Overcoming Salvation-Doubt
Doubting one’s salvation is not uncommon. If you’ve struggled with it, you’re not alone. Most of us have struggled with it at one time or another, myself included.
Doubt immobilizes and neutralizes. God has no desire for His people to live in doubt over their salvation.
“Examine yourselves to see if you be in the faith” the Bible says. And we well should from time to time, but you will find as you read further that the diagnosis of our salvation experience is not as elusive as we first might think.
Doubt can be readily and rather simply dealt with.
But before we go there, let us consider some of the reasons we doubt our salvation. Salvation-doubt can stem from several sources:
1. Your salvation experience occurred in early childhood.
Perhaps you, like many others, have grown up in church and were saved at an early age.
Many times adults or teens who experienced a childhood salvation struggle with doubt simply because the memory of the experience fades.
Or, they begin to question their own childhood ability to grasp a decision of such eternal significance. “Did I really mean it? Did I really know what I was doing?”
It is NOT impossible to be saved at a young age. Jesus said, “let the little children come to me.” Paul said, “let no one seduce you away from the SIMPLICITY of the Gospel.” The Gospel message really is so simple that a child can understand it. (The truth is, we tend to complicate it as we get older.)
My own daughter, Gianna, was saved at age four. I am constantly watching young children come to Christ in our meetings in churches all over the country. All of those children will likely struggle with doubt later on.
IMPORTANT TIP FOR PARENTS OF CHILDREN WHO ARE CONVERTED VERY YOUNG:
I suggest to parents with children who experience an early conversion to video or audio tape a conversation with them, perhaps at the celebration that you hold after their baptismal church service.
(That’s another idea: make it a BIG deal, bigger than a biological birthday, something they will surely remember! Celebrate!)
CAPTURE ON TAPE their articulation of their understanding of the Gospel. Later on, if and when they struggle with whether or not they knew what they were doing, pull the tape or the video and let them listen or watch.
They’ll be convinced by their own younger selves that their understanding of the Gospel was adequate for a genuine conversion. They DID know what they were doing after all. Assurance will usually return.
2. Personal sin.
When long un-confessed and un-repented of, personal sin will often result in doubting one’s salvation.
This is just the way sin works.
Sin clouds one’s reason, one’s memory and one’s judgment. Sin leaves us open and vulnerable to the lies of Satan (the Accuser of the Brethren) causing us to forget our past faith and genuine fruit.
The fact is, when we find ourselves in sin and conviction comes riding in behind, fast on it’s heels, that is sure sign that we are truly saved. When we sin and care not, that is when we should worry.
Be quick to forsake personal sin! Assurance returns when fellowship with the Lord is restored.
3. Man-centered, performance-based preaching and teaching.
This is an ever-growing problem today and has been so over the last sixty years or so. There is so much emphasis on man’s performance in salvation. What we say. What we pray. How we pray it. What we do – or don’t do – as performance. Performance-based Christianity is the order of the day.
That has lent itself to guilt-inducing, performance-based, doubt-inflating preaching that causes us to focus on ourselves and to scrutinize our salvation experience to a perverse degree.
Under this preaching and teaching, many will come forward to be “saved” that we thought for sure were saved already!
Now, I have no doubt that many church-goers are lost and need to be saved, but most of us have been in crusade-type services where it seemed, by what the preacher was saying, that unless you’ve lived perfectly every hour since the day of your conversion, then it wasn’t real and you need to get saved.
Then when the masses are in the throes of behavior-based, man-induced doubt, the preacher will then say something like, “If you’re 99% sure your saved, you’re 100% lost.” Many, many, many will respond.
When these results occur in the preaching context I’ve described, it’s confusing at best, diabolical at worst.
That type of preaching will certainly pack out altars and get the denominational numbers up, but so much doubt remains as a result, long after the meeting is over.
The trustworthiness of our salvation experience then shifts from Christ’s performance to ours. And ours is always to some degree flawed. So doubt prevails.
In these things, we forget the simplicity of the Gospel.
THE REMEDY: “WHERE IS YOUR TRUST?”
A Case Study
Last night after service the pastor and I counseled with a lady who was struggling with whether or not she would really be allowed to enter heaven. “I am so afraid that when I get there, God will deny me and say ‘I never knew you.’” This is a classic case of doubt.
The way I counsel people in her situation is to simply ask them where are they putting their trust for their salvation.
So I asked her, “Right now, this minute… what are you trusting in for your salvation? Your good works? Church membership? Baptism?”
If their past conversion was genuine, their response is some form of the following: “Jesus Christ alone.” “His blood, period.” “What he did for me on the cross. That’s it.”
If their answer reflects a works-based assurance, or anything else non-Jesus, I will explain the Gospel and lead them to Christ.
This lady responded with a smile, “Only in Jesus and His blood.”
“Are you sure there’s nothing else you’re trusting in?”
“No, sir. Nothing else. Only Jesus saves.”
That’s your answer! There’s your assurance! Because THAT’S THE ISSUE: where is your trust?
I said to her something to the effect: “God never breaks his promises. He has given you the faith to apply and you’ve applied it. Heaven is sure. Conversion was complete after all. When you get to heaven, He’ll say to you, ‘Come on in. Welcome!’”
Next came a glad sigh of relief.
Notice the GOD-CENTERED nature of the right response. Satan always throws back to man and performance. God always pulls our eyes back to Himself and what HE has done and what HE said He will do and the promises HE will keep in regards to saving us.
Salvation is initiated, sustained and completed by God and God alone.
Ours is only to determine where we have placed our trust.
I am not teaching “easy-believism.” True Christianity results in regeneration – a changed life. But even with a changed life, for whatever reason, many folks still struggle with doubt just as surely as they will struggle with sin from time to time.
If you are struggling, ask yourself: “Where is my trust?”
