Unfortunately, we can begin to doubt our salvation. This devotional reading begins to look at how our doubts should be eliminated because we belong to Jesus.
Nuggets
- God reveals the sin in our lives by revealing our doubts.
- God reveals the sin in our lives by convicting us, causing us misery.
Sometimes, we struggle wondering if we are really saved or not. We can think we aren’t worthy. Maybe we think we are too bad for God to save.
Pastor Steve and I just watched a documentary on the life of Charles Spurgeon. Yes, I use a lot of quotes from him. This giant man of faith often questioned not only his call to the ministry but also his salvation as a whole.
No one is exempt from Satan’s seeds of doubt.
I ran across one of Beveridge’s sermons that talks to the surety of salvation. Let’s run through this to see what habits we can pick up to battle and defeat our doubts.
The first series in the study is going to be on how Christ will not lose what is given to Him. But what does the phrase given to Him mean?
God helps us recognize our sin and misery.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life theme, click the button below.
Here is a running list of nuggets for the theme.
Devotions in the The Surity of Our Salvation study
Here is a running list of nuggets for the study.
The foundation of this study is Beveridge’s sermon The Believer’s Safety
Resource
The title of the devotion is Beveridge’s words.
Revealing Our Sin
“I have paid attention and listened, but they have not spoken rightly; no man relents of his evil, saying, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone turns to his own course, like a horse plunging headlong into battle” (Jer. 8: 6 ESV)
God reveals the sin in our lives by revealing our doubts.
We need to put these verses into context. Jeremiah was detailing another “declares the Lord” section. It was concerning Judgment Day, where the dead would be judged.
But then God has a wonderful note of encouragement. “You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord: When men fall, do they not rise again? If one turns away, does he not return?” (Jer. 8: 4 ESV).
Yes, you backslide. But don’t you come back to Me?
Backsliding is when those who have made a profession of faith but return to their sinful lives.
- Faith is a gift from God and a work of the Spirit that enhances the conviction that the doctrines revealed in God’s Word are true, even if we do not understand all aspects of them, a belief which impacts our lives and distinguishes us from others.
Glossary
What gets me is Beveridge would use Jeremiah 8: 6 as evidence that we are given to Jesus. It sure seems to me that the person in this verse was non-repentant.
But doesn’t that speak to our doubts about our salvation? Our doubts are caused by sin in our lives.
In other words, we doubt our sincerity. We don’t think the desire is there.
Yes, we are still in these sinful bodies, so we are going to continue to sin even after conversion. That doesn’t change.
What changes is our desire to not sin. After we ask Jesus to be our Savior, we have to want to be obedient to God’s laws and commandments.
Doubts of our salvation can be caused because we don’t think we’ve repented of everything. Or maybe it is we don’t feel we’ve repented enough.
Hopefully, it isn’t because we don’t feel that God can’t or won’t forgive us. When we do that, we question His power and purpose.
I wonder if, sometimes, we are mistaken about what God is really trying to do in our lives. We know God reveals our sins to us. But what is the reason He is doing so?
God doesn’t reveal our sin to us to hit us over the head because we have done wrong. He shows us that for which we need to repent and turn away from so we can continue to grow in grace and knowledge and grow closer to Him.
But we don’t always get that. We think God is going to give us a whammy.
We are too focused on God’s wrath and not on God’s love.
We have to remember that God reveals sin our lives to us to bring us to salvation. But He also does to bring us to sanctification.
We need to have God cut the sin out of us when He reveals it to us. Look what Sibbes said. He wrote,
“The longer we live in any sin unrepented of, the more our hearts will be hardened; the more Satan takes advantage against us, the more hardly he is driven out of his old possession, the more just it may be with God to give us up from one sin to another.”
Resource
Sin hardens our hearts.
- “Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: ‘You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.’ For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them” (Mt. 13: 14-15 ESV).
- Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. Blessed is the one who fears the Lord always, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity” (Prov. 28: 13-14 ESV).
That is the opposite of what we want. We don’t want hardened hearts. We want obedient, submissive hearts.
Satan is going to use those hardened hearts to sow doubt of our salvation. He is going to scare us into thinking we haven’t repented appropriately.
But then, won’t our doubts draw God’s attention upon us? We think of the lost sheep as God leaving the 99 and going after the one in terms of salvation.
What we don’t think about is that the sheep was already His. He isn’t poaching someone else’s sheep.
God is going after His own. He is listening in Heaven, waiting to run to us as if we are prodigal sons and daughters.
Revealing Our Misery
“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (Jn. 16: 7-8 ESV)
God reveals the sin in our lives by convicting us, causing us misery.
The Holy Spirit has a distinct job description. One of His duties is to convict us, which has three elements: sin, righteousness, and judgment.
The convicting of the Holy Spirit causes misery because He is pointing out our sins. He is showing our unrighteousness — and self-righteousness — needs correction.
And we don’t like to be corrected!
Think about what the Holy Spirit is teaching us. He teaches discernment, which is where we can evaluate the situation and recognize right from wrong.
We are evaluating our unrighteousness against Jesus’ total righteousness. There is no way we are going to match up.
Ooo, baby! We don’t like it when we are seen to be inferior.
Remember, too, that God’s Word only gives us a foundation of God’s truth. Jesus said that the apostles could only bear to hear so much, but that there was more.
It is the job of the Holy Spirit to give us that more. “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (Jn. 16: 12-13 ESV).
Wouldn’t it be easy to doubt ourselves when we are being taught the more? We don’t have God’s Word to find it verbatim. We have to use the discernment, where Satan can sow seeds of doubt.
Ooo baby, don’t we think we aren’t good enough to figure it out?
Cumming gave a good explanation of what the Holy Spirit is up against when He convicts us. He wrote,
“Now to ‘convince,’ or to ‘convict’ means to bring home sin to one’s judgment, and to render all denial impossible; to one’s conscience, and to render all evasion impracticable; to unveil sin in its own hiding-place; to detect it when it lurks in the core of the most exquisite bud, or when it nestles in the bosom of the most fragrant and beautiful flower; to fix upon it the sinner’s eye so intently, that he shall see it lying where he never suspected it to be before, nestling amidst the affections he thought holy, clinging to the habits he thought beautiful, and staining all his nature so entirely by its venom, that he shall feel that none but the Omnipotent Spirit of God can enable him to get rid of it.”
Resource
Oh, wow! Let’s break that down.
- We don’t like our failures pointed out to us.
- Some may see “…render all denial impossible …” and “… render all evasion impracticable …” as being backed into a corner.
- We generally have one sin that we want to hide, and it hurts to have it brought out into the open.
- It especially hurts when we have an unsuspected sin pointed out to us.
- We can really kick back when we think something is right when it is really wrong.
- And through all of this we are supposed to be strong in our faith? Wouldn’t it rather convince us that we made the wrong decision to submit to God?
That is a recipe for misery!
Maybe that is why it sometimes feels like we are navigating a mine field instead of the Sanctification Road.
Jesus won’t lose us while we are wrestling within our doubts. Let’s mark out the scene.
It is Pentecost. Jesus is dead. The Holy Spirit has been introduced.
- The Holy Spirit leads us away from sin and to the gospel.
- Moreover, the Holy Spirit leads us to belief — not doubt — in Jesus as our Savior.
- The Holy Spirit leads us to follow His example since Jesus’ example, as Spurgeon said, “… no longer reproved their darkness …”
- The Holy Spirit assures us that there will be judgment for sin.
Spurgeon said something that I think we forget. We want to just kick ourselves because of the doubt. He wrote, “We cannot make headway with certain people who profess faith very readily, but are convinced of nothing. But get near a real sinner, the man who mourns in his inmost soul that he is so, and you find one who will welcome the [Savior].
Resource
A sinner who mourns because of His sin is the only one who will genuinely submit to God. Yes, we are to mourn because we don’t like our current separation from God. We want to strengthen our faith and eliminate our doubts of salvation.
Faith is believing in that which we cannot see. It is believing in that which we cannot know and understand.
Through all this, we have the reassurance that Jesus does not lose anyone He is given. “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (Jn. 10: 29 ESV).
Making the Connections
“I have paid attention and listened, but they have not spoken rightly; no man relents of his evil, saying, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone turns to his own course, like a horse plunging headlong into battle” (Jer. 8: 6 ESV)
Let’s go back to the first verse we looked at in this devotion. Sibbes gave us a good note of encouragement. He wrote,
“Should we be stricken, if we have made our peace with God, if we have repented, all shall be welcome, all shall be turned to our good. We know the sting is pulled out. ‘No man repented of his evil ways.’ We see, then, that generality is no plea. ‘We must not follow a multitude to do evil’ (Exodus 23:2). We must not follow the stream, to do as the world doth. It hath been the commendation of God’s children, that they have striven against the stream and been good in evil times.”
Resource
There is only one unpardonable sin. It is quenching the Holy Spirit. We must not lessen, deaden, or suppress the Holy Spirit.
We definitely can’t let our doubts deaden the Holy Spirit. Our belief in God has to remain intact. We can’t choose to not believe God.
But we have to remember that all sin stems from unbelief. To me, it is all a form of rejection of Jesus.
We have to be very careful to not lessen or suppress the Holy Spirit. We have to be obedient through our doubts.
We can’t resolve our doubts by compromising with the worldview. That wouldn’t be being obedient to God. We have to do things His way.
Sibbes put it this way. He wrote, “God having given man this excellent prerogative to cite himself and to judge his own courses, when man doth not this, it is the cause of all mischief, of all sin and misery.
Resource
What this is telling me is we have to evaluate ourselves. We have to work through our doubts and make peace with God.
Related Link
I have created a worksheet to help us evaluate ourselves. Click on the button below to access it.
But we have to remember it isn’t ourselves bringing us back to God. That would be the worldview self-help way.
We aren’t going to lose anything unless we are delusional in our self-evaluation. It has to be an honest look at ourselves.
Evaluating ourselves has to lead in repentance. Repentance is us acknowledging that we are wrong. Forgiveness is God’s deal alone.
How Do We Apply This?
- Don’t let our understanding be darkened and our conscience be dulled by continuing to sin.
- Keep our prayer life going — even through our doubts.
- Repent when needed.
- Evaluate where we are at in our doubts.
- Make our peace with God and hide in His promises.
- Watch for when doubts could come — because they will.
- Sincerely believe in God.
Resource
Father God. Too many times, we doubt our salvation. When we have made a genuine confession, You have promised us that Jesus will not lose us. Help us to obediently submit to You. Amen.
What do you think?
Leave me a comment below (about this or anything else) or head over to my Facebook group for some interactive discussion.
If you don’t understand something and would like further clarification, please contact me.
If you have not signed up for the email providing the link to the devotions and the newsletter, do so below.
If God has used this devotion to speak with you, consider sharing it on social media.