The pursuit of assurance may last long. We may find, moreover, that doubt can return after a long season of confidence, for assurance once enjoyed does not mean assurance always enjoyed. Our peace can rise and fall, requiring a fresh pursuit of assurance through the means God has provided. But however long we have to travel this road, and however often, remember: the preciousness of assurance outweighs all the world.

Soon after becoming a Christian, I started wondering if I really was a Christian. The first doubt struck unexpectedly, like lightning from a cloudless sky. Am I real? I seemed to love Jesus. I seemed to trust him. I seemed to bear the marks of a changed life. But, the thought crept in, so too did Judas.
Though the long night of wrestling slowly passed, I emerged from it like Jacob, limping into the daylight. Assurance has been, perhaps, the main question, the chief struggle of my Christian life over the years, sending me searching for what Paul and the author of Hebrews call “full assurance” (Colossians 2:2; Hebrews 10:22).
The topic of assurance is complex, to put it mildly. Genuine Christians doubt their salvation for many different reasons, and God nourishes assurance through several different means. So the needed word for one doubter often differs from the needed word for another. Nevertheless, for those who find themselves floundering, as I did, perhaps unsure what’s even happening to them, a basic guide to assurance may prove useful.
Possibility of Assurance
By assurance, I simply mean, to borrow a definition from D.A. Carson, “a Christian believer’s confidence that he or she is in right standing with God, and that this will issue in ultimate salvation.” Assured Christians can say, with Spirit-wrought conviction, not only “Christ died for sinners” but “Christ died for me.” Though sin may assault them, and Satan may accuse them, they know themselves forgiven, beloved, and bound for heaven. And the first word to offer about such assurance is simply this: it’s possible.
Your faith may feel small, and your hold on Christ shaky. Even still, it is possible for you to feel down deep that he will never cast you out (John 6:37). It is possible for you to cry “Abba!” with the implicit trust of God’s children (Romans 8:15–16). It is possible for you to “rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8). It is possible for you to have “confidence for the day of judgment” (1 John 4:17) — indeed, to “know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).
God’s desire for his people’s assurance, even for the most fragile of them, burns brightly through the Scriptures. He has knit assurance into his very name, whether old covenant (Exodus 34:6–7) or new (Matthew 1:21). He has spoken assurance in promise upon promise from a mouth that “never lies” (Titus 1:2). And as he once wrote assurance with a rainbow (Genesis 9:13–17), and flashed assurance through the stars (Genesis 15:5–6), so now he has sealed assurance with the greatest sign of all: the body and blood of his dear Son. Week by week, we eat the bread and drink the cup of his steadfast love in Christ (Matthew 26:26–29).
If God’s new covenant is sure (and it is), if his promises are true (and they are), and if his character cannot change (and it can’t), then full assurance is possible for everyone in Christ, no matter how strong our present fears.
Enemies of Assurance
If, then, Scripture testifies so powerfully to the possibility of assurance, why does anyone ever lack assurance — and why do some seem to struggle with it ongoingly? Because Christian assurance is not only possible, but opposed. Of the enemies that assail us, three are chief: Satan, sin, and our broken psychology.
Satan
We might expect “the accuser of our brothers, . . . who accuses them day and night before our God” to war against the Christian’s peace (Revelation 12:10). And so he does.
In his classic on assurance, Religious Affections, Jonathan Edwards reminds readers that the devil assaulted even the assurance of Jesus (172). “If you are the Son of God, command these stones. . . . If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down” (Matthew 4:3, 6). The Father had just said, “This is my beloved Son” (Matthew 3:17), but the devil loves to trade his own if for God’s is.
Many a true Christian has, in turn, heard that dreadful if: “If you are a Christian, why do you sin so much? Why is your faith so small? Why is your heart so cold?” And though Satan’s charges cannot condemn those whom God has justified (Romans 8:33), they certainly can ruin our comfort.
The devil knows that well-assured Christians threaten the domain of darkness more than any other. And so, he protects his property with one of his most-used weapons: doubt.
Sin
Alongside Satan, Scripture presents sin as one of the foremost enemies of assurance. Now, of course, assurance in this life always coexists with sin. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). Nevertheless, habitual sin, unrepentant sin, or particularly grievous sin darkens our assurance as surely as drawn curtains darken a room — and it should.
“By this we know that we have come to know him,” the apostle John writes, “if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:5). And therefore, when a pattern of commandment-keeping gives way to commandment-breaking, and a pattern of repentance to stubbornness, and a pattern of confession to secrecy, we cannot “know that we have come to know him” with the same confidence as before. We may be secure in Jesus’s grasp, as Peter was even when he denied his Lord, but our sense of that security is rightly weak until we “have turned again” (Luke 22:31–32), and again have heard his pardoning voice (John 21:15–19).
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We can have confidence that there will come a day when Christ will personally and visibly come again to this earth a second time, and when he does, the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the highest of the mountains—the true worship of God will become preeminent. All the other mountains and temples will be destroyed: the Hagia Sophia will fall to the ground, the Dome of the Rock will crumble to make room for Jesus’ Temple, and St. Peter’s Basilica will be reduced to rubble.

You don’t have to turn on the news or visit a news web site very long to get very depressed. We live in a day of despair, threat of war, violence, murder, poverty, sickness, abortion, waning morality, injustice, and racial tensions. Even from the perspective of the unbelieving world, things look pretty bleak.
But from the Christian perspective, things look perhaps even worse. We recognize these things as but symptoms of deeper problems. We look around us and see fewer and fewer people, even in our own country, who truly worship God.
Whereas once our country had at least had a Judeo-Christian moral foundation, today, more people than ever reject any standards of morality, relativism is rampant, people are simply following after whatever sinful lust fits their fancy.
But the picture is even worse. We probably should expect that unbelievers would live like this. It was something of an anomaly by the grace of God that our country enjoyed such moral stability for so long.
But we are witnessing in our day these same kind of terrible problems even within churches. Self-professed Christians are worshiping themselves rather than the true God. Professing believers refuse to listen to God’s Word and are following after their own lusts. Even people who claim the name of Christ are perpetuating immorality and injustice in our world.
All of this very bleak assessment of our world leads us to ask, is there any hope?
Israel during the time of Isaiah’s prophecy resembled in many ways the condition in which we find ourselves today.
During Isaiah’s childhood, Israel and Judah experienced prosperity and freedom from foreign powers. Yet the people of Israel very quickly took that prosperity and peace for granted and began to forsake the Lord. They stopped trusting God’s promises. They began to follow after false idols and idolatrous practices. They recognized the hostile world foreign powers growing around them, and instead of trusting in God’s promises to protect them, God’s people turned to the promises of this world. Perhaps Isaiah himself describes it best when in Chapter 6 he relates his calling to be a prophet of the Lord, and he confesses that he is a man of unclean lips, and he dwells among a people of unclean lips.
For this reason, the prophecy of Isaiah begins in chapter 1 with harsh condemnation.
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. 3 The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.” 4 Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.
Isa 1:2–4
The chapter continues with strong words of admonition; the prophet offers forgiveness to the people if they will repent of their sins and turn back to God, but if they do not turn, he promises that they will be consumed by the fiery wrath of the Lord.
And as we know, that is exactly what happens to Israel and Judah. The people are carried off into captivity and Jerusalem is utterly destroyed; the people fail to heed the prophet’s warnings—they do not worship God as he has commanded, they do not listen or obey God’s words, and thus they face the punishment of war and destruction that he has promised to them.
Thus much of the prophecy of Isaiah follows this theme of judgment and doom found in Chapter 1. Yet this is not the only theme of the prophecy; indeed, it is not really even the primary theme of the prophecy.
Rather, we find right at the beginning of chapter 2 a glimpse of hope in the midst of this turmoil:
The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. 2 It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, 3 and many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4 He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
Isa 2:1–4
Now, Isaiah says, you are experiencing impending judgment. You have failed to worship God as you ought, you are not listening to the word of God, and war is coming.
But, there is still hope. There is a day coming that will bring hope to God’s rebellious and condemned people.
A day is coming that will bring hope.
Let’s look at how Isaiah describes this coming day of hope.
A Day is coming when the worship of God will be preeminent.
First, Isaiah says that in that day, “the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the highest of the mountains.”
Clearly the “house of the Lord” here is the Temple—the center of Yahweh’s worship, and the mountain is Mt. Zion, the place upon which God’s house sits. In that coming day, Isaiah, prophesies, the mountain of the Temple of God will rise up above all other mountains and will be established as the highest of them all.
This prophecy signifies that in that coming day, the worship of God will be preeminent. All other mountains—all other places of worship will shrink under the majestic greatness of Mt. Zion. Mt. Gerazim will be but a small hill, Mt. Olympus a mere bump in the road, Baal’s Mt. Carmel will appear as an ant hill.
Likewise every other dwelling place of the gods will collapse in sight of that brilliant Temple on the mount. Hatshepsut’s temple along the Nile in Egypt will be buried, the Greek Parthenon will crumble, the Sumerian ziggurat reduced to rubble.
All of the places of worship will be nothing compared to the house of the Lord. God’s people will no longer flock to the high places of the false idols; instead, they will stream toward the highest mountain of all where they will once again return to true worship.
But notice that it is not just God’s people who return to worship. It is not as if all of the other nations will continue to worship in their false houses on their false mountains in that day. No—the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the highest mountain, it will be lifted above all the other hills, and “all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of Yahweh, to the house of the God of Jacob.’”
In that coming day, not only will the true worship of Yahweh be restored for the people of Israel; all the nations will descend from their crumbling temples on their puny hills and will flow like a surging river up to the true Temple on the preeminent mountain.
What hope this must have brought to Isaiah’s discouraged heart! Here he is in the midst of an unclean people who have forsaken the worship of the one true God in favor of worshipping false, insignificant idols made by human hands, idols that have mouths but they cannot speak, eyes but they cannot see, and ears but they cannot hear.
But revelation has come to him that a day is coming when these rebellious people will turn away from those false gods and will return to worshiping the true God. And not only that, all the peoples of the earth will join Israel in worshiping the God of Jacob.
A day is coming when all people will hear and obey the Word of the Lord.
But there is a second hope-filled blessing this coming day will bring. Look again at what the peoples of the nations say in verse 3:
And many peoples shall come, and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
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Some men may speak less, but do a better job at this act of truth-telling. In the life of action, there is a deeper wisdom, than in a life of word without this action. It takes a manly courage and a sense of humility before God to persist in this truth-speaking in the home, in the church, in the work-place. It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can persist in speaking the truth in love. Act as men. Speak the truth and speak it in love.

In my last blog post, I spoke about facing giants, and acting like men in doing so. I focused on a lot of personal or internal characteristics of a man who acts like a man in battle: prayer before God and the destruction of idols of the heart (selfishness, pride, self-pity). But what does that look like in the real world? It seems that certain visible skills must be cultivated.
I want to focus on what acting like a man looks like in the realm of truth-telling. This is one of the primary battlefields for the modern Christian man.
There are many issues in the culture, in the church and in the modern family. But how can men in the church begin to effect the change that they want to see in the church and the world? The assembly is under attack. A Biblical and creational understanding of man and woman is under attack. Pornographic material saturates the world and weakens men spiritually and morally. The inherent dependence on government weakens men in their responsibility to work hard and provide for their families. We look to the government and to leaders for solutions, rather than accepting this core truth: I must take responsibility to serve God fearlessly and boldly within my own spheres of influence.
That responsibility begins with speaking the truth to myself and then within my environment.
In I Corinthians 16:13-14, a man is commanded to let all that he does be done in love. The truth is under attack in our culture and in our homes, just as when Satan crept up on Adam and Eve in the Garden: did God really say? Adam as the head of the home bought into the lie, when he should have laid down his life for his wife. Of course, even this truth-speaking must be done in love: “Rather, speaking the truth in love.” (Eph. 4:15)
This is one of the hardest parts of learning to be a man. It is easy to veer into one of two ditches. Either we promote a spineless love that is unmoored from the truth. Or we present the truth in ways that are less than upbuilding. For example, a man must tell his wife the truth and lead his family in truth, but he does so recognizing that she is the weaker vessel, and having patience with the immaturity in his children. He does so to build her up. It is done in selfless love.
I have seen an issue in the “manosphere” that at times when men want to “tell the truth” so to speak, they do it with filthy language and insults. Somehow dropping crass language makes it more courageous. I am not saying that there is no place for strong language. For example, Paul tells the Judaizers in Galatia essentially that they should castrate themselves (Gal. 5:12). But it was well aimed along the lines of their beliefs that that they could only fellowship with those who were circumcised. And so Paul is telling them to just circumcise themselves from the Church if they want to got that far in their practice. But the vast majority of what is arising in our culture is simply filthy language that does not build up but tears down. Much of it does not make sense within context and so it is not truth-telling, but simply filthy language.
Back to the ditches. Fear of consequences, can make a man harsh in telling the truth on one hand, or make him compromise in telling the truth on the other hand. Both responses are a symptom of fear. It takes courage to speak truth in love in a culture where, the consequences might put you in a place where you are without a job.
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