Lesson 4: Overcoming Doubts About Your Salvation

A. WHY DO WE HAVE DOUBTS?

1. SIN: Your disobedience raises questions about your relationship with God.

2. IGNORANCE: If you don’t know God’s direction, you may question if you’re on the correct path.

3. HERESY: If you think you can’t sin, you deny the experience of Paul. “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice” (Rom. 7:19, NKJV).

4. NOT SAVED: If you are not God’s child, you will doubt if He is your Father.

5. CONCLUSION: Because your sin nature is not eradicated, then you will always have doubts until you get to heaven.

B. DON’T LISTEN TO YOUR DOUBTS

God wants you to know you are saved. The word “know” appears 32 times in I John.

1. Don’t listen to your doubts, remember your salvation experience.

 “He who has the Son has life; and he who does not have the Son of God, does not have life” (I John 5:12).

 I know I am saved because I have a Savior, just as I know I am married because I have a wife.

2. Don’t listen to your doubts; acknowledge the Bible is your assurance.

 “This (the scriptures) is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son he who has the Son has life” (I John 5:11-12).

 I know I am saved because I have met the requirements of the Bible just as I know I am married because I have a marriage license. “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life” (I John 5:13).

3. Don’t listen to your doubts; recognize your answers to prayer.

 God will not answer if you are not saved. “We know that God does not hear sinners” (John 9:31).

 God will not answer if I live in sin. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear” (Ps. 66:18).

 Therefore, I must be a child of God since He answers my prayers. “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him” (I John 5:14-15, NKJV).

4. Don’t listen to your doubts; realize you have a new attitude toward sin.

 Before you were saved, you sinned and were not guilty of your sins.

 After you are saved, sin bothers you. “We know that those who have become a part of God’s family do not make a practice of sinning” (I John 5:18, LB).

 Christians will sin, but they are not comfortable continuing in sin.

5. Don’t listen to your doubts, rest assured in your new understanding of spiritual truth.

 The unsaved are blinded to spiritual truth and cannot understand its application to them. “But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them” (2 Cor. 4:3-4).

 “We know the son of God has come and has given us an understanding” (I John 5:20, NKJV).

 “I am writing to you . . . because you know the difference between truth and falsehood” (I John 2:20, LB).

6. Don’t listen to your doubts; your new love of Christians demonstrates your salvation.

 It’s natural to be selfish, love your own, and hate or shun some people you dislike.

 Our new love for Christians and our desire to assemble with Christians demonstrate our salvation. “If we love other Christians, it proves that we have passed from death to life” (I John 3:14, LB).

 “Everyone who loves the Father loves His children, too” (I John 5:1, LB).

7. Don’t listen to your doubts; your desire to get your friends and family saved confirms your salvation.

 Lost people are blinded to spiritual things. “Their minds were blinded” (2 Cor. 3:14).

 We realize others are lost when we find salvation in Christ. “We know that we are of God, when we realize the whole world lies under the control of the wicked one” (I John 5:19, ELT).

C. CONCLUSION

 God wants you to have an inner confidence. “Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6, NKJV).

 Doubts will disrupt your Christian life.

If you give into your doubts, you miss God’s perfect work in your heart