What are my feelings and habits regarding the “means of grace”? i.e. church attendance, fellowship, private devotional life. Do you find worshipping with other Christians on Sunday to be a mere duty and drudgery or is it a true delight and refreshment to your soul? Do you look forward to partaking in the Lord’s Supper? Are these things you couldn’t stand to live without or do you have an attitude that you could take it or leave it?
1. What place does my faith in Christ hold in my heart?
It is not enough that your beliefs are merely in your head and expressed by your words or feelings. If your faith is real, it must possess your heart. That is, your faith will dramatically affect your desires, your interests, and the decisions you make. Genuine faith will satisfy the deepest desires of your soul.
2. How do I really view sin?
If your faith is genuine, you will be repulsed by the sinfulness of sin. You will view sin as something that God truly hates, and something which renders people guilty and condemned before Him because He is holy.
You will view all sin, even the seemingly small sins, as something deserving of God’s judgment. You will see sin as the root cause of all sorrow and unhappiness, strife and wars, quarrels and fighting, and sickness and death.
Above all, you will understand that sin is the thing which ruins people eternally, holds us captive, and destroys our happiness —unless we can find someone outside of ourselves to rescue us from it.
3. What are my true feelings about Jesus Christ?
Many professing Christians believe that Christ existed as a great person and teacher and may even view Him as the savior. They may belong to and be active in church, but their intellectual belief never radically transforms their daily life in a deeply personal way.