Do you ever doubt your salvation? Do you ever wonder, "Am I real or am I just going through the motions?--am I really born again?" I do. It may not be comforting to you for you to hear a pastor say that.

But I read my bible and find warning after warning about not deceiving yourself. I remember an exerpt from a book by Jonathan Edwards that scared the daylights out of me: Are you saved or do the powers of your imagination have you convinced that you are?

 My aim here is not to get you to doubt (unless you should--God forbid that you have assurance of something so eternally significant which you have no grounds for being assured of).  But for those of you, who, like me, are good at asking yourself uncomfortable questions, this message I heard this morning by John Piper may just give hope for your weary soul, just as it did for mine. 

You can read, listen, or watch it here.

Also, I highly recommend the two messages that preceed it. 

 If I were to summarize what the light revealed to me this morning, it would be this: the born again person is able to discern and use the Bible to stregthen assurance by properly heeding verses pertaining to their condition at the time. There are verses of warning that God means for you to apply to yourself if you are sinning.  There are other verses that God means for you to apply to yourself if you are dispairing. If you cross those--if you flip-flop them, you kill yourself.  When the dispairing soul reads "anyone born of God does not keep on sinning" (1 John 5:18) it plunges you further into dispair because you are daily, or like me, hourly, confronted with your sinfulness. And this verse rips any assurance out of your hands. Likewise, when 1 John is applied to the light-hearted person who is sinning: "If we do sin, we have an advocate with the Father" we can see that verse as a liscense to not take our sin seriously. 

 It is hard to explain...unless you are John Piper. Listen to this. It makes all kinds of sense when he explains it. At least it did to me. May you be encouraged.