January 26, 2010
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letter 42 on assurance & fighting for joy: "Blessed Assurance" - You are a child of God!
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
I continue to come across believers who are struggling with sin and guilt and assurance of their salvation. Though I never really doubted I could lose my salvation, I came to a time over twenty years after I had been saved in which I struggled with such sin and guilt for a very long time. That's why I wrote my series of posts on dealing with past sins and guilt. I had to dig into God's Word and examine His promises of forgiveness and cleansing and assurance in spite of my feelings. Then in His sovereign time and in His graciousness, God gave me freedom and release from the burden and oppression of that sin and guilt (I wrote about that here and here.)It grieves me that many in the Church don't teach we can have any assurance of our salvation and freedom from our guilt over our sin.
It also grieves me that many who do teach assurance is available teach that it is available to us only on an intellectual level, instead of teaching that an inner assurance is also available to all believers, i.e.- that there is an assurance available to us which is spoken directly to us by the Spirit of God.
Granted, God's gift of assurance is sovereignly given (as are all His gifts), i.e.- God chooses to give assurance in His way, in His time, yet it is available to all who are His children by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
As I've been reading a bit more about the work of God in revival, it appears that one of the hallmarks of revival is God's gift of assurance coming to more and more of His children. I know I have been humbled and eternally grateful to have received God's gift of assurance. I tell you I was haunted and filled with overwhelming guilt and shame and was so bound up by that; I was paralyzed in my Christian life in so many ways. I was to the point of depression, desperation and despair at times. There were days I could only cry and cry and cry. I was only seeking to find some relief for my soul from that burden of my sin and guilt (and praise God I have!), but in retrospect, I can see that God's gifts of assurance and joy given to me have come with a corresponding desire to seek His face for revival. I wasn't really even thinking about revival until after I received this assurance of cleansing and forgiveness. I wasn't truly zealous to proclaim Christ until after I received this assurance. I wasn't truly desiring to pray for revival until after I received this assurance. In my limited reading about revival, this seems to be the pattern throughout church history: in His sovereignty, during times of revival God chooses to give such inner assurance to some of His children in greater numbers, and then the revival fires continue to spread as a result.
All I can say is that I am humbled at how gracious the Lord has been to me (He didn't have to give me that assurance at all; and He can certainly save us without our having any sense of assurance). And I am also privileged (as well as responsible) to share this doctrine of assurance. May we never limit, grieve or quench the work of God's Holy Spirit. This blessed assurance can be ours as His children, and I dare to say that I am convinced such assurance is the firstfruits of the revival God is beginning to spark in many places now...
Seeking His face and seeking you might know His joy unspeakable and receive His gift of blessed assurance,
Karen
Blessed Assurance
(lyrics - Fanny J. Crosby, music - Phoebe P. Knapp)Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.Refrain:
This is my story, this is my song,
praising my Savior all the day long;
this is my story, this is my song,
praising my Savior all the day long.
Perfect submission, perfect delight,
visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
angels descending bring from above
echoes of mercy, whispers of love.
(Refrain)Perfect submission, all is at rest;
I in my Savior am happy and blest,
watching and waiting, looking above,
filled with His goodness, lost in His love.(Refrain)
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.
I John 3:1And so we are!
Can you sing the words of "Blessed Assurance" without doubt?
Do you have such blessed assurance?
Do you see what kind of love the Father has given you?If you have believed on Christ and received God's gift of salvation by grace through faith,
God the Father has called you His child, and so you are!*You can have such blessed assurance...
after all...
You are a child of God!
No matter what your heart may tell you...You are a child of God!
No matter what your pile of sins may tell you...You are a child of God!
No matter what your nagging guilt may tell you...You are a child of God!
No matter what your increasing list of failures may tell you...You are a child of God!
No matter what Satan may tell you (he is a liar!)...You are a child of God!Look to God's Word, to the work of Christ done for you and to His promises there.
Listen to the voice of His Holy Spirit who has come to dwell in you by faith."You are a child of God!"
Like the men & women of faith in Hebrews 11, embrace the promises God has given you...
(All of God's promises are yes and Amen in Christ Jesus.)Embrace the promises, embrace the truth, embrace your sonship,
even as He is embracing you through the blood of Christ."You are a child of God!"
You were once unclean,
but He has called you clean!"You are a child of God!"
He has covered you with the righteousness of Christ! (II Cor. 5:21)
He remembers your sin no more! (Hebrews 8:12)
He has welcomed you home as His child!"You are a child of God!"
If the Father has set His love on you,
if you have received Christ and believed on His Name,
if you are born again by His Spirit,
thenyou are a child of God!
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
(John 1:12-13)Beyond reading God's promises in Scripture (yes, we must do this!),
beyond reminding ourselves of God's promises in Scripture (yes, we must do this!)
beyond hiding God's promises in our hearts (yes, we must do this!),
but beyond all that...know this:
you can have such blessed assurance as Fanny Crosby wrote about, not only in your head
but written in your very heart and soul, in the very depths of your being:"You are a child of God!"
May our Lord help you and all of His children to experience the full assurance of His love for you in Jesus Christ
through the gift of His Holy Spirit.Our place and position in Christ is not based on anything we have done or can ever do,
but solely on what He has done!May our Father speak to you of His full acceptance of you in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6).
May our Jesus our Savior assure you that He is not ashamed to call you His brother (Hebrews 2:11).
May God's Holy Spirit bear witness to you that you are a child of God (Romans 8:16)."You are a child of God!"
May God give you joy and peace in believing (Romans 15:13).
May God grant you the full assurance of faith (Hebrews 10:19-22).
These are privileges we have as children of God.Please ask God for them.
Our Father wants to give His children good gifts.
Child of God,
adopted by the Father,
redeemed by the Lamb's blood,
sealed with the Spirit,
will you ask our Father in faith?
Remember that He will not turn away any who come to Him.You are a child of God!
* If you are not sure if you have been truly been born again and are a child of God, please read my post, the Holy Spirit and life. If you have further questions about this, please message me).Please note: I'm not teaching a cheap grace or presumptuous salvation. The born-again child will still struggle with sin and will be grieved over sin, i.e.- there is no presumption, no "once saved, always saved" mentality ("I'm saved so it doesn't matter how I live"), yet we can have full assurance of salvation and freedom from guilt.
Related posts:
- who are we to say . . . (Christ's atonement and assurance)
- "Salvation unto Us Has Come by God's free grace & favor"
- postcards from England: are we excited over a dead fish and a car wreck?
- my fourteen posts on "Dealing with Past Sins & Guilt" (highly recommended if you struggle w/ your past sins & failures haunting you)
- my testimony of assurance received: my new song: "My soul is clean" and Letter 18 on assurance and fighting for joy (my testimony of joy)
- my other letters on assurance and fighting for joy
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Comments (7)
What a great grace we have that we have the right to become a child of God...nice post.
It is interesting that my experience is somewhat opposite yours.
When I was younger "doubts" would flow from out of my rebellions, but assurance would flow from study of the Word. Far from a mere intellectual knowledge, when I study the Word it rejunivates my faith and so changes my actions and changes my life. It is futile for me to chase after happiness (Ecclesiastes warns me that to do so is chasing the wind), for I need to study the Word to grow my faith and allow God to give me what only He can bestow as a gift.
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17)
Blessings.
@llamalima - What a great grace we have that we have the right to become a child of God
Amen! "O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods." Psalm 95:1-3.
@craigwbooth - I'm not discounting the use of the Word. Not at all. That is part of the impotency of the Church today and one of the things that distresses me: the Word has been jettisoned or watered down in so many churches/denominations. We absolutely must continue to be rooted in and study the Word. The Word is living and powerful as we allow the Holy Spirit to leads us and teaches us through it. The Spirit is the one who helps us to hear (Rom. 10:17) and understand at all. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth and He is the One who guides us into all truth about the living God.
My point here is that there is an assurance available in addition to the assurance that assurance you spoke of. I had all the basic truths in my head about Christ's sufficiency to save, to cleanse from sin & guilt (yes, we always have more to learn, but I think you know what I mean by that), but I still continued to be plagued with uncertainty and lingering guilt to the point where I was really paralyzed in so many ways in my Christian walk. God had shown me my total depravity in contrast to His holiness (as much as I was able to humanly see those things as He revealed them to me). When you are down in the dust, when you see God lifted up and holy and your sin in contrast, that breaks you. Though I tend to be pretty emotional, I am very cautious of experiences when it comes to Christianity. I wasn't looking for an experience per se. I don't really know what I was looking for, only relief from the guilt, a way to appropriate the promises I knew to be true in my head. How could I really honor God if I kept being pulled down by guilt?
One day when I knelt down to pray and then confess my sin, I began to feel like a total failure and that my sanctification was really hopeless (even though I knew Christ's work on my behalf, even though I knew His promises that my sanctification all comes through Him). Of course I had done this many, many times before...then suddenly God "spoke" (not audibly) to my soul: "Your soul is clean." I hesitated for a quite a while to share the story publicly, but as I continued to read accounts of other Christians, they had similar things happening, similar encounters w/ the Holy Spirit. I'm not talking about nutty things and iffy testimonies, people doing things that are off-the-wall, I'm talking about people like Whitefield, Edwards, the Wesleys, Moody, Lloyd-Jones, Pascal, etc. (I wrote more about this here.)
The danger w/ sharing experiences is that people will sometimes attempt to seek the experience and not really seek God. But as we keep coming before God, we have to trust He will give us what we need to walk w/ Him. I think, however, much orthodox reformed Christianity discounts the ministry of the Holy Spirit to the believer. We can't just pull Him out when we like, e.g. - for a sermon on Pentecost Sunday and then pack Him up the rest of the year. He blows where He wills. The danger of more charismatic/Pentecostal movements is to discount the Word of God. The danger of more orthodox movements movements is to discount the Spirit of God. We need to have a right balance of both. We must always be checking our experiences against the Scripture, trying and testing all things, and, as I said never seeking experiences, but seeking the living God. But since He is living we will have a living experience of and with Him, an experience that is never determined by us, but by how He wants to move. He is God and we are not.
Seeking God and praying a deeper understanding of His glory & His majesty would be restored to the Church,
Karen
Thank you so much for this post. I was catching up with some email today and came across this one which I had never read. I guess that is because God knew I would need it today, when my feeling of assurance was very low. It is not that I doubt God's strength to carry me, it is that I doubt my own mind and abilities. Do I even know my own mind? But, as you so clearly pointed out above, the strength in this relationship with God doesn't come from me, it comes from God. In reading John 14:27 today, "Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid," I was struck by how much Christ did not want his followers to be sitting around agonizing about things, he wanted us confident in Him and able to do his work. I will keep on praying! So, thank you for the repeated statement "You are a child of God," and all the great verses of assurance. I needed it all.
@kjlindgren - You're welcome. Isn't it wonderful God always brings us what we need at just the right time?
Christ did not want his followers to be sitting around agonizing about things, he wanted us confident in Him and able to do his work.
Amen. Yes, I've been thinking about this same thing in another sense: What good does it do for me to think about what I might be doing later this month or this year? God makes His will known to us when we need it. Yet I can begin to waste a lot of time considering such things instead of focusing on what He wants me to do right now.
Assurance is a gift God wants to give us. We have the promises written in His Word but He also wants to write them on our hearts as well. Why would our Father leave ever leave His children uncertain and doubting? As we look at the apostle Paul's words we see a continuing confidence. That's why the doctrine of election is so important, it is for the believer who may begin to doubt his salvation. I know not all Christians believe in election (you can certainly be saved apart from believing it; for many years I didn't believe it), but it's such a glorious, albeit mysterious, doctrine. How can we speak boldly about such a great salvation if we have any nagging doubt about our own salvation in our own minds or hearts?
Our salvation is all of God from beginning to end so we might only boast in Him alone (I Cor. 26-31). God has got us secure and He wants us to learn more and more to rest in His everlasting and strong arms. Is His hand shortened that He cannot save? (Num. 11:23; Is. 59:1) Can we do anything to undo His salvific work on the cross? Of course not! Praying you would continue to grow in the knowledge of God's love for you in Christ that passes all understanding. (hugs)
I really like your added thought that spending time agonizing about what we will do in the future is a waste of time. God does give us what we need when we need it. I have gotten lots better at this since I was diagnosed with cancer, but I still find myself wondering about shorter-term future issues.