Doubt and Knowing You’re A Christian

"Doubt" By Shahram Sharif

Recently I received the following questions from a member of our church.  I thought the question and my response might be helpful to some others.

I feel like I’m struggling.  How do you know that Jesus has come into your heart even though you say the words?  Shouldn’t you feel something or am I just looking for the wrong signs?

These are great questions.  Here are a couple of thoughts.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, talked about a “witness of the Spirit” which was an experience of the Holy Spirit “witnessing” to our spirit that we are children of God.  Here’s a link to a sermon of his on this topic.  The sermon is actually in two parts so here’s a link to the second sermon. He personally sought this witness of the Spirit his entire life, but interestingly enough while he sought it and preached about it, he rarely ever felt it himself!

Wesley wrote in code language to his brother Charles and this code was only recently broken.  An interesting letter came to light that he wrote Charles at the height of his ministry when he was being very successful at helping hundreds if not thousands of people become Christians and join small groups of other Christians.  Here is the relevant part:

In one of my last [letters] I was saying I do not feel the wrath of God abiding on me; nor can I believe it does. And yet (this is the mystery) I do not love God. I never did. Therefore I never believed in the Christian sense of the word. Therefore I am only an honest heathen, a proselyte of the Temple, one of the [those that fear God]. And yet to be so employed of God! And so hedged in that I can neither get forward nor backward! Surely there never was such an instance before, from the beginning of the world! If I ever have had that faith, it would not be so strange. But I never had any other [evidence] of the eternal or invisible world than I have now; and that is none at all, unless such as faintly shines from reason’s glimmering ray. I have no direct witness, I do not say that I am a child of God, but of anything invisible or eternal. If I have any fear, it is not that of falling into hell but of falling into nothing.

Wow!  Here’s a guy who preaches about knowing in your heart that you’re a child of God, and he’s struggling with this himself.  Actually, I appreciate very deeply his honesty with his brother.

So here’s what I’d say: some people experience something “in their heart” when they are a Christian, but other people don’t experience anything.  They just make a commitment to follow Jesus and stick with it.  I tend to be more like the later.  Sometimes I know something special inside of me, but most of the time I don’t.  Most of the time I just keep on keeping on.

Another big person in history was Martin Luther.  He was the founder of the Lutheran Church and the beginner of the Protestant Reformation.  He was first a monk and then a pastor.  He had doubts all the time and when he had doubts or when others told him about their doubts, he told them to remember their baptism.  If you want to know if you’re a Christian, remember your baptism and know that you were baptized into Christ Jesus.  The only thing left is to live like it (and we have the help of the Holy Spirit to do that whether we feel the Spirit or not).

I hope these thoughts are helpful.  In a nutshell, you’re not experiencing anything unusual.  You’re participating in the church.  Maybe a next step would be to get to know some others in our church more fully.  I suspect they have similar experiences too.  The best way to do that is to join a small group.