Faith Baptist Church
4258 Botetourt Road
Fincastle, Virginia 24090
(540) 473-2325
I Peter 2:2 & other verses
In our last message on the Evidences that I am Saved we looked at several practices of a believer.
1. The Christian will not practice sin as a habit of life, I Jn.3:9
2. The Christian is disciplined by the heavenly Father, Heb.12:7-11
3. The Christian will love (agape, self-virtue love)other Christians, I Jn.3:10, 14
4. The Christian will desire spiritual food, I Pet.2:2
We will continue with the fourth evidence that you are saved this morning.
If a pastor loves the Lord he will feed his sheep which means if the sheep love the Lord they will learn from the undershepherd the Lord has given them. It is those sheep who refuse to stay close to the shepherd that gets picked off by the lions and wolves of this world. I Pet.2:2; I Pet.5:2; II Pet.3:18, Rev.1:16, 20.
Your steady desire to receive the pure Word will develop your confidence in God. It will narrow your interests in the many things of this world significantly. I’ve never known a spiritually mature believer who stayed distracted all week by endless pursuits. They always have their spiritual antenna zoomed in on the word and work of God. Their spiritual radio is always dialed in on the will of God.
As healthy growing believers we have new interests that draw us to God to the point that we are eventually drawn to deeper understanding of the meat of the Word. When a person says they are a Christian and they do not have the desire to grow in their spiritual understanding of God it is very evident they have never been born again. A healthy Christian is a hungry Christian. The exception to this is the believer who drifts from the word and the influence of truth. He has lost his hunger for the truth. If a believer fills up on the husks of the world there is no more room, nor appetite for spiritual food. Like the prodigal son he can live for a while as if he had not been saved. When he comes back to his senses and he goes to God through confession he will need to be taught truth which he has forgotten, Heb.5:11-14.
Please listen carefully, Jesus Christ said in Mt.11:15; Mk.4:9; Lk.8:8 to “those who have an ear, let them hear” i.e., his spiritual teachings. If you do not have an ear that desires to hear as much as you can from the messenger God has sent you, then you have a problem, and the sooner you accept you have a problem and come clean with the Lord the quicker you will start to understand the thinking of God and the worth of his word. Every thing else is secondary to the word of God. A biblically sound doctrinal church will never be able to do enough to appease non doctrinal believers. There will never be enough comforts to keep them coming. It’s never about being rooted and grounded in the truth; it’s always about activity and amusement. There will always be performance oriented believers as there will always be perception of truth oriented believers and the performance oriented believers will always way out number the perception of truth oriented believers. We have to decide which one we are for we will all have to answer one day as to why we picked one over the other. Which one do you suspect the Lord will have to reign with him in his kingdom?
5. The Christian will be in an attitude of prayer consistently for anyone at any time
Col.1:9; I Thess.5:17. Prayer is another evidence in the believer’s life that helps to develop assurance. When you know you pray about so many things you must understand the unsaved do not think this way. It is not always on their minds. As believers we pray about everything. The unsaved do pray to God, but their refusal to accept God’s Son as their Savior tells the Father they are unrepentant of their sins. The unrepentant person is still under the sentence of death and condemnation. Their prayers go only so far.
6. The Christian desires to see others come to Christ in salvation
Rom.10:1; II Cor.5:19-20- The ministry of reconciliation is ever present with a believer.
Another evidence of Christianity that produces righteous living bringing about greater assurance and peace is your desire to see others come to Jesus Christ for salvation. The unsaved do not think of the eternal destiny of the souls of those around them. They do not feel a sense of responsibility to reconcile men to God through Jesus Christ. The first thing I wanted to see after I became a believer at the age of fifteen was for my parents and my brother and sisters to be saved.
These evidences are characteristic of the believer living the Spirit filled life, not the carnal life. A carnal believer thinks only of his own pleasures and his own problems. He does not want to hear about your problems, or what God is doing in your life. He doesn’t care about his witness to the lost. Though he is still saved, he is in God’s woodshed. If he stays long enough he can loose his assurance, though he is still eternally secure in Christ Jesus, II Tim.2:13. A spiritual edifice of God’s word must be built and maintained, and if not, it will crumble, Heb.5:11-14. Your spiritual house will not fall for lack of activity, but it will fall for lack of correct thinking.
If the believer wants to have joy, and he takes his salvation seriously and he does his or her part to grow in that so great salvation, assurance of salvation as well as assurance that he is doing the will of God will grow as well. Purity in his or her life will increase also.
The believer gets past the stage of infancy where he keeps on trying to repeat or relive his salvation experience. Hearing the Gospel only, Sunday after Sunday exclusively, retards Christian growth.
Many who doubt their salvation experience, who do not have that abiding assurance that they are being kept by God, are often basing their relationship to God merely upon their feelings that day. Feelings are not the measure of ones relationship with God, doctrinal facts and Divine promises are all you need. But again we have to take the time to cultivate our souls with God’s Word.
This is the reason why the right local church and the right pastor-teacher are so important. The pastor studies, and then delivers the message his people need.
Consistent faithfulness to the word of God is the hallmark of a maturing believer.
Study is hard work and requires dedication, but the rewards are immeasurable.
As we close this series Why I Should Know I am Saved, I do not want you to think I am judging you, and I am not saying I think any of you are not saved; that is something between you and the Lord, so I have listed the reasons God wants you to know you are saved. We all should examine our relationship with God and we must do it in light of his revealed word.
If you know you are saved:
1. It changes your whole outlook on life.
2. It settles forever your eternal destination.
3. It rearranges your priorities to put God first in everything.
4. It puts all of us in check regarding our Christian attitudes toward one another and God.
5. It simplifies our objectives in life as we have only one main goal and that is to bring glory to God by reflecting his biblically revealed righteous values to the world.