assurance | Craig T. Owens

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Thursdays With Spurgeon—An Assured Eternity

May 27, 2021 — Craig T. Owens

This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on iTunes or Spotify.

An Assured Eternity

The life of God in the soul is not transient but abiding. Not temporary but eternal. Some think that the life of God in the believer’s soul may die out. But how then could it be eternal? If it dies, it is not eternal life. If it is eternal life, it cannot die. … We are said to have been made ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1:4). Surely this means, among other things, that we receive an undying life. …

If our life is Christ’s life, we will not die until Christ dies. …

This is John’s desire for you: that you would believe with all your heart and soul and strength. He would have you believe more constantly, so that you may say, ‘My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and give praise’ (Psalm 57:7). It is not always so with us. We are at times chicken-hearted. We play the man today and the mouse tomorrow. Lord, have mercy upon us. We are an inconsistent people, fickle as the wind. The Lord would have us abide always in Him with strong and mighty confidence, being rooted and built up in Him. He would have us trust courageously.

From The Blessing Of Full Assurance

John the Beloved wrapped up his Gospel with this statement: “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31). The word John uses for “life” is the Greek word zoe. This is how zoe is defined—

Life real and genuine, a life active and vigorous, devoted to God, blessed, in the portion even in this world of those who put their trust in Christ, but after the resurrection to be consummated by new accessions…and to last for ever. (Strong’s Greek dictionary)

Do you believe Jesus died and rose again? Based on that faith, have you asked the Father to forgive you of your sins? If so, then listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit in your heart that is giving you full assurance of promises like these:

Everyone who believes may have eternal life in [Jesus] (John 3:15)
Whoever believes in [Jesus] shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16)
Now this is eternal life: that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent (John 17:3)
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life (John 3:36)
Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4:14)
Because I live, you also will live (John 14:9)
Whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life (John 5:24)
My Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day (John 6:40)
When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory (Colossians 3:4)
Resting in the hope of eternal life, life which the ever truthful God Who cannot deceive promised before the world or the ages of time began (Titus 1:2)
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life (1 John 5:13)

[Check out all of these verses by clicking here.]

Friend, this is why it’s so important for us to regularly read the Bible. We need to have our faith bolstered by hearing these rock-solid, unchanging, eternal words of God so that we can live each day in full assurance of our salvation and eternal life.

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Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: 1 John, 2 Peter, assurance, Bible study, Charles Spurgeon, Colossians, doubt, eternal life, faith, God's Word, Gospel of John, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Psalm, salvation, Scripture, Titus, video. Leave a Comment »

Thursdays With Spurgeon—Three Pieces Of Evidence

May 20, 2021 — Craig T. Owens

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on iTunes or Spotify.

Three Pieces Of Evidence

Many who believe in the name of Jesus are not sure that they have eternal life. They only hope so. … I speak affectionately to the weaker ones who cannot yet say that they know they have believed. I speak not to your condemnation but your consolation. Full assurance is not essential to salvation, but it is essential to satisfaction. May you get it at once. At any rate may you never be satisfied to live without it. You may have full assurance. …

Do you love God? Do you love His only begotten Son? You can answer those two questions surely. … If I love Him, I know it is because He first loved me [1 John 4:19]. Love to God in us is always the work of God’s love toward us. … Love to Jesus is an effect that proves the existence of its cause. …

John goes on to give another evidence: ‘By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments’ (1 John 5:2). … The Holy Spirit tells us that if we love the brethren, we have passed from death to life. You can tell whether you love the brethren, as such, for their Master’s sake and for the truth’s sake that is in them. And if you can truly say that you thus love them, then you may know that you have eternal life [1 John 3:14]. …

Our apostle gives us this further evidence: ‘This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome’ (1 John 5:3). Obedience is the grand test of love. … Do you feel that you love the ways of God, that you desire holiness and follow after it joyfully? Then, dear friends, you have eternal life and these are the sure evidences of it. Obedience, holiness, delight in God, never came into a human heart except from a Heavenly Hand. …

To me the fact that the mouth of God has spoken it stands in the place of all argument, either for or against. If Jehovah says so, so it is. … If your faith stands in the wisdom of men and is based upon the cleverness of a preacher, it will fail you. But if it stands on the sure Word of the Lord, it will stand forever.

From The Blessing Of Full Assurance

These pieces of evidence are why I stressed last week that you make reading the Bible a regular practice: God tells us that faith comes through hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17). One of the favorite tactics of the devil is to try to get people to doubt or misapply God’s Word—he asked Adam and Eve, “Did God really say…” and then he quoted the Psalms out of context to Jesus to try to get Him to doubt (Genesis 3:1; Luke 4:10-11).

So when doubts about your secure standing in God’s sight creep in, you can return to the Scripture to say, “I have these three pieces of evidence that make me confident of God’s favor: I love Him because He first loved me, I love others because His love is in me, and I delight to obey all that my Father has told me.”

Don’t passively listen to your doubts and the devil’s lies, but actively talk back to them! Get into God’s Word and let God’s Word get into you so that you can speak the truth to every doubt.

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Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: 1 John, assurance, Bible study, Charles Spurgeon, doubt, evidence, faith, Genesis, God's Word, Gospel of Luke, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, lies, Romans, Scripture, spiritual warfare, truth. Leave a Comment »

The Reason We Can Live Securely

April 14, 2021 — Craig T. Owens

Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple or Spotify.

The wicked plot…but the Lord laughs… (Psalm 37:12).

The wicked may hatch all sorts of evil plots that appear to benefit themselves, but God always gets the final word and the last laugh!

This 37th Psalm is filled with the contrasts of the temporary advantages of evil versus the eternal rewards of righteousness. Wicked people may flourish for a moment in time, but righteous people have both an inheritance that lasts forever and God’s help every single day too! In other words, the righteous get to securely live in a win-win relationship.

With this in mind, David instructs the righteous how to live out their days:

not fretting over evil people
trusting God to supply their needs
doing good for others
delighting in God
remaining steadfastly committed to God
patiently
refraining from anger
full of hope
generously
securely in God’s peace

Righteous people can live securely every single day because they know that not only does God holds them securely today, but He will continue to hold them securely for all of eternity. Secure people are empowered to live a joy-filled, others-centered, God-glorifying life.

If you know Jesus as your Savior, you can say “Amen!” to this secure way of living.

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Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: assurance, empowerment, eternity, generosity, God's glory, hope, patience, peace, Psalm, security, trust. Leave a Comment »

Thursdays With Spurgeon—Christ’s Momentary Pain, Your Eternal Gain

July 30, 2020 — Craig T. Owens

Christ’s Momentary Pain, Your Eternal Gain

After Jesus said this, He looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may glorify You. (John 17:1)

The Son of God was glorified while He was dying, and it was one part of His glory that He should be able to bear the enormous load of human guilt. As a race we lay crushed beneath it.

A thousand Samsons could not relieve us! Angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim could never lift the stupendous mass! But this one Man alone, with no help, in weakness of body and in death pains, bore away the enormous load of human guilt! The chastisement of our peace was upon Him. The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all! What a load it was! And that He could bear it was, indeed, a display of His glory. The lost in hell cannot bear the wrath of God! An eternity of suffering will not have discharged the dreadful penalty, and yet He bore that burden in an hour! Oh, marvelous strength of the incarnate God! Glorious are You indeed, O Christ, upon Your Cross! …

I say He was glorified in His passion and His prayer was heard! The Father did glorify His Son even on the Tree! It was an hour of glory that might dazzle angels’ eyes; that hour when He said, ‘It is finished!’ (John 19:30) and gave up the ghost. What had He finished? He had finished that which saved His people! He had peopled heaven with immortal spirits who will delight in Him forever and had shaken the gates of hell! God indeed glorified His Son in enabling Him to bear, and bear so well, all the weight of sin and the penalty that was due to it. …

When He died, He did not render the redemption of His people possible, but He ransomed them completely. By His agonies and death He did not merely give a bare hope of the pardon of sin, but He hurled the sin of all His elect into the depths of the sea in that same moment! He did not merely make the salvation of men a possibility if they would, but He saved His people then and there! He finished the work that He came to do, and proof of it is written that ‘this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God’ (Hebrews 10:12).

From The Son Glorified By The Father And The Father Glorified By The Son

The enemy of your soul would love for you to believe his lies that you have to do something to secure your salvation, or that your most recent sin somehow made your salvation iffy, or that God is angry with you.

THOSE ARE ALL LIES!

Jesus didn’t make your salvation possible; He made it yours. This is what glorifies God: when you believe that the death of Jesus is all that is needed for your complete and eternal salvation!

Jesus paid it all

All to Him I owe

Sin had left a crimson stain

He washed it white as snow

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: assurance, Calvary, Charles Spurgeon, confidence, Cross, eternal life, God's glory, Gospel of John, Heavenly Father, Hebrews, Isaiah, Jesus Christ, resurrection, salvation. Leave a Comment »

Poetry Saturday—Sacred Bond

May 16, 2020 — Craig T. Owens

‘Twixt Jesus and the chosen race,

Subsists a bond of sovereign grace.

That hell, with its infernal train.

Shall ne’er dissolve, or rend in twain.

This sacred bond shall never break,

Though earth should to her centre shake ;

Rest, doubting saint, assured of this,

For God has pledged His holiness.

He swore but once, the deed was done;

‘Twas settled by the great Three One;

Christ was appointed to r’deem

All that the Father loved in Him.

Hail sacred union, firm and strong!

How great the grace, how sweet the song!

That worms of earth should ever be

One with incarnate Deity!

One in the tomb, one when He rose,

One when He triumph’d o’er His foes.

One when in heaven He took His seat.

While seraph’s sung all hell’s defeat.

This sacred tie forbids their fears,

For all He is, or has, is theirs;

With Him their head, they stand or fall,

Their life, their surety, and their all. —Anonymous

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: assurance, eternal life, God's Sovereignty, grace, hope, Jesus Christ, poem, poetry, redemption, salvation, Trinity. Leave a Comment »

Thursdays With Spurgeon—The Assurance In Christ’s Ascension

April 9, 2020 — Craig T. Owens

The Assurance In Christ’s Ascension

Our Savior descended when He came to the manger of Bethlehem, and further descended when He became ‘a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief’ (Isaiah 53:3). He descended lower still when He was obedient to death, even the death of the Cross—and further yet when His dead body was laid in the grave. … Long and dark was the descent. There were no depths of humiliation, temptation, or affliction that He did not fathom. …

The time came for our Lord to continue His homeward, upward journey and return to the glory from which He had come down. From the Mount of Olives, ‘while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight’ (Acts 1:9). The rest of His upward progress we cannot describe. Imagination and faith step in and conceive of Him as rising beyond all regions known to us, far above all imaginable height. …

How high He ascended after He passed the pearly portal Paul cannot tell us, save that he says God ‘seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion’ (Ephesians 1:20-21). He describes our Master as ‘dwelling in unapproachable light’ (1 Timothy 6:16). The Man Christ Jesus has gone back to the place from where His Godhead came! …

We are sure that the purpose of His love is secure or He would not have returned to His rest. The love that brought Him here would have kept Him here if all things necessary for our salvation had not been finished. …

Remember that His assent to the Father is representative. Every believer rose with Him and grasped the inheritance. When He rose up, ascending on high, He taught our feet the way. At the last His people will be caught up together with the Lord in the air, and so will they be forever with the Lord. He has made a stairway for His saints to climb to their bliss, and He has traveled it Himself to assure us that the new and living way is available for us. In His ascension He bore all His people with Him.

From Our Lord’s Triumphant Ascension

Jesus told His Father that He had completed everything He was sent to complete (John 17:4). John also says that Christ’s “It is finished” cry from the Cross also marked the completion of everything that had been prophesied about Jesus (John 19:28-30).

Such amazing love brought Jesus to earth! And His steadfast love also made sure that He left absolutely nothing undone that was needed for our salvation!

There’s now no reason for us to live fearful or anxious or skeptical about what is coming next. When Jesus says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” and when He promises that He has gone to prepare a place for us to bring us to be with Him, He has demonstrated His authority to make these claims in His death, resurrection, and ascension.

Oh my friends, live every day in that glorious assurance!

Thursdays With Spurgeon—The Greatest Treasure Ever!

January 23, 2020 — Craig T. Owens

The Greatest Treasure Ever!

Oh! Christian, do but consider what it is to have God to be your own! Consider what it is, compared with anything else.

Jacob’s portion is the Lord;

What can Jacob more require?

What can heaven more afford—

Or a creature more desire?

Some have their portion in the city. Their wealth is superabundant and in constant streams it flows to them, until they become a very reservoir of gold. But what is gold compared with your God? You could not live on it; your spiritual life could not be sustained by it. Apply it to your aching head, and would it afford you any ease?

Put it on a troubled conscience, and could your gold allay its pangs? Put it on your desponding heart and see if it could stay a solitary groan or give you one grief the less. But you have God, and in Him you have more than gold or riches ever could buy, more than heaps of brilliant ore could ever purchase for you. …

There are griefs here with which men cannot intermeddle, and there are griefs to come with which men cannot interfere to alleviate the pangs, pains, agonies, and dying strife. But when you have this: “I will be your God” [Jeremiah 31:33]—you have as much as other men can have put together. …

O Christian, ask for nothing in this world but that you may live on this and that you may die on this: “I will be your God.” This exceeds all the world has to offer. …

Oh! Here is a very sea of bliss, a very ocean of delight! Come, bathe your spirit in it. You may swim to eternity and never find a shore. You may dive to the very infinite and never find the bottom. “I will be your God.” Oh! If this does not make your eyes sparkle, if this makes not your foot dance for joy and your heart beat high with bliss, then assuredly your soul is not in a healthy state.

From God In The Covenant

I agree with Spurgeon: “If this does not make your eyes sparkle, if this makes not your foot dance for joy and your heart beat high with bliss, then assuredly your soul is not in a healthy state.”

If you want your soul to be in this healthy state, it is possible for you to know assuredly that God is saying to you, “I will be your God.” Jesus died in your place to pay the penalty for your sin. If you believe that, you may ask God to forgive all your sins—completely cancel that record of wrongdoing—and He will! Then His Spirit will take up residence in your heart and you can know the unspeakable bliss of the truth of what God says: “I am your God”!

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: assurance, Charles Spurgeon, Christian, covenant, delight, doctrine, eternal life, forgiveness, God's favor, Heaven, Jeremiah, joy, salvation, theology. 1 Comment »

Thursdays With Spurgeon—The Joy Of Saying, “My God”

January 16, 2020 — Craig T. Owens

The Joy Of Saying, “My God”

We commence then by the first thing, which is enough to startle us by its immense value. In fact, unless it had been written in God’s Word, we never could have dreamed that such a blessing could have been ours. God Himself, by the covenant, becomes the believer’s own portion and inheritance. “I will be their God” [Jeremiah 31:33]. …

Stop just one moment and think it over before we start. In the covenant of grace, God Himself conveys Himself to you and becomes yours. Understand it. God and all that is meant by that word—eternity, infinity, omnipotence, omniscience, perfect justice, infallible rectitude, and immutable love; all that is meant by God as Creator, Guardian, Preserver, Governor, Judge. All that that great word God can mean of goodness and of love, of bounty and of grace. All that this covenant gives you to be your absolute property as much as anything you can call your own: “I will be their God.” …

While He is Judge of all, He especially is their judge because He is the Judge whom they love to reverence, the Judge whom they long to approach because they know His lips will confirm that which their hearts have already felt, which is the sentence of their full acquittal through the merits of the glorious Savior. Our loving God is the Judge who will acquit our souls, and in that respect we can say He is our God whether as Sovereign, as Governor enforcing law, or as Judge punishing sin. Although God is in some sense the God of all men, yet in this matter there is something special toward His people so that they can say, “He is our God, even in those relationships.” …

Furthermore, the Christian can call God his God from the fact of his justification. A sinner can call God, God, but he must always put in an adjective and speak of God as an angry God, an incensed God, or an offended God. But the Christian can say “my God” without putting in any adjective except it be a sweet one wherewith to extol Him, so now we who were sometime afar off are made near by the blood of Christ. We who were enemies to God by wicked works are His friends, and looking up to Him, we can say “my God,” for He is my Friend, and I am His friend.

From God In The Covenant

What an incredible assurance in those two words: my God! Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).

It makes me want to sing along with Fanny Crosby:

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!

O what a foretaste of glory divine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

This is my story, this is my song

praising my Savior all the day long!

Posted in Uncategorized. Tags: assurance, Charles Spurgeon, Christian, covenant, doctrine, Fanny Crosby, God's favor, Jeremiah, Romans, theology. Leave a Comment »

What We Can Know

December 11, 2019 — Craig T. Owens

… we know … (1 John 3:16, 19, 24; 4:2, 6, 13; 5:2, 13, 19, 20).

God clearly reveals Himself to us so that it is not a mystery of how to abide with Him.

The word John uses for “know” in the Greek is ginosko. This is a knowledge through personal, firsthand experience; not knowledge someone told us about secondhand.

God reveals Himself in Creation, in His law, in the rituals of worship, in our conscience, and in the voice of the prophets. Ultimately—and most unmistakably of all—God reveals Himself in Jesus (John 14:9).

So here are 8 things we can now know…

We know true love because of the sacrifice of Jesus (3:16; 4:7-10).
We know we have God’s love in us by the way we treat others (3:17-19; 4:11; 4:20-21).
We know our hearts our confident by the inward witness of the Holy Spirit Who assures us that we abide in God and He in us (3:20-24).
We know how to discern deceptive spirits (4:1-6).
We know what it means to be confident on Judgment Day (4:12-19).
We know that loving others fulfills God’s commands (5:1-13).
We know God hears our prayers (5:14-17).
We know that we can be victorious over sin (5:18-21).