Some might say it’s not good to pursue a sense of assurance about our salvation. Doesn’t it lead to arrogance or complacency? Well, there’s no room for arrogance, because you know that salvation is the free gift of God’s grace—you’re not saved by anything you’ve done, so there’s no room for boasting.
Walking an aisle and praying a prayer can never assure us of our salvation. Today, Barry Cooper asserts that true assurance accompanies a life truly changed by the gospel.
When I was younger, I struggled to be sure that I was really saved.
I was a serial go-to-the-fronter during the 1980s, first as a kid, and then as a teenager. As a fourteen-year-old, I’d already “prayed the prayer” on multiple occasions. I went to the front at a Billy Graham rally and said the prayer. I went to the front at a Luis Palau meeting and said the prayer. I sat with head bowed at numerous churches, in numerous denominations over the years, and said the prayer. I said it ever more fervently, ever more anxiously, and often with tears. And I kept praying and going to the front because I was never entirely convinced that I’d prayed and gone to the front enough.
What would you say to fourteen-year-old Barry, once you’d told him to get rid of that ridiculous fluff on his upper lip? Many Christians, I think, would say something like this: “As long as you were sincere when you prayed the prayer, you are saved.”
The thing is, looking back, I’m really not sure I was.
It wasn’t until I was twenty, and in my second semester at university, that I felt a deep, inner assurance that I was truly saved.
Where did that suddenly come from? According to Scripture, this profound inner sense of assurance is something that the Holy Spirit gives us.