Soli Deo Gloria

There is a great difference between presumption and full assurance. Full assurance is reasonable; it is based on solid ground. Presumption takes for granted, and with brazen face pronounces that to be its own to which it has no right whatever. Beware, I pray you, of presuming that you are saved. If with your heart you trust in Jesus, then you are saved; but if you merely say, “I trust in Jesus,” it does not save you. If your heart is renewed; if you hate the things that you once loved and love the things that you once hated; if you have really repented; if there is a thorough change of mind in you; if you are born again, then you have reason to rejoice. But if there is no vital change, no inward godliness; if there is no love for God, no prayer, no work of the Holy Spirit, then your saying, “I am saved,” is but your own assertion, and it may delude, but it will not deliver you.

Our prayer ought to be, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, with real faith, with real salvation, with the trust in Jesus that is the essence of faith; not with the delusion that gives rise to gullibility.” God preserve us from imaginary blessings! I have met with persons who said, “I believe I am saved, because I dreamt it,” or, “Because I had a text of Scripture that applied to my own case. Such and such a good man said so and so in his sermon,” or, “Because I took to weeping and was excited, and I felt as I never felt before.” Ah, but nothing will stand the trial but this: “Do you abandon all confidence in everything but the finished work of Jesus, and do you come to Christ to be reconciled in Him to God?” If you do not, your dreams, and visions, and fancies, are but dreams, and visions, and fancies, and will not serve your turn when you most need them. Pray the Lord to bless you indeed, for of that sterling reality in all your walk and talk there is a great scarcity.

- Charles Spurgeon

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.” – Martin Luther

There has been a trend in American Christianity lately to focus on the confession of sin.  If this was a focus that was Biblical I would be rejoicing but what we are seeing is a trend that focuses on confession of sin outside of the only basis for that confession – the cross of Christ.   Do a cursory search on the internet for online confessionals and you’ll find that most if not all are encourage people to confess their sins, often anonymously, in an effort to help the sinner feel better – all without ever mentioning the only way forgiveness of sins is offered…  through the substitionary atonement of Christ on the cross.

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From “The Valley of Vision” – a collection of Puritan prayers.  (If you don’t own this little book I encourage you to get it…  it is amazing!)

Holy LORD,
I have sinned times without number, and been guilty of pride and unbelief, of failure to find thy mind in Thy Word, of neglect to seek Thee in daily life.

My transgressions and short-comings present me with a list of accusations, but I bless Thee that they will not stand against me, for all have been laid on Christ; Go on to subdue my corruptions, and grant me grace to live above them.

Let not the passions of the flesh nor lustings of the mind bring my spirit into subjection, but do Thou rule over me in liberty and power.

I thank Thee that many of my prayers have been refused – I have asked amiss and do not have, I have prayed from lusts and been rejected, I have longed for Egypt and been given a wilderness.

Go on with Thy patient work, answering ‘no’ to my wrongful prayers, and fitting me to accept it.

Purge me from every false desire, every base aspiration, everything contrary to Thy rule.

I thank Thee for Thy wisdom and Thy love, for all the acts of discipline to which I am subject, for sometimes putting me into the furnace to refine my gold and remove my dross.

No trial is so hard to bear as a sense of sin.  If Thou shouldst give me choice to live in pleasure and keep my sins, or to have them burnt awat with trial, give me sanctified affliction.

Deliver me from every evil habit, every accretion of former sins, everything that dims the brightness of Thy grace in me, everything that prevents me taking delight in Thee.  Then I shall bless The, God of Jeshurun, for heloing me to be upright.

Amen.