Is that crazy? Is that a delusional thing to say? It's true though! I want that conviction to be saved! To be God's child! To serve Him...willingly. But at times I worry if my impulses are just a fad...that here in a few months i won't really care about salvation and surely get that surprise when I find myself in the flames of..heck. I've gotten so spiritually drained that I don't have any strong feeling or conviction. That's why i said i want to want to be saved. I just wish it was a switch I could flip. God's children are so lucky i wish i could be one of them. I want God to draw me... i just don't know what else to do other than confuse myself..
There is a very unfortunate view in some Christian circles that suggests that "being saved" is something that can be ascertained by feeling a certain way.
I think it may be worth sharing some of my history and battle with faith:
One of my earliest, if not very earliest, memories is being about 3 or 4 years old. My grandfather on my mother's side was in the hospital from a stroke and we weren't sure whether he would live or not (he lived, don't worry). During this time my parents felt that it was important that they try and explain death, in the course of their explanation they also told me about heaven, hell, salvation, etc. So as a toddler my parents led me through what my church tradition at the time called the Sinner's Prayer, and "asked Jesus into my heart." Of course me, not even being four years old, thought I was getting a "no dying" pass. Moments later my parents understanding my confusion said that death would still happen, and so--again, I was a toddler--tried to "shoo" Jesus out of my heart.
Fast forward to when I was around eight years old. In the middle of a Sunday morning church service I was having some sort fit or something. My father took me out of the sanctuary and tried to figure out what was wrong. Well, I was terrified that I had actually shoo'd Jesus out of my heart--literally--from years earlier and that I wasn't "actually saved". And I really wanted to make sure I was actually saved. So my father led me through the Sinner's prayer again, and he asked if I meant it this time. I didn't know. I was eight.
If we skip ahead to when I was an adolescent I spent much of my adolescence deeply terrified that I wasn't "actually saved". Because I was told that being saved was something I should just know that I know, I should be completely assured of it, because when I asked Jesus to be my personal Lord and Savior I really meant it. The problem is that I didn't know if I really meant it, I didn't know what really meaning it meant, or how I could know just how sincere it was. And so I was regularly plagued by crippling doubt, every stray thought, every moral shortcoming continued to singe my conscience as I lived in a constant dread that Jesus hadn't become my Savior, and that I remained outside of His salvation. I lived in a constant fear of "What would happen if you died tonight, do you know where you'd be?" Because maybe I had simply spent my entire life only thinking I believed in Jesus but didn't actually believe in Him, and that unexpectedly I would find myself in Hell; because despite wanting to believe so very desperately I didn't know if I actually did believe.
Then something marvelous happened. I had been engaged in online discussion forums like this one for several years in my late teens/early 20's debating Scripture and theology with Christians from various backgrounds. But there was something that arguably changed the entire game for me. In short, salvation wasn't about me choosing Jesus, but in Jesus choosing me. Well how could I know that Jesus chose me? Because Jesus was born, Jesus suffered on the cross and died, Jesus rose from the dead. Christ came for everyone. Salvation wasn't found in my sincerity, in how I felt, or what I thought, it was found in Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection was--is--my salvation.
It's your salvation.
I could rest my conscience not in the things I felt, did, or didn't do; but in much more objective, concrete things. I was baptized, and according to Scripture all who are baptized have been buried with Jesus and belong to Him. That doesn't depend on me, or anyone else. That depends entirely on Jesus, entirely on God who in His mercy says it is so, and so it is so. The Gospel comes to you and me declaring "Christ died for you." And this Gospel, being true,
saves you. Believe this good news. It is on Christ's account, for Christ's sake, that we are saved. Not by any effort on our part, but on the promise of God that is ours, freely, in Christ. We can rest in these promises as they are given to us when the Gospel is preached, when you were baptized, when you receive the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper. In these things God declares to you, "You belong to Me, I am yours, and you are Mine." And nothing in all of creation can sever what is yours in Christ Jesus.
God keeps His promises.
Your sins are forgiven.
You belong to Jesus.
And if you are Christ's, then you are God's.
And if God's then a child of God.
You are saved.
Believe this good news. It is most certainly true.
-CryptoLutheran
