What If I Don't Feel Saved? | Theocast

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Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, John and I are going to attempt to answer the question, what do

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I do if I don't feel saved? This is a wrestling that we all have, if we're honest.

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God has told us in his word that through Christ we are his children, but so often we feel like anything but that.

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We often feel like his enemy. So what do we do with that? And then in the members podcast, we will consider some of the figures and movements within evangelicalism and even more pointedly within the

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Calvinistic evangelical world that have not helped with this and have even contributed to this erosion of assurance and have not helped people feel saved.

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Stay tuned. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the

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Christian life from a reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and myself,

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Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. Our brother Jimmy Buehler will not be with us today.

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Let's just suffice it to say that the man has plenty going on. He's a couple of weeks away from launching his church plant.

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They'll be beginning services soon, and he's also transitioning into a new job. So because we love

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Jimmy, we are giving him a break from the podcast. So you're stuck with me and you're stuck with John.

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We're going to do a pretty organic cultural update today. I know that that word organic has been ruined for all of us probably by many in the church, but we're going to give that a shot anyway.

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John, why don't you kick us off, man, with just a couple thoughts about what's going on in your life in your neck of the woods.

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Yeah, you know, it's funny. I didn't think about this before we got started, but as you were speaking,

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I remembered yesterday I was cleaning out my garage, taking the trash to the dump, and I go in and out of this back door in my garage quite a few times a week or even today.

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And yesterday I was walking to grab it and hanging right in front of my face was the tail of a snake.

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And I thought I was about to lose it right all over the floor right there. I hate snakes.

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And then I realized it moved pretty quickly and it was a skin to which

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I started scaling the rafters and I could not find this snake anywhere. And it was long.

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I put it up on social media for those that follow me. I was getting ready to say for anybody who follows you on social media,

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I think we've seen it. I mean, it's a substantial size snake skin, man.

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Yeah. I was trying to figure out what's, I mean, we do have rat snakes, which, you know, those are great. I like rat snakes because they keep the mice out, but I just don't like snakes.

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So I literally all day in my office is right off the garage and I'm looking underneath the desk.

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I had these visions of putting my feet under the desk and a snake bite. It's horrible. Just fear. You know, just fear.

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Yeah. For real, man. I told my son, like, don't walk in the garage without shoes on, which

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I'm not sure how that would help, but just logically in my mind, and I had to go grab tools. And every time I would reach into a cubby,

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I'm looking for this snake that's going to get me. It like wigs you out. Like, yeah, it's in your head for sure.

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That's funny, man. It is country living, man. That is, it is definitely country living. So. You are out in the cut.

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That's true. That is true. But hey, man, hopefully one day we're praying that the

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Lord will allow us to build a little pastor's cabin. So pastors who want to take a break from ministry and come out for a couple of days and come out, live in the outers of Nashville.

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Yeah, that'd be cool, man. I'm trying to think of what's going on in my life. We've had sickness here at the house lately with our kids.

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It's never fun. That time of year. Yeah. And so that's on my mind.

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Like our rhythms for the last, I don't know, eight or nine days have been really affected by that. And it just seems to be one of those situations where you think that, oh, okay, like one kid's well, and then it's like, oh, now another child's sick.

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And you're just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. So we're doing that right now. I think we can say this.

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We're about eight days away from flying out to California for the Here We Still Stand conference and some of the other things that we've got planned from a

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Theocast perspective out there. So looking forward to that trip. And by the time this launches, that'll be, yeah, by the time that will be in the past, that'll be already over.

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Yeah. Yeah. And those podcasts will be available and they'll be a part of the, they'll be coming out in the next few weeks.

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So stay tuned for those. Yeah. Some of those live podcasts we do and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny.

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As you're talking, I'm still scanning my rafters and I'm looking at,

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I don't feel safe at all. So in other words, if you sound distracted today, that might be why.

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I definitely don't feel safe. Don't feel safe. The question is, do you feel saved?

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I hear you. I thought you caught it. You caught it. I did. I did. I know we're both tired, but I did catch that.

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So man, why don't you tell everybody what we're going to talk about today? So today is a very important subject for many because it does cripple the heart and mind of people where they do not enjoy the

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Christian life. They live every single day trying to overcome this feeling.

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And the feeling that we are going to be talking about today is that of feeling saved, feeling assured that God is good with them, that they have either accomplished what is needed or God has accomplished inside of them.

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And there's a lot of confusion on what is it, this feeling that we're trying to go after. And another way of saying this is that it's an emotional security.

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And you can, for those of you who have grown up maybe in a revivalistic or baptistic background, you will hear sermons about this idea where if your passion isn't at a certain level or you don't have this moment where you've transitioned from drug dealer to now

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Christian, you're always wondering, am I truly saved? Because right at this moment,

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I don't have these strong emotions. I don't have these strong passions for God or to serve God. And I often feel fatigued when it comes spiritually.

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And we want to help the weary Christian in this. And it is a true crippling, it is a realistic bondage that people find themselves in.

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It's one that Justin and I have experienced and Jimmy, if you've not heard Jimmy's interview that he did when we first brought him on the podcast, it crippled him for many years and still at times can if we're not careful and allowing our theology.

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So that's where we're at today. That's what we're going to be covering is this idea of what if I don't feel saved?

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This is a conversation that's pretty near and dear to me. And John, you've already alluded to the fact that I think it is to you, too.

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I am a guy that rededicated my life to Jesus probably not less than 150 times between the ages of 12 and 18.

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And I wasn't even planning to say that, but your comments sort of prompted me to think about that. I grew up in a kind of liberal yet moralistic

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Baptist church, but I always had a pretty tender conscience like Luther's sort of crisis of the soul.

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It resonates with me. I was always very aware of the fact that I didn't measure up and my feelings and my affections were not where they should be.

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My abstinence from sin was not where it should be. My faithfulness was lacking. And so I always felt this need to rededicate my life because I clearly was not doing enough.

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And it was a crippling thing for me for years and years as a Christian.

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And I think the point that I'm trying to make, and you've somewhat already made it, bro, is that this is so common.

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I think it is normal for most every Christian, if not all of us, if we're honest, to say, man, there are just so many times, so many moments, so many days when

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I do not feel saved. I know on the one hand that God has told me that I'm his child, but deep down,

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I feel like his enemy. And so this conversation, I think, is really important for people.

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And I know our goal is to comfort the weary Christian and point him or her to Christ.

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We talk so often on this podcast about the kind of outside in realities where we're always looking outside of us to save what's wrong in us.

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We're always looking outside of ourselves for the ground of our comfort and our assurance and stuff.

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And so I want to acknowledge this, John. I think it's good to just go ahead and say this before we get into the rest of the conversation.

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This whole situation that we're describing where it's like, man,

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I don't feel like a Christian. I don't feel saved. That whole thing is inherently pietistic, like that whole formula, that whole schema.

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Because what pietism does at its core is it points us inside ourselves.

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It points us to something subjective, and it often will point us to our own feelings about God and about Jesus, in addition to our faithfulness and obedience and stuff like that, in order for us to find assurance, in order for us to feel saved.

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Our feelings about God and our feelings about Christ need to be in a certain place.

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And if they're not, then there's reason for worry and there's reason for concern. And so we're just going to go and use that word pietism right now and move forward in this conversation together.

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Yeah, if you're new to Theocast, and that word is a new word for you, I would encourage you to go to the website and download a book that we wrote to help explain that word, which is called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. And it is in that book we explain the difference between faith in Christ and pietism.

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So we'll just kind of we'll put that out there for you. I think it is helpful, Justin, that we deconstruct where this comes from, or we just pull it apart and help people identify that this crippling effect that's on our life is not the reality that is found in Scripture, which we will get to at the end of the podcast, of where should a

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Christian find their assurance and what should we do with these emotions? But within so many years within the evangelical world, if we just go back 200 years, you have this change of confessional truth, which is a truth that is based on a reality outside of yourself.

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If you go and you read any of the Reformed confessions, you will see that assurance is based solely, and the foundation of it is a reality outside of your experience, outside of your emotion, and even outside of your cognitive abilities to retain certain facts and truth.

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And often we struggle with fear and we don't feel saved because we absolutely forget realities.

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We forget truths. And this is why we keep pointing back and over and over and over again that the ordinary means of grace, it could seem like, well, that will get boring because you keep doing the same thing over and over again.

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And for those of you that struggle with assurance, you scream at the top of your lungs, no, because we often wander, as the song says, we wander away from the truth.

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And so I think, Justin, it would be helpful. I know that you've spoken to this in the past, but this isn't something that some

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Christians struggle with. Many struggle with it. And it's because I think there's a whole culture centered around it.

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So from your experience and the study that you've done, what are some of the factors that have played into this emotional -based security?

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So I think we're all prone to look to our faithfulness.

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We're all prone. And I'm just talking like we're prone in and of ourselves without anybody encouraging us to do it. Right. I think we naturally look to our faithfulness, our works, our abstinence from certain sins, etc.

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We look to those things as the things that will make us feel saved. So if, in other words, if I am being faithful enough, if I am doing enough good works, if I am abstaining from certain sins enough, and again, the question that I always want to throw into that is like, well, who defines that standard?

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Because that's not clear in Scripture. I mean, Scripture is all or nothing. You're either perfect or you're not.

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And so we're not saying there isn't progress in the Christian life in terms of the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

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But yeah, that kind of subjective standard is a dangerous thing anyway. But because I kind of digress, as we look to those things in order to feel saved, that is the reason why we so often don't feel saved.

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Because if we're looking to faithfulness, good works, abstinence from sin or anything like that, we're never going to even meet our own standard, let alone

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God's. And so we rightly feel, oh, my gosh, like this isn't as it should be.

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And I need to be concerned about my standing before the Lord. And then what happens,

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John, I know you and I agree about this, is many voices in evangelicalism and even in the calvangelical world, as we've so called it, sort of come in at this moment and double down on this hyper introspection, you know, observe and assess your faithfulness, your works, your abstinence from sin.

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You know, your battle against the flesh and the like. And really what's happening there is the problem is just exacerbated.

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You know, from the top turnbuckle, the elbow drop comes in and piles it on and everybody is crushed.

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And so I think it's a mixture, in one sense, of our own natural tendencies to be subjective and pietistic and all that, combined with people telling us to do that very thing.

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So to contrast the two, and I would say what we're going to be contrasting is confessionalism, these

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Reformed realities to, I would say, experience -based realities. Let me just run through a history of this real quick, of what

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Justin just kind of introduced us to. There's a history behind where this idea of focusing on our faithfulness is.

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So back, you've probably heard us speak of Charles Finney before, but Finney's theology has affected the

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American mind in ways that most people don't realize. He literally believed that he could logically convince someone into the kingdom, that humans weren't spiritually dead, they were just spiritually neutral.

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And so he said, I could walk into a room, and because of his charisma and his capacity to speak, he was a brilliant man.

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You can't be dumb and accomplish what he accomplished. He was a brilliant communicator. He was a brilliant leader.

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He has influenced millions of people without them even knowing it because of his theology that has influenced the culture, and Finney was able to convince people based upon their feeling that they were right with God.

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They needed to logically make a conclusion that the way that they thought and felt about God was based upon them.

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And as long as they had these feelings, had this commitment level to God, then they truly could be assured.

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If that level dropped, then they needed to, as Justin just spoke to, rededicate their life, which is totally played into revivalism.

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And revivalism was this movement where they were trying to revive, which is where the word comes from, the spiritual deadness of the

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American church. And so you have this awakening where you're calling people forward with these heavy -handed sermons based upon fear and dread, and people are coming.

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And there's just where the anxious bench was created, where people would come down to the altar and it was down there that they had this emotional experience of giving themselves back to God.

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And they had this, some people have never probably heard of what's called the sawdust trail, where they have these huge tent meetings and they would put sawdust down the middle of the aisle because so many people would come, it would just kick up all this dust.

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They called it the sawdust trail, where they were calling people to come forward to this strange word, altar, as if they were going to be sacrificing their sins there.

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And I still think that's an interesting word that there's an altar in front of churches. And then this played into, many of you who are listening to this podcast have been to a

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Christian summer camp. And Christian summer camps are notorious, they're notorious for creating emotional highs within young, vulnerable students.

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Got to throw your stick in the fire, man. That's right. And there is so much that they build on, you know, it's sermon one

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Monday, sermon two Tuesday. I mean, by the time Thursday rolls around, you have so many students who are questioning their standing before God.

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And by Friday, they are ready to make everything right. And they go home and they're on fire for the youth group and they're on fire to read their

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Bibles because they have redead and they may even want to get baptized again. And this then moves into the college ministry movement.

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And I had seen this in full force when I was a college pastor here in Nashville, just students who are just beside themselves because they could see other students that were apparently on fire for Christ.

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And they just begin to question, like, I just don't evangelize like they do. And I don't have time to read my Bible like they do.

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And I'm not involved. And I would say there's also the charismatic movement. Now, to my charismatic brothers,

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I don't like to clump everyone together. So when I say the charismatic movement, I don't mean my reformed brothers who would hold to the gifts still being for today,

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I'm not blaming you. So let me just get that out there right there. Cause I do know that some of you are listening, but I will say that the charismatic movement back down on Azusa Street created this emotional hysteria and people see the excitement.

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They see people's emotional highs. They see like, wow, these people feel like they're really dedicated and they have these spiritual experiences.

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And I don't have that. I go to church and I go home and I feel dull and bland and plain.

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And so each one of these revivalism, summer camp, college ministries, charismatic, we've all in some way been touched by this movement of emotional security, we're excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called faith versus faithfulness, a primer on rest.

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And we, the hosts put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ and how one leads to rest and how the other often to a lack of assurance.

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And you can get this at theocast .org slash primer. And if you've been encouraged by what you've been hearing at Theocast, we'd ask you to help partner with us.

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You can do that by joining our total access membership. That's our monthly membership that gives you access to all of our material that we've produced over the last four years, or simply by donating to our ministry.

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And you can do that by going to our website, theocast .org. We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

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Revivalism that you've touched on, pietism. And then I would throw in the, the other big word that often comes to mind, moralism, um, those things are so common.

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They're so ubiquitous in the evangelical church. It's, it's like white noise. You know, we, we don't even perceive it.

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It's, it's the classic analogy, right? Like it, the fish you're trying to tell the fish about the water, you know, that, that it's swimming in.

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Right. And it's just like, yeah, it doesn't resonate because it's just so normal. Uh, this is the air we breathe in, in evangelicalism.

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Uh, this is a revivalist, say again, to quote the song. Yeah, I wasn't doing that intentionally.

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Uh, yeah, it's the, it's the air we breathe though. For real. I mean, cause it's, it's like, Hey, you know, this, this instinct that we have, um, about whether it's moral transformation or like you've even said, like this sort of crisis moment where like we need to make this good decision for Christ.

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Um, the idea that our obedience is somehow earning us something in God's credit book, you know, all those kinds of things it's, it's incredibly common.

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And here's the thing, John, whether we're talking about, you know, the revivalistic instinct or the, the pietistic instinct or even moralism, you know, where again,

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I'm just, I'm meriting something, I'm earning something, I'm escaping punishment, all that kind of stuff, there is absolutely no hope whatsoever.

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In those kinds of schemes, because at the end of the day, I'm being driven back in on myself.

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For example, in a, in a message or excuse me, in a, in an evangelical world where the message is so often one of ongoing and constant improvement.

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That message will absolutely crush the saint who is appropriately mindful of his or her own corruption.

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The saint whose conscience is actually working as it should, and he or she is aware of all the ways that he or she is falling short is going to be crushed by that message of onward and upward, maybe, you know, and if you're not always on this nice, clean upward trajectory, you need to be worried, you've just eroded any possibility of assurance for all of us.

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And the only people in the room who feel good in that kind of a situation are people who somewhat naively think, man,

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I'm crushing the Christian life. For those of us in the room who are aware of our failures, it's like, well,

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I don't, I don't know that I am a Christian. I mean, maybe, maybe it didn't take. Yeah, bro, jump in.

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David Zoll's book on seculosity was very helpful here. And if you have not read it,

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I encourage you to read it. David did a great job of exposing the lack of the gospel within just our culture.

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But in the book, there's a section on food and how we spiritualize food. And we, we, we put, you know, ice cream as a bad food and broccoli as a good food.

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So this is morally wrong for me to eat. And this is morally right. Right.

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And I had a bunch of, Yeah, I was bad and I had ice cream. I was good. I had a salad. That's right.

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So we had a bunch of people over to our house on Sunday for our new members class, and my wife made this wonderful meal.

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And then afterwards she made these, uh, these cookie ice cream sandwiches, which were amazing with meatballs.

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How dare her? Yeah, that's right. They were, they were amazing. And everyone there, you know, it's, it's, we're a very health conscious city.

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Every, in Nashville is all about running and health. And I'm sure Asheville, I think, Oh, it's, oh, it's nothing like that here. That was a joke.

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And so of course everyone there was like, well, you know, it's the weekend, it's Sunday, we can have a bad day.

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And it was, everybody was talking about resetting on Monday. We're going to reset and, you know, basically rededicate ourselves.

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But this is true of Christianity. We are trained in this mindset where we stumble, we fall, we give into the flesh and now, okay,

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I need to reset myself. I need to reset myself on Monday. And of course that's typically

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Sunday. We need to reset ourselves Sunday. But what happens when it's, okay, but then Monday I have a cookie and ice cream.

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Okay. And then Tuesday. And then before you know it, you've like, oh man, I have gone back to a horrible lifestyle and you are beginning to even question your motive.

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Like I'll never be able to be healthy. And this is where, when someone finds themselves struggling in sin or they find themselves underneath the dirge of just life where life is hard and they have, they don't wake up in the morning energized and they're so excited about, you know, life and the

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Christian life. And they're not listening to Christian podcasts and they're not having Christian conversations and they're feeling the pain of sorrow of loss or frustration or they've lost their job, whatever.

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And they're looking for that reset button. It's like, what is going to bring me that spark where I used to have that feeling?

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Or they may have never had it. And they ask themselves, how can I be like so -and -so? And they look at these emotional people who have the capacity to describe their lives as one that I think is not realistic.

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And we've mentioned this in the past, but there's this hedonistic, radical, revivalistic movement where you see these famous men get on TV and they have these passionate sermons.

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You're like, I want to be like that. I want to love Jesus the way that guy loves Jesus. And so you begin to wonder, if I don't love

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Jesus that way because I've been feeling this way so long, I must not be saved.

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Justin, I think you had something you want to reply to that. Well, I do have some stuff

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I want to say. And I mean, even your comment just now about like, hey, I'm looking at this man preach so passionately and I want to be like that.

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I mean, I just want to say right now as a man who preaches the word of God most every Sunday, if people were to observe me preaching the word, they might draw that same conclusion.

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Like, my gosh, I want to care like he cares and I want to feel like he seems to feel.

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Now, I'm very honest in the way that I preach scripture in terms of even just my own frame and my own shortcomings, as I know you are, brother, and many other brothers that are listening to this podcast would be the same way.

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But I can envision people looking at me preaching a sermon and thinking that they want to be like me. And my message there is like, if you only knew what's going on in my own heart and mind, maybe even that Sunday morning, let alone the rest of the week,

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I am no different than you. You're like, bro, I'm not as zealous as I should be.

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I don't care as much as I should about this or that. There's not enough fruit. There's not enough good works. Like, I'm sinning and all these kinds of things.

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My word to that person in that moment, lovingly, is, hey, brother, hey, sister, take a number and get in line.

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Join the rest of us who feel the exact same way that you do. And here's the thing, man, this is not unique to you and me, what we're saying.

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My argument and your argument is for the legitimate believer, there is this ongoing like crisis that we feel internally because we know that we are not as we should be.

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And so Luther said it this way. Here is the paradox at the heart of the Christian self -perception.

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A godly man feels sin more than grace, wrath more than favor, judgment more than redemption.

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This is our experience. This is why we have to always be looking outside of ourselves for the ground of our assurance.

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And I know you're wanting to maybe take us in another direction, John, and I'm happy for you to go ahead and do that. Well, I just think that with the time that we have left,

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I want to lead the believer towards, okay, well, then how do you find assurance and be able to compare the two because you have to be able to identify when you have those feelings.

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And I'll be frank, I admitted this to my church on Sunday. I've been running pretty hard.

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We've got a lot going on in our church. I've got a lot going on in my life. And Saturday I was driving, contemplating having to buy a new car, which

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I can't wait when I go to heaven, I never have to think about dealing with car salesmen and used cars and anybody else who else feels my pain.

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I hate buying cars. But I had this moment where I had been in some complicated conversations, had been counseling different pastors and different church members, and I just felt,

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I felt very alone and I felt very hopeless and in despair driving down the interstate, no music on, and I could not pull myself out of that feeling.

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And I say feeling because in my mind, I knew what I felt wasn't real.

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Sure. But it didn't remove the thought of, I still feel this way. When it still feels real.

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It does. I felt, and the feeling I had was dark. I felt hopeless.

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I felt like nothing was going to work out right. I felt like everything is falling apart and it's all my fault.

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And the only sense of hope, I can remember exactly what exit I was at. The only sense of hope

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I felt was when I stopped and said, thank God that I don't have to get through this alone, that tomorrow my congregation, even though I'm the pastor, tomorrow my congregation will care and love for me and I will receive the gospel of hope of Jesus Christ, a reality outside of myself, even coming to me,

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I was going to preach tomorrow and I was still hopeful of what I would receive from my congregation, not from my sermon.

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Well, bro, we're no different. You and I as lead pastors of churches, like I talked about this maybe once on, on Theocast.

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I don't know if I did or not. I might be thinking of another scenario. I remember a Sunday morning a few months ago, just so pointedly in my mind, man, where it was just not going well.

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I mean, just circumstantially in our home, it was a tough morning. My own heart and mind. I mean, I just was, like you said, just feeling this sense of despair and hopelessness and despondency and discouragement.

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And I drove over to the YMCA where we meet here locally and was just, you know,

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I was playing music in the truck and wrestling with these realities. And then

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I pulled in the parking lot and I saw some cars of people that I know and love from our church.

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You know, they're there early. They're there for setup, just like me. And I thought, like, Father, thank you for these people who trust your son and who love one another and love me.

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And then the other thought that went through my mind is there is nowhere in the world where I would rather be right now than coming to this place because I know what we're about to do.

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And even on the Sunday mornings when I'm up there preaching and I'm trying to get myself to believe what I'm saying, like I am so grateful for the saints and for the church and the ordinary means that God has given because we just so desperately need those things when we're feeling like you've just described.

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And I'm a man who struggles with anxiety, man. I am hopeful in God and incredibly pessimistic about human beings and even about life in this fallen world.

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And so I am often haunted by notions of things going wrongly and terribly and like, oh, this isn't going to work out.

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And so battling despair and discouragement is a normal experience for me like it is for so many.

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And one thing I want to say, John, if that's cool, is the reason why this struggle is so real and palpable for us is that when our consciences accuse us and when

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Satan, the great accuser of the brethren, when he accuses us, it's not as though there isn't material to work with.

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I mean, the accusations are legitimate. You know, when it's my own conscience accusing me or when

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Satan accuses me that I'm not doing enough and I'm not good enough, he's exactly right. You know, and so then the accusations are legit.

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The question is, what do we do with it? And this is where the confessional perspective is so helpful. I want to read just really quickly from the

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Heidelberg Catechism, question 60. I think it speaks beautifully to this. So question 60 reads this way from the

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Heidelberg Catechism. The question is, how art thou righteous before God? The answer, only by a true faith in Jesus Christ, so that though my conscience accuse me that I have grossly transgressed all the commandments of God and kept none of them and am still inclined to evil, notwithstanding God without any merit of mine, but only of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ.

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And it goes on from there. But it's so beautiful. It's exactly right. My conscience legitimately accuses me that I've broken all of God's commands, that I've never legitimately kept one of them, and I still sin.

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And so my righteousness, praise God, is found in Christ. It's His perfect satisfaction,

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His righteousness, His holiness is counted to me. That's where we're going. Amen. As we were speaking to earlier, the reality of emotionalism, revivalism, compared to the confessionalism, let me just read to you the

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London Baptist Confession, which is going to be very similar in the Westminster as well. But chapter 18, point two, it says, speaking of assurance, the assurance of grace and salvation, this certainly is not merely an inconclusive or likely persuasion based on a fallible hope.

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It is an infallible assurance of faith founded on the blood and righteousness of Christ revealed in the gospel.

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It is also built on an inward evidence of those graces of the Spirit about which promises are made. It is further based on the testimony of the

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Spirit of adoption, witnessing with our spirit that we are the children of God.

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As the fruit of this assurance, our hearts are kept both humble and holy. That opening line, it is not based upon a fallible hope.

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I would say your emotional feeling is a fallible hope. If you think that you can feel right with God the majority of your time, as Justin just said, your conscience is going to accuse you.

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Unfortunately, ministers of the gospel get up and they absolutely use your sinful tendencies to make you question your moral fortitude, your moral commitment to God.

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Have you lusted this week? Did you desire money? Have you been fearful?

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You name the sin and then what they do is they call into question your dedication to Christ.

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And it is there, my dear friend, that I point you to Romans chapter five, where it says that when you were the enemy of God, that's when

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God chose to love you. And in Romans chapter eight, he goes on to say that once you are his child, there's nothing that can separate you from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.

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So your assurance can never be based upon how you feel towards God because God's feeling towards you has not changed, nor will it ever change.

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If the evidence of faith is in your heart and in your mind, and when it says there that the spirit of promise is made with you, that your spirit of adoption is connected with his spirit, what that means is the gift of faith.

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You can look to Christ and say there is no hope outside of Christ in the blood of Christ. You cannot say that unless the spirit has brought that into you.

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And what the confession and scripture is saying is that is the reality of where you find your assurance.

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It cannot be in how you think and feel at that moment because sin is deceiving and Satan is good at his job.

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Otherwise, Peter and Paul wouldn't warn us about how powerful Satan is at convincing believers they're not saved.

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That's right. We always come back, it seems, to Romans seven, Romans eight in conversations like this for good reason.

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Romans seven, as you guys have talked about on Theocast before, and as I've even talked about maybe in other places as well,

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Romans seven is the normal experience of the Christian. And so when Paul talks so beautifully there about his own internal struggle and doing the things he doesn't want to do and not doing the good things that he wants to do and his despair in and of himself, like wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

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He immediately goes to praising God for Christ and then tells us in Romans eight one, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, to which all of God's people say, praise

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God that that's true. And he goes on to give us all these wonderful promises in Romans chapter eight about how no one can bring any charge against God's elect because it is

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God who justifies. It's Jesus Christ who died. More than that, who was raised, who is interceding for us, just like the writer of the

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Hebrews says in Hebrews 725. He is able to save to the uttermost all of those who draw near to God through him because he lives forever to make intercession for them.

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And so that's where our hope is found in Christ, outside of ourselves.

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Absolutely. And you were just talking about, John, the reality that we all the time are changing.

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Our feelings are changing all the time, our joy, our love, but God doesn't change.

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Christ doesn't change. Like the objective reality of what Jesus has accomplished does not change.

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And I know I quoted this a few weeks ago, but Horatius Bonar's hymn, I Hear the Words of Love, like if you don't know it, go look up the lyrics to it.

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It is incredibly edifying and it's about this reality. He says in verse four of that hymn, he says, my love is oft times low.

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My joy still ebbs and flows, but peace with him remains the same. No change,

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Jehovah knows. Then verse five, I change. He changes not. The Christ can never die.

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His love, not mine, the resting place, his truth, not mine, the tie. It's like, I mean, my goodness, that's where hope is found because I vacillate by the minute, you know?

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And so the problem with a pietistic understanding of these things is that we're being pointed to something that inherently is sinking sand.

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It's not the solid rock. We're being pointed to something that can never withstand serious examination.

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It just can't. Yeah. To base your assurance upon your level of dedication is not founded in scripture.

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And there are people who will use verses to do that. As a matter of fact, next week, Justin and I are going to cover that. We're going to do a

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New Days to Confused based upon, is it Hebrews 13? Hebrews 12. Hebrews 12, sorry.

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I'm going to read the beginning of Hebrews 12. We'll give a little bit of an intro to that as we get ready to head on now. But this is,

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I think, important to realize that when the writers of scripture bring believers hope, it is in the reality of fighting sin.

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We are not saying that if you're in sin, remain in sin. That is, sin is, I think sin causes more people to question their assurance because you are living in a lie.

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The lie, you have been trapped and you are carrying this burden. And so this is what the writer of Hebrews says, therefore, it's 12 .1.

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Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, and what those witnesses are, is the reality of those who have had their eyes opened and they by faith walk and trust in Jesus Christ as frail humans.

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That's the witness. So let us lay aside every weight and sin, which clings closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

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I love that the writer, I think Paul, uses the concept of a race because it is, you know, running in races is a complicated thing.

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It's a very, it's hard. And this is what he says. As you are exerting so much energy to try and remove, there's so much temptation and so much that distract us.

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What are we focusing on? Looking to Jesus. And here it is. Here's your assurance, right?

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Not in your ability to run. Your assurance is not in your ability to lay aside. This is where the writer puts your assurance.

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Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of what saves you, which is faith in Christ.

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So the one who began your faith and the one who will keep your, the perfecter.

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Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, took in on your sin, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne, meaning that it is finished.

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If he sat down, there's nothing left to do. The pattern of the apostles is always one of here is who you are, your identity in Christ, here is what your status is.

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You're justified in Christ Jesus. You have been reconciled to God. You've been given a spirit of adoption, not a spirit of fear.

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That a spirit of adoption in you is what prompts you to cry out to God and call him father.

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And so you're living in a status forward, identity forward reality. And this is why we always say that assurance is the baseline.

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It is the essence of the Christian life, not the pursuit of it. We live in this position of safety and security as we pursue obedience and as we battle our own corruption and the like.

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And this is why, as many of us see in our churches too, that when Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward

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I look and I see him there who made an end of all my sin. We're looking to Christ. We're looking to Christ and what he has accomplished for us, and that's the ground of our hope and our assurance when we don't feel saved.

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And so we've got more to say about this, friends, and we're going to make our way over, John and I are, to the members podcast.

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We hope that you join us over there. If you are not yet a total access member, you can go over to theocast .org

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and learn more about our total access membership. You'll get access there as the name would imply to other kinds of content, including our members podcast, which comes out every week.

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So brother, this has been good. I look forward to chopping it up a little bit more with you over on the member side.

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We'll see you guys there. Yeah, as a lead in, I think just to put it in there, there are some more pointed movements in theology and men that I want to try and tie this to.