What If I Don't Feel Saved? | Theocast

The Question of Feeling Saved and the Burden of Assurance

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, John and I are going to attempt to answer the question, what do I do if I don't feel saved? This is a wrestling that we all have, if we're honest. God has told us in his word that through Christ we are his children, but so often we feel like anything but that.

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 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.

Stay tuned. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the Christian life from a reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and myself, Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

Our brother Jimmy Buehler will not be with us today. 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. They'll be beginning services soon, and he's also transitioning into a new job.

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

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.

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

And yesterday I was walking to grab it and hanging right in front of my face was the tail of a snake. And I thought I was about to lose it right all over the floor right there. I hate snakes. And then I realized it moved pretty quickly and it was a skin to which I started scaling the rafters and I could not find this snake anywhere.

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

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

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

Yeah, for real, man.

I told my son, like, don't go, don't walk in the garage without shoes on, which I'm not sure how that would help, but just logically in my mind. I had to go grab tools and every time I would reach into a cubby, 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. That's funny, man.

It is country living, man. That is, it is definitely country living.

So.

You are out in the cut.

That's true.

That is true.

But hey, man, hopefully one day we're praying that the 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 live in the outers of Nashville.

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. It's never fun.

That time of year.

Yeah, and so that's on my mind. 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 and you're just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So we're doing that right now. We, I think we can say this. 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 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.

Already over.

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. So stay tuned for those.

Yeah.

Some of those live podcasts we do and stuff.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's funny as you're talking, I'm still scanning my rafters and I'm looking at it. I don't feel safe at all.

So in other words, if you sound distracted today, that might be why.

I definitely don't feel safe.

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

I hear you.

You caught it. You caught it.

I did. I did.

I mean, I know we're both tired, but I did catch that. So man, why don't you tell everybody what we're going to talk about today?

Pietism, Emotional Security, and the Roots of Assurance

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

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.

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. And 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 Christian, you're always wondering, am I truly saved?

Because right at this moment, 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. 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. 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.

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?

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

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

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

As a Christian. 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. 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 I do not feel saved.

I know on the one hand that God has told me that I'm his child, but deep down, I feel like his enemy. And so this conversation, I think, is really important for people. And I know our goal is to comfort the weary Christian and point him or her to Christ.

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

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. This whole situation that we're describing where it's like, man, 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. Because what pietism does at its core is it points us inside ourselves, 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, our feelings about God and our feelings about Christ need to be in a certain place. 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 ahead and use that word pietism right now and move forward in this conversation together.

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 Faith Versus Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest.

And it is in that book we explain the difference between faith in Christ and pietism. So 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 to the reality that is found in Scripture, which we will get to at the end of the podcast of where should a 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 in reality outside of yourself. 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.

Often we struggle with fear and we don't feel saved because we absolutely forget realities, we forget truths. 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.

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. 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 Christians struggle with, many struggle with it, and it's because I think there's a whole culture centered around it.

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

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

We look to those things as the things that will make us feel saved. So 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?

That's not clear in Scripture. I mean, Scripture is all or nothing. You're either perfect or you're not, and so we're not saying there isn't progress in the Holy Spirit in us, 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. 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 God's.

And so we rightly feel, oh my gosh, this isn't as it should be, and I need to be concerned about my standing before the Lord. And then what happens, 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.

Observe and assess your faithfulness, your works, your abstinence from sin, your battle against the flesh and the like, and really what's happening there is the problem is just exacerbated. From the top turnbuckle, the elbow drop comes in and piles it on, and everybody is crushed.

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.

Revivalism, Finney, and the Rise of Emotional-Driven Assurance

So to contrast the two, and I would say what we're going to be contrasting is confessionalism, these Reformed realities, to, I would say, experience-based realities. Let me just run through a history of this real quick, of what Justin just kind of introduced.

Us to.

There's a history behind where this idea of focusing on our faithfulness is. So back, you've probably heard us speak of Charles Finney before, but Finney's theology has affected the 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. 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.

You can't be dumb and accomplish what he accomplished. He was a brilliant communicator. He was a brilliant leader. 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. They needed to logically make a conclusion that the way that they thought and felt about God was based upon them.

And as long as they had these feelings, this commitment level to God, then they truly could be assured. If that level dropped, then they needed to, as Justin just spoke to, rededicate their life, which is totally played into revivalism.

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

And some people have never probably heard of what's called the sawdust trail, where they had 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. 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.

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 Christian summer camp.

And Christian summer camps are notorious.

Justin Perdue. Easy now.

They're notorious for creating emotional highs within young, vulnerable students.

Got to throw your stick in the fire, man.

Tim Cynova. That's right. And there is so much that they build on. You know, it's Sermon One Monday, Sermon Two Tuesday. I mean, by the time Thursday rolls around, you have so many students who are questioning their standing before God.

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 Bibles because they have redead. And they may even want to get baptized again.

And this then moves into the college ministry movement. 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.

And they just begin to question. I just don't evangelize like they do. I don't have time to read my Bible like they do, and I'm not involved. And I would say there's also the charismatic movement. Now, to my charismatic brothers, 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. I'm not blaming you. So let me just get that out there right there, because 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. They see people's emotional highs. They see like, wow, these people feel like they're really dedicated and they have these spiritual experiences.

And I don't have that. I go to church and I go home and I feel dull and bland and plain. 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 vs. Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest. 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.

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. 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. You can do that by going to our website, theocast .org.

We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

Why Moralism and Self-Examination Crush Assurance

Pietism, and then I would throw in the other big word that often comes to mind, moralism. Those things are so common. They're so ubiquitous in the evangelical church. It's like white noise. We don't even perceive it.

It's the classic analogy, right? You're trying to tell the fish about the water that it's swimming in, right? And it doesn't resonate because it's just so normal. This is the air we breathe in evangelicalism.

To quote the song?

Revivalist, say again?

To quote the song?

Yeah, I wasn't doing that intentionally. Yeah, it's the air we breathe, though, for real. I mean, because it's like, hey, this instinct that we have about whether it's moral transformation, or like you've even said, this sort of crisis moment where we need to make this good decision for Christ, the idea that our obedience is somehow earning us something in God's credit book, all those kinds of things, it's incredibly common.

And here's the thing, John, whether we're talking about the revivalistic instinct or the pietistic instinct or even moralism, where again, I'm meriting something, I'm earning something, I'm escaping punishment, all that kind of stuff, there is absolutely no hope whatsoever in those kinds of schemes.

Because at the end of the day, I'm being driven back in on myself. For example, in an evangelical world where the message is so often one of ongoing and constant improvement, that message will absolutely crush the saint who is appropriately mindful of his or her own corruption.

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.

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. And the only people in the room who feel good in that kind of a situation are people who somewhat naively think, man, I'm crushing the Christian life.

For those of us in the room who are aware of our failures, it's like, well, I don't know that I am a Christian. I mean, maybe it didn't take. Yeah, bro, jump in.

David Zoll's book on secularity was very helpful here. And if you have not read it, I encourage you to read it. David did a great job of exposing the lack of the gospel within just our culture. But in the book, there's a section on food and how we spiritualize food.

And we put, you know, ice cream as a bad food and broccoli as a good food. So this is morally wrong for me to eat. And this is morally right.

Right.

And I had a bunch of people in my

Yeah, I was bad and I had ice cream.

I was good.

I had a salad.

That's right. 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. And then afterwards, she made these cookie ice cream sandwiches, which were amazing with.

How dare her.

Yeah, that's right. They were amazing. And everyone there, you know, we're a very health conscious city. And Nashville's all about running and health. And I'm sure Asheville, I think

Oh, it's nothing like that here. That was a joke.

And so, of course, everyone there was like, well, you know, it's the weekend. It's Sunday. We can have a bad day. And everybody was talking about resetting on Monday. We're going to reset and, you know, basically rededicate ourselves.

But this is true of Christianity. We are trained in this mindset where we stumble, we fall, we give into the flesh. And now, OK, I need to reset myself. I need to reset myself on Monday. And of course, that's typically Sunday.

We need to reset ourselves Sunday. But what happens when it's OK, but then Monday I have a cookie and ice cream. OK, 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. 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 don't wake up in the morning energized and they're so excited about life and the 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. And they're looking for that reset button cycle. What is going to bring me that spark where I used to have that feeling?

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.

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. And 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 Jesus that way, because I've been feeling this way so long, I must not be saved. I know, Justin, I think you had something you want to reply to that.

Justin Perdue. Well, I do have some stuff 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. 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.

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

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, like what's going on in my own heart and mind, you know, maybe even that Sunday morning, let alone the rest of the week, like I am no different than you.

Like, you're like, I don't, bro, I don't, I'm not as zealous as I should be. I don't care, you know, 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.

My word to that person in that moment, like lovingly, is, hey brother, hey sister, like take a number and get in line. Like join the rest of us who feel the exact same way that you do. And here's the thing, man, like this is not unique to you and me, like what we're saying.

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

A godly man feels sin more than grace, wrath more than favor, judgment more than redemption. This is our experience. This is why we have to always be looking outside of ourselves for the ground of our assurance.

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.

Assurance in Christ, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Gospel Promises

Well, I just think that with the time that we have left, 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.

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

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, 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. And I say feeling because in my mind, I knew what I felt wasn't real, but it didn't remove the thought of, I still feel this way.

I feel as if

When it still feels real.

It does. I felt, and the feeling I had was dark. I felt hopeless. I felt like nothing was going to work out right. I felt like everything is falling apart and it's all my fault. And the only sense of hope, I can remember exactly what exit I was at.

The only sense of hope 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.

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

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

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.

And I drove over to the YMCA where we meet here locally and was just, you know, I was playing music in the truck and wrestling with these realities. And then I pulled in the parking lot and I saw some cars of people that I know and love.

From our church.

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. 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.

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.

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

And so battling despair and discouragement is a normal experience for me like it is for so many. 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 Satan, the great accuser of the brethren, when he accuses us, it's not as though there isn't material to work with.

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

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 Heidelberg Catechism, question 60. I think it speaks beautifully to this.

So question 60 reads this way from the 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 accused 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.

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.

And so my righteousness, praise God, is found in Christ. It's His perfect satisfaction, 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 confessionalism. Let me just read to you the Lenten Baptist Confession, which is going to be very similar in the Westminster as well.

But chapter 18 .2, 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. It is an infallible assurance of faith founded on the blood and righteousness of Christ revealed in the gospel.

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

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. I would say your emotional feeling is a fallible hope.

No doubt.

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. 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.

Have you lusted this week? Did you desire money? You name the sin, and then what they do is they call into question your dedication to.