Sermon: "Steps That Lead to Assurance"
A very attractive lady was walking down the street to work and saw a parrot in a pet store. She stopped to admire the bird. The parrot said to her, “Hey, lady, you are really ugly.” The lady was hurt and angry. She stormed past the store and went to work.
On the way home she saw the same parrot in the window and the parrot, upon seeing her, said, “Hey, lady, you are really ugly.” She glanced at her reflection in the store window. Fussed with her hair and stalked away.
The next day on the way to work she saw the same parrot and once again it said, “Hey, lady, you are really ugly.” The lady was so upset that she stormed into the store and threatened to sue the store and have the bird killed. The store manager apologized profusely and promised the bird wouldn’t say it again. All the while he wondered why a beautiful lady would believe a parrot.
When the lady walked past the store on the way home from work, the parrot said to her, “Hey, lady!” She paused and said, “Yes?” The bird said, “You know.”
She hung her head, and shuffled away, wondering why God had made her so ugly.
Inwardly we laugh at that story and wonder how someone could be so dumb. Yet there are many of you here this morning who have received Jesus as your Lord, and yet believe the lies of Satan when he tells you that you aren’t really a Child of God.
You look at that attractive lady and wonder why she would believe a parrot.
I suspect God looks at us and wonders why we would believe the father of lies. Yes, that is how Jesus described Satan. Listen to what Jesus said.
JOHN 8:44b – When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
Satan is a liar and yet many Christians believe him when he tells them they are not really a Child of God. They walk away hanging their heads, heads filled with doubts and fears, wondering what is going to happen to them when they die.
That is not how you have to, or should, live as a Christian, and so for the next four weeks our lessons are designed to help you know that you are a Child of God if you have believed in your heart and confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.
James wrote in the beginning of his letter about being double-minded and unstable. I don’t think any of us want to be like that. Yet the lack of assurance among professing Christians is a disturbing reality.
Often this lack of assurance can be traced to an inadequate faith or a lack of commitment to God. Over these next four weeks we hope to help you overcome these things or anything else that is causing you to be unsure of your salvation.
Our scripture text for this morning is found in I Timothy, chapter six.
I TIMOTHY 6:12 – Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
This morning we are going to look at some steps you can take to help you fight the good fight of faith, to help you take hold of the eternal life God gave you, to help you know that you are a Child of God.
Of course, to be a Child of God you must believe in Jesus. You must receive Him as your Lord. Here is what the Bible tells us about salvation and Jesus.
ACTS 4:12 – Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.
If you have never received Jesus as your Lord you need to do that now. You don’t have to first clean up your life. You just have to believe and receive. Of course, if you receive Jesus as your Lord that means as Lord you need to obey him. That obedience may cause you to make some changes in your life-style.
Let’s look now at how you can live a life of assurance once you have received Jesus as your Lord.
You can be certain you are a Child of God if you will take the following steps that lead to assurance.
STEP NUMBER ONE – EXERCISE YOUR FAITH
We all understand the importance of physical exercise. If we have an arm or leg in a cast for weeks, when the cast is removed the arm or leg is very weak because it has not been exercised. Your faith also needs to be exercised or it will be weak and it is difficult to be sure you are a Child of God if your faith is weak. Our scripture text says …
I TIMOTHY 6:12a – Fight the good fight of the faith.
The question is, “How do we fight the good fight of the faith or how do we exercise our faith?” Here are some suggestions you might find helpful.
1. Spend some time in prayer
It is hard to trust someone you don’t know. Prayer is one way of developing a relationship with God.
2. Do things you know God wants you to do
Forgive others – visit the sick – tell others about Jesus – be a generous giver – feed upon (study) his word – serve others – help the poor
The story is told of a godly man in a small European village. He was greatly loved by his friends and neighbors. They believed he had an especially close relationship with God. He disappeared every Friday and could not be found for several hours. Some people said that during those hours he ascended to heaven and talked with God.
There was a newcomer to that village. He was a skeptic who made fun of the faith of all the other people. He got increasingly irritated by all the claims about the godly man and so he determined to find out where he really spent Fridays. He hid near the man’s house. He watched as he rose early, spent time in prayer, and left his house in work clothes.
The young skeptic followed the old man from a safe distance. He watched him cut up a fallen tree into a large pile of firewood. He continued to watch as he made trip after trip to a shack in the poorest part of the village and stacked the wood. It was the home of an old woman and her sick husband. After leaving the couple enough wood to last them a week, the man quietly returned to his own home.
The villagers were startled the next Sunday when the young newcomer was in church. They were even more surprised when he became a Christian shortly thereafter.
If you aren’t doing the things you know God wants you to do, your faith will be very weak.
3. Try doing what you think you can’t do
Many people don’t think they can teach – others say they don’t feel comfortable visiting people in hospitals or nursing homes – some believe they can’t be generous givers – others say they don’t have the time or desire to reach out to the poor – I have even had people say, “serving in the nursery is not my thing.”
Many times I have done things “that are not my thing” and quite often God has moved in ways I never dreamed of.
Faith is asking God to use you and then moving forward. In the beginning it might be very uncomfortable, and yes, even frightening.
There are lots of other ways you can exercise your faith, but let’s now move to the second step that leads to assurance.
STEP NUMBER TWO – TRUST THE PROMISES OF GOD
Assurance can be cultivated through simply believing what God has promised.
God asked Abraham to do some really difficult things, but he also made some wonderful promises to Abraham. Like you and me, Abraham sometimes messed up, but most of the time Abraham stood firm and believed God would keep his promises. The Bible says …
ROMANS 4:3 – What does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
I am not going to review all of God’s promises to you, but here are some of them.
PSALM 30:5 – For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.
PSALM 34:19 -- A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.
JOHN 14:2 – In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.
ROMANS 8:28 -- And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
JOHN 3:14-15 – 14Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
PSALM 41:1 – Blessed is he who has regard for the weak; the Lord delivers him in times of trouble.
ACTS 3:19 -- Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.
I CORINTHIANS 15:58 – Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
Here is a key statement concerning trusting God and his promises:
If your trust in God and his promises is complete and wholehearted, it will do away with your fears, set your mind at rest, and fill your heart with assurance.
Like Paul, you will be able to say …
II TIMOTHY 1:12b – I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.
So to be certain about your salvation, you need to …EXERCISE YOUR FAITH … TRUST THE PROMISES OF GOD and …
STEP NUMBER THREE – STUDY GOD’S WORD
The Apostle Paul wrote …
II TIMOTHY 2:15 -- Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.
Last fall when Connie’s mother was at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD, we made many trips to visit her. Some of you know the hospital is located right in the center of Baltimore. One day I decided to forsake our normal route through Baltimore and try a short cut. Big mistake! But I thought as long as I kept going southeast, eventually I would see something in the city I recognized. Of course Connie turned to the map, located where we were and told me I was going in the wrong direction. I was going northeast, instead of southeast. I really struggled to turn because it “felt” like I was going south, not north. But I trusted Connie’s map instead of my feelings and we soon came to a street on our normal route.
We can’t always trust our feelings. It was good that I had a map and trusted what it showed.
The same principle holds true when it comes to our assurance of salvation. Assurance must rest upon something more reliable and permanent than our feelings. Assurance that rests upon God’s unchanging word remains steadfast.
If you have trouble being certain that you are a Child of God, and that heaven is going to be your eternal home, you either aren’t reading and studying your Bible or you don’t believe what it teaches, because listen to what it says …
ISAIAH 12:2 – Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord, the Lord, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.
ROMANS 10:9 – That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
ACTS 2:21 – And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
JOHN 3:16 – For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
EPHESIANS 2:8 – For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.
Isn’t it great that you can be certain you are a Child of God. That you can think about dying and not have to be afraid that God won’t accept you into heaven. That you can face death not wondering if you are going to be sent to hell.
And isn’t it wonderful that the steps you need to take to have this assurance are relatively simple. The first three are …
1. Exercise your faith – by spending time in prayer, doing the things you know God wants you to do and trying to do what you think you can’t do.
2. Trust the promises of God
3. Study God’s Word
That brings us to the final step.
STEP NUMBER FOUR – CULTIVATE YOUR CHRISTIAN LIFE
Paul wrote to his friend Timothy …
I TIMOTHY 4:12 – Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.
You will not find assurance of your salvation in the lives of other Christians. True assurance originates from within yourself; from the way you live your life. Paul gives us five areas in which we, as Christians, should set the example. How you measure up in these five areas will have a lot to do with how certain you are that you are a true Child of God. Here they are …
A. YOUR SPEECH
Is your speech free from gossip, curse words, angry words and dirty jokes? Do your words build up and encourage others? Does your speech often include thanks and praise to God?
B. YOUR LIFE
Are you serving God and others with your life? Are you really trying to lay up treasures in heaven or are you more interested in earthly treasures? Do you offer yourself to God every day?
C. YOUR LOVE
You no doubt know what the Bible has to say about this. Once someone asked Jesus which commandment was the greatest or most important. Jesus replied ….
MATTHEW 22:37-39 – 37Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.
D. YOUR FAITH
We looked at this earlier when we discussed exercising our faith. The simple definition of faith given to us in Hebrews chapter eleven has always been helpful to me.
HEBREWS 11:1 – Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
That’s how we need to live. Don’t’ be like the beautiful woman who believed a bird and fall for Satan’s lies. Just take God as his word. You are hoping to spend eternity in heaven … be sure of it even though you can’t see it because of your trust in God.
E. YOUR PURITY
Do you know what makes me tired? Dealing with all the sin I encounter in the counseling office. Selfishness, pride, greed and all types of sexual impurity.
Do you know what makes me really tired? Dealing with all those things in my own life. Striving to live a life of purity can be exhausting because the temptations never stop and our old sinful nature is just waiting for an opportunity to burst forth. It is a daily battle to live a life of purity. That’s one of the reasons the Apostle Paul wrote
I TIMOTHY 6:12a – Fight the good fight of the faith.
CONCLUSION
You can be certain you are a Child of God if you will take the following steps:
- Exercise Your Faith
- Trust the Promises of God
- Study God’s Word
- Cultivate Your Christian Life
The Apostle Peter also spoke about assurance. He said the same things we have studied this morning but in a little different manner. I would like to close with his words from the New Living Translation.
II PETER 1:3-10 - 3By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. 4And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.
5In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, 6and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, 7and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.
8The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins.
10So, dear brothers and sisters, work hard to prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen. Do these things, and you will never fall away. 11Then God will give you a grand entrance into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.