Assured By Greg GilbertSample

Striving for Assurance

One of the essential ideas I hope to convey this week is this: you will never deepen your faith in Jesus—and therefore strengthen your confidence and assurance of your salvation—by staring at yourself all the time. The fountainhead and bottomless well of assurance is the utterly trustworthy and completely inexhaustible truth that Jesus has loved and acted to save sinners and that God has promised and sworn by His own infinite self that His Son’s mission to save sinners will not fail—not even in the smallest particular. Get your mind around that, plant your heart in that soil, and you will find your assurance growing and strengthening. The more trustworthy and faithful you learn God to be, the more you will trust Him and the more certain you will be in that trust.

Often the very best way to deepen our assurance of salvation is to peel our eyes off ourselves entirely and put them on God and His people. For example, when you feel your faith is failing, start simply and answer honestly:

Do I believe there is a God? Yes, I do.

Do I believe Jesus of Nazareth really existed? Yes, I do. 

Do I believe Jesus was the Son of God? I really do.

Do I believe he died on the cross? Yes.

Do I believe that when He died, He was dying in the place of sinners? Yes.

Do I believe He rose from the dead? I do. 

Do I believe I am a sinner who needs to be saved? Yes. 

Do I believe Jesus when He said everyone who trusts in Him will not perish? Yes.

Do I believe God when He said everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved? Yes.

As you ask foundational questions, your faith becomes grounded in the concrete truths of who Jesus was, what He did, and what He promised. God intends for you not to be racked by fear and doubt but to be able to rest in the arms of your Savior as you trust Him to bring you safely home. No greater truth has ever rung through the cosmos that God so loved—if all else should fail and the earth itself were removed from its foundation, of that you can be assured!

Does focusing on the simple foundation of what Christ did for you build confidence in the gift of your salvation? Why or why not?