Assurance of salvation is one of those things people assume you either have or you do not. And then something happens at two in the morning and you discover it is not nearly as settled as you thought.
THE NIGHTS DAN STOPPED BEING SURE
My friend Dan Green has walked with the Lord for decades. He has never been afraid of dying. He genuinely looks forward to seeing Jesus.
And in the middle of the hardest stretch of his cancer treatment, something started coming at him in the night - vivid dreams telling him he was not going to heaven, that he would be separated from his Lord. He woke up terrified. It went on for about two months.
He also wondered aloud whether some of it was the medication. He may well be right.
Either way, a man who had never doubted found himself doubting.
WHY ASSURANCE OF SALVATION IS NOT A FEELING
Here is the trap, and almost everybody falls into it at some point.
We treat certainty as the proof. If I feel sure, I must be saved. If I feel afraid, something must be wrong with me. So assurance of salvation quietly becomes a mood we have to maintain, and the moment we are sick or exhausted or lying awake at three, the mood collapses and takes our confidence with it.
But feelings are not the foundation. They never were.
NOT OF WORKS
Dan did not feel his way out of those two months. He read his way out.
He went into the Word looking for the truth and found it in Ephesians. By grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves - it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one can boast.
Not of works. Not of yourselves.
And his conclusion was as plain as anything he said: what I was being fed was a lie.
It was a lie because your salvation was never resting on your performance in the first place. It rests on Jesus. If it depended on how you were doing, it would rise and fall with your sleep, your medication and your worst week - and that is precisely the thing Scripture says it does not do.
THAT YOU MAY KNOW
There is a verse worth writing down somewhere you will see it at two in the morning.
John wrote his first letter and said plainly that he wrote these things to those who believe on the name of the Son of God, so that they may KNOW they have eternal life.
Not hope. Not feel. Know.
The assurance of salvation John is describing is something you can hold onto on a night when you feel nothing at all, because it does not depend on the feeling. It depends on what Jesus already did, and that is finished.
WHAT TO DO AT TWO IN THE MORNING
If this is happening to you, three things.
First, you are not crazy, and it does not mean you have lost anything. Sick, exhausted, medicated people have hard nights. That is a body, not a verdict.
Second, do what Dan did and go to the Word rather than to your feelings. Read Ephesians two, slowly. Read First John five. Your feelings will tell you what is happening in your body. Scripture will tell you what is true.
Third, tell somebody. Dan carried those nights for a while before he said anything, and this kind of fear feeds on being kept quiet.
YOU ARE NEVER ALONE
Dan came out the other side of it, and his words to you were simple. God will bring you through those things. Do not give up, and do not run scared.
That is the last thing this series has to say, and it is worth sitting with. The ending is already settled. You did not secure it and you could not have. Assurance of salvation is not a feeling you generate - it is a fact you rest on.
If you do not have that relationship with Jesus, or you had one once and it has gone cold or weak or angry, please visit our Accepting Jesus page. Everything Dan has shared across these five episodes runs straight through that one decision.
You are NEVER ALONE. Never. And it is going to be all right.
Listen to the Podcast - Dan's Story, Part Five: It's Gonna Be All Right