seeking
Here are some questions which need answering.
The first question is about assurance, I think. It's tricky to answer because people's experiences vary. Some people know in a fairly clearcut way, when and where they were saved. Other people's understanding of their experience is more blurry. As you know, salvation is God's work, and everything about it is at his discretion, and that includes him letting a person understand what he's done for them, or in them. But there are two general ways that the issue can be tackled.
One is that there are several characteristics which mark out a person who God has saved, and the Bible tells us what these are. So one way for a person to find out whether the Lord has saved them is to examine themselves to see whether they can find any of those characteristics in their own lives. It takes a careful analysis of themselves and the things they've experienced, comparing them to what it says in the Bible, and asking help from God to do it honestly and thoroughly. I might try and post something later that would go into more details about what kind of characteristics I'm talking about, but for now, all I want to say is that if your self-analysis is honest before God, and you find that he has given you some things that match with the descriptions he gives of the people he saves, then you can conclude that he has saved you too, still asking him to confirm to you himself that this conclusion is right.
The other thing would be to recognise that assurance of being saved is a gift from God, and go to him to ask him to give it to you. That goes hand in hand with using all the different ways of approaching him, and especially reading what he has to say in the Bible, and praying. (There are other ways, but these are two of the most readily available.) He tells us that the Holy Spirit witnesses with our spirits that we are the children of God, and that's something that we can ask him to do for us too, or at any rate make it clear to us whether or not we are truly his children. 'Ask, and ye shall receive.'
The second question is: This person is reading the bible more and more, praying constantly, and thinking about God all the time. Do they need to go to church too?
It might be worth saying this to start off with: the mere fact of going to church isn't going to contribute to saving you. It is perfectly possible for God to work in a person's soul simply through his Word which they prayerfully read at home for themselves. You don't need to add in churchgoing, as if getting saved was just ticking things off on a checklist, or as if you would definitely be saved once you started going back to church, just because it's the one thing you notice you're missing at the moment.
On the other hand, going to church to hear the gospel preached is one of the most important ways that God has arranged for people to approach him - right alongside bible-reading and prayer. He has set up the ministry as a way of helping people to understand what the bible says, and sending his Word home to their hearts, in a way that doesn't really happen when you're reading the bible on your own. What a preacher is meant to do, is take the Word of God, explain what it means, and show you how it's relevant to your personal spiritual situation. By gathering with other people to hear God's Word being brought to you in that way, you're not only obeying what God wants you to do, but you're also placing yourself in a very good situation for getting help from him and his Word.
But having said all that, some people unfortunately live in places where there's no real gospel preachers for them to listen to. If that was the case with the person asking these questions, I'm even more hesitant to offer any suggestions. Ideally you would want to keep looking for a church where the bible is respected above everything else, and where the preacher speaks to your heart in a biblical way. But if you can't hear the gospel when you go along to the churches in your locality, maybe it might be better to stay at home after all, and carry on prayerfully reading the bible, asking for the Lord himself to guide you since there are none of his pastors within reach who can help.
The third question was: What happens if you turn away again, even after the Lord has renewed his work in you?
Salvation is God's work, from beginning to end, and if he ever saves someone, he makes sure that he keeps them safe for the rest of their life (until he takes them to heaven to be safe with himself for ever). Nobody needs to think that once God starts to work in them, it's up to them now to make sure that the work doesn't fail. It's a shameful thing to turn away from God, especially if he's begun to work in you, but he still proclaims a message of forgiveness to anyone who returns to him. Some people in the past turned so far away from him that he told them, 'You have destroyed yourselves,' but that wasn't where he stopped: 'You have destroyed yourselves, but in me is your help.' Hosea 13:9. He speaks to the wicked person and the unrighteous person and says, "Return to the Lord, and he will have mercy, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Isaiah 55:6-8. It's good to recognise that we aren't able to keep ourselves, and we are prone to turn away, because when we realise that, it should make us run even closer to him, asking him to keep us. And if we do turn away from him, we still know that there's no one else who can help us, or who would help us, so all you can really do is turn back to him again, still asking for forgiveness.
That's as far as I've thought on these questions at the moment, and if anything is unclear or misleading, I'd welcome anyone who points it out. I'll also be very glad if anyone can add anything that would be helpful to the person who asked them.
- If someone is crying out for the Lord to save them, how are they to know when he does?
- Do you need to go to church, or is it enough to read the Bible, pray, and think about God without going to church as well?
- If you think that there used to be a time in your life when the Lord was working in you, but you turned away (gave up going to church, etc), what happens if he's working in you now, and you turn away again?
The first question is about assurance, I think. It's tricky to answer because people's experiences vary. Some people know in a fairly clearcut way, when and where they were saved. Other people's understanding of their experience is more blurry. As you know, salvation is God's work, and everything about it is at his discretion, and that includes him letting a person understand what he's done for them, or in them. But there are two general ways that the issue can be tackled.
One is that there are several characteristics which mark out a person who God has saved, and the Bible tells us what these are. So one way for a person to find out whether the Lord has saved them is to examine themselves to see whether they can find any of those characteristics in their own lives. It takes a careful analysis of themselves and the things they've experienced, comparing them to what it says in the Bible, and asking help from God to do it honestly and thoroughly. I might try and post something later that would go into more details about what kind of characteristics I'm talking about, but for now, all I want to say is that if your self-analysis is honest before God, and you find that he has given you some things that match with the descriptions he gives of the people he saves, then you can conclude that he has saved you too, still asking him to confirm to you himself that this conclusion is right.
The other thing would be to recognise that assurance of being saved is a gift from God, and go to him to ask him to give it to you. That goes hand in hand with using all the different ways of approaching him, and especially reading what he has to say in the Bible, and praying. (There are other ways, but these are two of the most readily available.) He tells us that the Holy Spirit witnesses with our spirits that we are the children of God, and that's something that we can ask him to do for us too, or at any rate make it clear to us whether or not we are truly his children. 'Ask, and ye shall receive.'
The second question is: This person is reading the bible more and more, praying constantly, and thinking about God all the time. Do they need to go to church too?
It might be worth saying this to start off with: the mere fact of going to church isn't going to contribute to saving you. It is perfectly possible for God to work in a person's soul simply through his Word which they prayerfully read at home for themselves. You don't need to add in churchgoing, as if getting saved was just ticking things off on a checklist, or as if you would definitely be saved once you started going back to church, just because it's the one thing you notice you're missing at the moment.
On the other hand, going to church to hear the gospel preached is one of the most important ways that God has arranged for people to approach him - right alongside bible-reading and prayer. He has set up the ministry as a way of helping people to understand what the bible says, and sending his Word home to their hearts, in a way that doesn't really happen when you're reading the bible on your own. What a preacher is meant to do, is take the Word of God, explain what it means, and show you how it's relevant to your personal spiritual situation. By gathering with other people to hear God's Word being brought to you in that way, you're not only obeying what God wants you to do, but you're also placing yourself in a very good situation for getting help from him and his Word.
But having said all that, some people unfortunately live in places where there's no real gospel preachers for them to listen to. If that was the case with the person asking these questions, I'm even more hesitant to offer any suggestions. Ideally you would want to keep looking for a church where the bible is respected above everything else, and where the preacher speaks to your heart in a biblical way. But if you can't hear the gospel when you go along to the churches in your locality, maybe it might be better to stay at home after all, and carry on prayerfully reading the bible, asking for the Lord himself to guide you since there are none of his pastors within reach who can help.
The third question was: What happens if you turn away again, even after the Lord has renewed his work in you?
Salvation is God's work, from beginning to end, and if he ever saves someone, he makes sure that he keeps them safe for the rest of their life (until he takes them to heaven to be safe with himself for ever). Nobody needs to think that once God starts to work in them, it's up to them now to make sure that the work doesn't fail. It's a shameful thing to turn away from God, especially if he's begun to work in you, but he still proclaims a message of forgiveness to anyone who returns to him. Some people in the past turned so far away from him that he told them, 'You have destroyed yourselves,' but that wasn't where he stopped: 'You have destroyed yourselves, but in me is your help.' Hosea 13:9. He speaks to the wicked person and the unrighteous person and says, "Return to the Lord, and he will have mercy, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Isaiah 55:6-8. It's good to recognise that we aren't able to keep ourselves, and we are prone to turn away, because when we realise that, it should make us run even closer to him, asking him to keep us. And if we do turn away from him, we still know that there's no one else who can help us, or who would help us, so all you can really do is turn back to him again, still asking for forgiveness.
That's as far as I've thought on these questions at the moment, and if anything is unclear or misleading, I'd welcome anyone who points it out. I'll also be very glad if anyone can add anything that would be helpful to the person who asked them.
posted by cath at
10:27 am
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