How do I know when I’m back on the tracks? Does it feel different? Should I feel different after asking God into my life?

It’s a great set of questions. Let me back up and review just for a moment before answering the question. I suggested that sin is anything whether intentional or unintentional that causes our lives to jump off the tracks of God’s will. There are two basic steps for getting your life back on the tracks. First, tell the truth about yourself. Admit to yourself and God that your life is off the tracks. Second, receive God’s lift of forgiveness back on the tracks.

So how do you know when you’re back on the tracks? Does it feel different? Well, yes and no. Paul talks about the “Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:16-17a). I think that the general experience of Christians has been that when they experience God’s forgiveness, there is a kind of peace in their spirit and soul. It is God’s Spirit dwelling in friendship with your spirit.

And yet, not every Christian experiences this quite the same way. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, desired to experience this “witness of the Spirit” all his life and wrote a couple of sermons about it, but while he sought it himself and preached that we should expect it and look for it, his diary shows that he often did not feel it himself. Some of us will simply experience a new confidence or commitment in seeking and following God’s way for our life, but nothing that seems “supernatural.”

But on another level we may actually feel worse. If we continue reading Paul’s thoughts we hear him say, “If, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:17b). We should expect there to be suffering involved in following Christ. This suffering may come from persecution or it may come from denying our bodies all their passions and lusts. It also may come from the paradoxical experience that the more spiritually mature you are the more you realize how far you have to go. The more that sin loses its grip on your life, the more you realize just how deep sin runs. Should you feel different? Yes. You should feel peace. And no. You may feel worse.

Maybe the best image to help one understand this situation is that of a storm over deep water. The top of the water may rage at the tempest of the storm with rolling breakers, but below the surface the water is as calm as it ever has been. The outside of your life may be filled with suffering, but on the inside there is a deep reservoir of peace that was not there before.

Then again, I wonder if God isn’t wonderful enough to work in as many ways as there are individuals, and that means every person’s experience will be a little different. I will never forget what Rick Ray said when I baptized him last summer: “For forty years I have wondered how God could forgive me for things I couldn’t even forgive myself. Then I realized that it didn’t matter what I thought. It only mattered what God thought.” Amen.