Part 2 of 2. ← Read Part 1: Expect a Change, Don’t Chase the Change
Last time we talked about assurance, about knowing you’re a child of God, and about expecting a real change when the Holy Spirit gives new birth. That matters. But there’s something we have to say next, or we’ll do more harm than good:
Assurance is the base of the mountain. It isn’t the summit.
Scripture puts it this way:
“Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God,”
(Hebrews 6:1, ESV)
A foundation is meant to be built on. You don’t keep pouring it again, and you don’t move into the basement and call the house finished. Once you know you belong to Christ, the climb starts.
There are two ways to get stuck at the bottom.
Danger 1: Living by feelings and frames
Some people measure their standing with God by how they feel today. A warm, stirred-up day means “I’m saved.” A flat, dry day means “Maybe I’m not.”
Jonathan Edwards spent years watching revival up close, and he warned against exactly this:
“It is no sign, one way or other, that religious affections are very great, or raised very high.”
(Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, Part II, sign 1)
Notice “one way or other.” Big feelings don’t prove you’re saved, and they don’t prove you’re not. Edwards wasn’t against strong feeling. In the same section he says, “if true religion in the hearts of men be raised to a great height, divine and holy affections will be raised to a great height.” Feelings just aren’t the foundation.
The same goes for loud confidence:
“It is no sign that affections are right, or that they are wrong, that they make persons exceeding confident.”
(Edwards, Religious Affections, Part II, sign 11)“Nothing can be certainly argued from their confidence, how great and strong soever it be.”
(Same, Part II, sign 11)
Feeling sure and being sure are not the same thing. And if you’re living in sin and coasting on an old memory, Edwards says the light goes out:
“It is as impossible, in the nature of things, that a holy and Christian hope should be kept alive in its clearness and strength, in such circumstances, as it is to keep the light in the room, when the candle that gives it is put out”
(Same, Part II, sign 11)
Assurance isn’t a feeling you hold onto by force. It’s light from a candle, and the candle is a living walk with Christ.
Danger 2: “I’ve arrived”
The second danger is quieter. It sounds like this: “I know I’m saved. Settled. I don’t need to keep learning.”
Edwards saw that one too. He describes what false confidence does to a person:
“there are no more earnest longings after light and grace; for his end is answered; he is confident. that his sins are forgiven him, and that he shall go to heaven; and so he is satisfied.”
(Edwards, Religious Affections, Part III, sign 11)
Then he says it even more plainly:
“but now they act as though they thought their work was done; they live upon their first work, or some high past experiences; and there is an end to their crying, and striving after God and grace.”
(Same, Part III, sign 11)“the Scriptures every where represent the seeking, striving, and labour of a Christian, as being chiefly after his conversion, and his conversion as being but the beginning of his work.”
(Same, Part III, sign 11)
The beginning of his work. Conversion is the trailhead.
Real grace works the other way. It makes you hungrier:
“the more earnestly will he hunger and thirst for more, until he comes to perfection. And therefore this is the nature of spiritual affections, that the greater they be, the greater the appetite and longing is, after grace and holiness.”
(Same, Part III, sign 11)
If you’ve tasted that the Lord is good, you want more of Him, not less.
And where does that hunger show? Edwards says it shows in your life:
“Gracious and holy affections have their exercise and fruit in Christian practice.”
(Edwards, Religious Affections, Part III, sign 12)
He calls this “the chief of all the signs of grace, both as an evidence of the sincerity of professors unto others, and also to their own consciences” (same, Part III, sign 12). This isn’t about earning anything. It’s what a new heart does.
A word if your assurance feels shaken
Maybe reading this makes you nervous. “What if I’ve coasted? What if my assurance has gone dim?”
Hear the Westminster Confession:
“True believers may have the assurance of their salvation divers ways shaken, diminished, and intermitted; as, by negligence in preserving of it; by falling into some special sin, which woundeth the conscience, and grieveth the Spirit; by some sudden or vehement temptation; by God’s withdrawing the light of his countenance, and suffering even such as fear him to walk in darkness and to have no light: yet are they never utterly destitute of that seed of God, and life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart and conscience of duty, out of which, by the operation of the Spirit, this assurance may in due time be revived, and by the which, in the meantime, they are supported from utter despair.”
(Westminster Confession of Faith 18.4)
True believers can have their assurance shaken. That doesn’t mean they were never His. And notice how it comes back: “by the operation of the Spirit.” You don’t talk yourself back into confidence. You turn back to Christ, and the Spirit revives what He planted.
So keep climbing
Don’t build on your feelings, and don’t sit down at the trailhead. Look to Jesus. Open His Word and keep learning, with a growing hunger to know Him better than you did yesterday.
The question still isn’t “How do I feel?” or “Have I arrived?” It’s the one Jesus asked: “But who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15, ESV). The better you know Him, the higher the climb goes.
Next read: How to Pray When You Don’t Know How →
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Image made with AI tools. Words and Scripture checked by Justin.