Assurance

If you have been part of a Methodist church for more than a week, you have probably heard this story: 

While he was relatively young, and before he started the movement that we are a part of today, John Wesley became friends with a Moravian Christian by the name of Peter Bohler. Bohler argued that it was possible to experience the love, power, and forgiveness of God directly and instantaneously.

Wesley was not convinced. But on May 24, 1738 he attended a Bible study in London on Aldersgate Street and experienced what Bohler had been telling him about. This is what he wrote (he was a prolific journalist) about that day: 

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. (Bold added.)

Number one: he didn’t want to go. Number two: once he got there he had to sit and listen to – of all things – someone read Martin Luther’s preface to the Book of Romans. And yet, in that unlikely place he experienced the Holy Spirit fill him with an assurance that he was forgiven for his sins.

Because it was what he experienced, and it was what Bohler had argued for, Wesley began to insist that every Christian could receive directly from the Holy Spirit a personal assurance that their sins had been forgiven. And moreover, that it was an instantaneous experience. 

Over time, however, through conversations with many mature Christians, his view began to change in this regard: every Christian can and should experience the assurance of God’s love and forgiveness, but it may not happen in exactly the way he experienced it. 

Dr. Charles W. Keysor, the founding editor of Good News magazine, described it in his own life this way: 

Before I became a Christian, I had absolute assurance in myself. I had no assurance that God was real, that He was personally involved in the world, or that He cared about me. Becoming a Christian marked the first real break in my self-assurance and the dawning of the divine assurance that “Jesus loves even me”. After conversion the Holy Spirit gradually reversed my center of assurance. He revealed to me the depth of my sin and I began to see that in myself I had no ground for assurance. I began to see Christ as the only reliable ground for my trust. Thus God destroy-ed false assurance and gave me a new, better confidence. Assurance grew that He is wonderful…. I prayed – and the answers came. Surprisingly. Ingeniously. Adequately. This happened over and over – and so assurance developed that “my God will supply every need … according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (Ph. 4:19) (Bold added.)

Assurance. Confidence. Trust. An inner conviction born of God’s work in your life that Jesus did not just die for the sins of the world, but that he died for your sins. The witness of God in your soul that God doesn’t just love the world, but that he loves you. It may come in a moment as it did for Wesley. It may grow over time as it did for Keysor. But it should be the experience of every Christian. God is not content that his children should wander through life plagued by doubt over their relationship with Him. 

God loves you. God wants you to trust it deeply enough to live your life confidently. If you do not have that confidence, ask God for the gift of assurance. Make it a priority in your prayer life. Seek it and note all the ways that God works in your life. And in His good time -

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

Blessings,

Pastor Tim

If you want to pursue this further, I suggest “Wesley for Armchair Theologians” by William J. Abraham, and “Our Methodist Heritage”

by Charles W. Keysor.