
   2. But Jesus said it takes God’s “strong man” (Himself) to invade the householder’s home (Satan and his kingdom), for the strong man to plunder the householder’s goods (enable people to believe and be saved). Luke 11:21-22. Every conversion to Jesus Christ is a miraculous deliverance from the evil one. And He is the one who does it, each and every time!
4. Unsaved people are spiritually blind. 1 Corinthians 1, 2 Cor. 4.
   1. A person can't make a free choice if he or she is chained by ignorance.
      1. This is why people absolutely need to know the Gospel. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Rom. 10:17). You can't believe in a Savior about whom you have heard nothing!
      2. Even when the information is available and enters the ears or the eyes, the Lord must spiritually open the mind to pay attention to it (as in Lydia's case, in Acts 16:14). The Holy Spirit must bring conviction. So natural human reason, by itself, is not adequate to the need.
5. Unsaved people by instinct don’t like the light of Christ and run from it and Him. John 3:19-20.  The problem isn't just Satan interfering in people's hearts. We're all born with a natural pride of self, which leads to a sinful life, rebellion against God, and a fear of conviction of sin.
   1. However, Christ also said in the same passage that there are people who “live by the truth” (John 3:21). Those are the sorts of people who do not run from the light. Rather, they come to the light of the Gospel. Cornelius in Acts 10 was an important example of this kind of person. Even though he was not regenerate, he was God-fearing, God-respecting, and God-seeking.  He wasn't this way out of his own natural strength. The Lord had been intervening in his life, every step of the way. 

Don't let humanism influence your thinking.  Prayer for non-Christian is a essential part of how we all come to Christ, because we don't have the natural capacity to understand the Gospel or break free from Satan's coils.