How to Know if You're a Real Christian - Rural Reset 3/21 [5]

Host: TJ Freeman

Summary: In this podcast episode, TJ Freeman addresses common doubts about Christian faith, particularly focusing on questions of salvation and assurance. He shares his personal struggle with these doubts, triggered during his middle school years, and discusses how intellectual, emotional, and willful commitments are integral to genuine faith.

Key Points:

• Common Doubts in the Faith: Many people struggle with doubt. Some struggle because they are not a Christian and need to come to saving faith in Christ. Others struggle because they come up against something unfamiliar in Scripture or can't seem to overcome a sin struggle. 
• The Importance of Assurance in Salvation: Even though doubt is a common struggle, it's wise to not push it to the back burner. Instead, doubts should be dealt with, examined, and taken to the Lord.
• Threefold Test of True Faith: This test helps people examine whether their minds, emotions, and commitments have been changed since becoming a Christian. 

Listener Takeaways:

• Examine your life and pray! Christians are those have been changed by the gospel and are seeking to live for the glory of God. 
• Christians, by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, are able to understand Scripture and see sin in themselves. 
• Represent Christ wherever he has placed you so others can experience the joy of being a Christian.

Connect with Us:

• Website: backtorurality.com
• Social Media: Facebook

Transcript

Have you ever wondered if you're really a Christian? Like, do I really believe the things that I say I believe? Did I pray the prayer right? And did the person who told me how to pray the prayer really know what they were talking about? Or maybe there's some sin that you've committed, or you keep on committing, and you're thinking, man, I wonder if that disqualified me from really being a Christian.

Well, hello, my name is TJ Freeman. I live in a town you've probably never heard of. And for a long time I struggled to understand my role in God's plan for the middle of nowhere. But a few years ago when I was asking God to please send me to a city, any city, although preferably a warm one, he did something else instead.

He changed my heart. And what I learned is that the middle of nowhere actually plays a vital role in God's plan for his creation. And he's chosen people like you and like me to fulfill it. So if you're a christian who lives in the middle of nowhere Back to Rurality is the podcast for you. God has you there for a reason, an important reason, and becoming a healthier Christian will help you accomplish his plan for the place you live in, probably no one's ever heard of.

So let's get back to Rurality. We are in a series of 21 episodes meant to help you take a step toward becoming a healthier Christian. And today we're talking about how to know if you really are a Christian. And if you're struggling with a question like that, we're going to You're not alone. You should know that lots of Christians, and probably some who aren't, struggle with questions like that.

As a pastor, I often have people ask me, How can I really know that I'm saved? Well, I've actually struggled with that question a bit myself at a couple different times in my life. The first time was when I was in middle school, and somebody brought up the fact that the United States is not in the Bible, which had never occurred to me before.

But they said, if the United States is not in the Bible at the end, how do we know that the country is not going to blow up in our lifetime? Now, forget about the theological implications of any of that, except for the fact that for the first time in my life, I was thinking deeply about the end, which of course made me think about my own end, and I thought about eternity.

And just the concept of eternity at all was terrifying. You're going to be somewhere forever and ever. And there's no end as scary as death is. It actually brings a little bit of relief because there's an end to this thing. So the thought of eternity was terrifying. And then I, of course, thought about an eternity in hell.

And that just sent shivers down my spine. I felt it. It was like my blood turned cold. I laid there just completely unable to sleep. I didn't care about whatever conversation was going on in the room anymore. I mean, it's middle school. We're probably eating gummy bears and drinking Pepsi. I didn't care about that stuff at all anymore.

I was just thinking about eternity and I wanted to make sure that I was not going to end up in hell for eternity with no chance of escape. So I started to question, did I pray the prayer right? I mean, I was only four years old. Did I pray that thing the right way? Did I even know what I was talking about?

And what about my sweet Sunday school teacher who led me in that prayer? Did she know what she was talking about? How did she know? How could she be so certain? And it started me down a path where I was really unsettled about my own salvation, which in that case proved to be a good thing. More on that later.

I've had other times since then where I've just wondered, Hey, this sin struggle in my life, you know, because I can't  get over that thing. Is that something that means I'm not a Christian? I think all of us have questions like this. So if you're struggling with these kinds of questions. You're really not alone.

Now, it's important for you to get this sorted out. You don't want this to be one of those back burner struggles that, you know, you, you think about every now and then you give it a quick little stir, maybe adjust the temperature, but it stays on the back burner. You want to bring this to the front burner for a couple of reasons.

Number one, you might be struggling because you're not really a Christian. That's why I said the struggle that I started at that middle school sleepover was a good one. Because I later would find out that I had indeed misunderstood the gospel. I really did think at that age that if I prayed the prayer, said the words at some point in my life, I was good.

I was not at all thinking about what it meant to love the Lord, to submit to him as the king of the universe. to treasure him, to be invested in his word, not because I needed to like do my religious duty, but because I want to hear from the one who made me, who made me for his glory. Those kinds of things weren't in my mind at all.

I was living very selfishly. And I just wanted to make sure that when I died, I didn't have to suffer. That journey was a good journey for me to be on. And that may be true of you too. It could be that the reason you've struggled with an assurance of your salvation Is that you're not actually saved. And it's a kindness from the Lord.

If you're having this little prompt by his spirit to think about your eternity and to question whether or not you really understand the gospel. The Bible talks about examining ourselves to see if we're in the faith. So that could be a good thing. And if you're struggling with that at all, sorting that out will really matter.

And you're going to want to meet with your pastor, another Christian friend, sit down with your Bible and talk about these things. If you don't have access to a healthy church. I would love to be in touch with you. So you could reach out on back to morality. com. I would love to have the opportunity to speak with you about this matter and to point you to some really helpful resources.

The other reason though, that you might be struggling with an assurance of your salvation is not so, and this is something really that you need to deal with so that you can put it behind you. If you are really a Christian and there's a doubt in your mind about that, that's, that's nagging. And it's significant.

You're not certain about these things. It is going to take something away from you and replace it with something bad. It's going to take away the joy and the peace that are consistent with God's Spirit. And it's going to replace them with fear, which is not something that the Lord gives us a spirit of.

He doesn't give us a spirit of fear, but of  power and love and of a sound mind. That's from 2 Timothy 1. So you won't have the full effect of love and joy and peace and all that fruit of the spirit if you're dealing with this kind of background noise of doubting your salvation. It'll be like trying to listen to a radio station and it's really staticky and you can, you can make out what it says, but the whole experience is ruined by the fact that's really staticky.

Listen, if staticky, if static comes in and I'm listening to that radio station, I'm gonna change it. I don't care if it's my favorite song. I don't like the static. It's too distracting. And that's true of us as Christians as well. So this leads to a really important question. How do I really know if I'm a Christian?

And one of the problems to really knowing is the fact that the Bible is a big book and very few people feel like they have a really good grasp on the whole thing. So knowing that there's some stuff out there in the Bible that you wish you were more familiar with, but you don't. Opens up the possibility that there's something you've overlooked or that there's something you've misunderstood.

And so you're just going, man, I'm not sure I can be as confident in my salvation because I don't think I know everything there is to know. You may also have had the experience where you're like, well, this verse kind of sounds like this. But this verse over here kind of sounds like that. What do I do? How do I reconcile two things that just don't sound like they go together?

On top of that, there are a lot of people with competing viewpoints. I grew up in an environment that made it seem, at least to my young understanding, that as long as someone prays the prayer they're in, and there was a pretty big emphasis when I was young about saying these words, repeat after me. And then right after you repeated those words came the assurance.

You are now a Christian. Other people have different views that you can become a Christian whenever you don't have to say these specific words. The Lord just does a work in your heart. And you experience some change. And as you look back, you're going, I'm a Christian. I don't know exactly when it happened, but I became a Christian.

Others have taught things like you can lose your salvation. There's just a lot of opinions on what it means to be and to stay a Christian. Yet, according to the Bible in 1 John 5, 11 through 13, It sounds like we should actually be able to know whether we're Christians or not. Listen to these words. John says, and this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.

Whoever has the Son has life, whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. Now listen to this, this is verse 13, I write these things to you who believe, in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. Who's he writing to? People who believe in the Son of God, professing believers, and in this case, genuine professing believers, and he tells them that you can have an assurance.

You can know that you have eternal life, and as you read the things that he wrote, those are the kinds of things that help you have that confidence. In the book of John, chapter 5, verse 24, so that was 1st John before, 1st John 5, this is John 5, 24. Truly, truly, Jesus says, I say to you, whoever hears my word,

So Jesus is saying, whoever hears the word of God and then believes in the God who sent Jesus, his son, to die in the place of sinners, that person will have eternal life. So Jesus seems pretty confident that there is a way you can know who are the people who are saved and who are the people who are not.

The people who are saved are the ones who hears. Who hear, they hear the word preached, they believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that He alone can save them, and He does it by dying for their sins, and that when you trust in Him, and the God who actually raised Jesus from the dead, you are saved. You don't come into judgment anymore, you've passed from death to life.

9 13, it says the true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world. And the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. So when Jesus came, he was not recognized by the world. That whole manger scene, where people are going, you know, things like, can anything good come from Nazareth?

This whole thing about they expected a king and they got this little baby born in a manger instead. So the, the world's rejecting him. They don't know him. It says he came to his own, to the Jews, his own people didn't receive him. That's more like what I was just saying, you know, this rejection of can anything good come from Nazareth and we thought we were getting an actual king.

So the world's rejected him, his own people have rejected him. Verse 12, But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but But of God, God has been very kind to offer salvation to all who believe.

And yet, it's not something that you can just will on your own. It's not something that you can, of the flesh, decide, I'm just going to be saved. It's the will of the Lord, confesses that Jesus is Lord, who believes this gospel, has the right to become sons of God. He makes us his family. That is just an amazing blessing.

But it comes with this assurance that, if these are the things you believe. This is the reality for you as a Christian. So all of those verses to say, it seems like from the Bible, there is enough there to have some clarity about the difference between somebody who really is a Christian and somebody who is not.

Now, as you look at your own life, you can evaluate whether or not you're one of these people who has really believed the truth. And there's three parts of you that are involved in that. I used to work in a biblical counseling center in Southwest Florida, and we used some material when we were first discipling somebody, especially a newer believer.

And it had in there this three part commitment, three parts of you that are involved in becoming a Christian, and they are your intellect, your emotion, and your will. I think that's pretty good. There's the part of you that thinks. There's the part of you that feels. And then there's the part of you that does.

So let's, let's imagine getting buckled into your car for a second. You go out, you get in your nice, shiny, what, 1998 Astro minivan. Does anybody even still have those? I think they all went to cash for clunkers. Whatever it is, you get in your Toyota Sienna. And you plop yourself down, and you know that it's illegal for you to go down the road without buckling your seatbelt.

You know, you have to do it. You might not want to do it, but you know, you have to, that's your intellect. Then maybe you have an emotional connection to it as well. You think, boy, I would really hate it if I died in a car crash because I was too stubborn to buckle my seatbelt. Maybe you've seen pictures of people who didn't fasten their seatbelts and the kind of havoc that that causes, or you've heard the stories of the only reason he survived is because he had a seatbelt on.

So, because you love your family and you don't want them to have to suffer knowing that, oh, if he or she would only have put on their seatbelt, they'd still be here with us. You decide, okay, well I better buckle up. So now you got your intellect involved, got your emotions involved, but you still don't have the seatbelt on, do you?

No. Because you gotta actually reach back there, grab that thing, pull it around your waist and click it in. Now your will is engaged. You have your intellect, your emotion, and your will. Those are the three parts of you necessary to do pretty much anything. And that's true about becoming a Christian. Like, you could know some things about God, you can know about hell, you can know about salvation, you can know about all that stuff, but that doesn't, that's not enough to just become a Christian.

Just knowing about God, salvation, eternity, and you can feel it. You can be like me in middle school and have your blood run cold because you're so worried about your eternal state and what it would be like to suffer in hell. You on the flip side could really have these ooey gooey kind of emotions about God and you go to church and on the 47th time through that Hillsong song you Feel it and it's like man, I really feel the presence of the Lord here, you know Yeah, you have your intellect you have your emotion.

Neither of those things are really complete though You have to have this third thing which is your will and you just surrender that You surrender your will to the Lord and you say I see now You That's the thing about our sin. When we choose to sin, we're rebelling against God who made us for His glory.

And when you become a Christian, you go, Oh, I actually see that. You know, you can read about this in Ephesians 2, where Paul talks about before we became Christians, We were following our flesh, the passions of our flesh, the desires of the mind. We were by nature, children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

And we were also following somebody who don't really want to be following the Prince of the power of the air, which is another way of saying the devil. So we were doing that before we became Christians. You're following your flesh. And then God opened your eyes and you see, Oh, he said to live this way because he made me for his glory.

And I've not been doing that. Yeah. And that's wrong. And I actually deserve to be punished for that because God in his Kindness gave me life and breath. He gave me purpose. And I don't mean purpose in the Rick Warren way. I mean, purpose in the sense that he made me to glorify him. He's given me a life that's meant for something bigger than just my life itself, and I've squandered it to date.

And you just recognize, well, he has the right and authority then to hold me accountable to that. So you turn from that sin, you ask for forgiveness and really there should be no hope. The answer should be no. You did the crime. Now you got to pay the price, but God caused Jesus to pay the price for us.

Jesus died in our place receiving the full weight of all of our sin so that we could go free. Our sin is credited to Christ's account. Christ's righteousness at the same time is credited to our account. So when God looks at us, he sees the works of his Son, not our sin instead. That's a really big deal.

So you, when you know these things and you feel the emotional connection to these things, you say, Oh, well, I want to, I want to live for him then. If he's willing to pardon me for my sin and restore me, then the thing I want to do is know him more, love him more and bring him the glory he created me to bring.

So now you've had this change in your, your mind, a change in the way you feel and the change in the way that you act. Now, these things are not always going to be perfectly aligned with God. You may at times in your mind, think things that are not true. You may feel things or not feel things that are really unreliable.

And you may use your will to do some things that dishonor the Lord instead of honoring the Lord. But generally you've had a moment where those, those three things come together and you say, I want to give my life to Christ, receiving the salvation that he's offered me, and I want to live for his glory.

And from that point on, you start to try to do that. It's imperfect. Sanctification is the process by which we become more and more like Christ. It takes a lifetime. You won't be perfect until the very end, but you have a new wanter. That's the thing. The things you used to want are not the things you want anymore.

Now, I liked pizza before and after I became a Christian. That's not the thing. It's not, you know, every little desire is now completely transformed. So even your taste buds reflect that you now want to follow Jesus. But you do have a new wanter in the sense that you used to want sin, you used to want to rule your own life, you used to want your own glory, your own comfort, now you want to live for God's glory.

And that's a consistently growing reality in the life of a Christian, which leads me to another threefold test. So the first is just looking at, have I really surrendered my intellect, my emotion, and my will to the Lord? The next is going, well, if I have, I should be able to see some evidence of that. And there's a threefold test for that as well.

The first thing is, you're just looking at what the Word says a Christian is. What does the Bible say it is to be a Christian? We've looked at some of those verses from 1 John and John already, you can go back and listen to those again. But essentially it's somebody who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

You've confessed that Jesus is Lord. You've confessed your sin to him. Jesus says that this way, you've denied yourself, taken up a cross and being willing to follow after him. So you've recognized what the Bible says about God. You believe it and you trust in his son alone for your salvation. Those are the kinds of things the Bible says a Christian is.

Then you need to realize the Bible also says that if you're a Christian, there's a guarantee, a seal that you receive. And that is God's spirit. And you can see that in Ephesians 1, 13 to 14. It says in him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.

On another episode, we'll spend time talking more about the Holy Spirit. It's not this, you know, sometimes it's the Holy Ghost and it's a spooky, what is that kind of reality. Some people refer to the Spirit like, I've never seen Star Wars, but I guess there's a force. And so you think of the Holy Spirit as some kind of force.

The Holy Spirit is God, part of the Trinity, one of the three persons of the Trinity, and He dwells in all His believers. He puts fruit in you. I should say it this way. He cultivates fruit in you. And you can read about that fruit in Galatians five. In fact, Galatians five is a really good place. If you want to give yourself a test on this tells us what the works of the flesh are in Galatians five and, and makes a pretty awful list and says that people who do these things are not the people who inherit the kingdom of God.

Then it gives us this other list, things like love, joy, peace, kindness. These things are listed as the fruit of the spirit, and he's cultivating these things in you. So you should see an increasing presence. Of those kinds of things in your life. So you're not looking for do I feel the force? You are saying things like well, one of the jobs of the Holy Spirit is to illuminate the truth.

Am I understanding scripture a little bit better? Am I beginning to to see things come to life in the Bible? Am I understanding these concepts more? Do I see things in me like I'm slowly becoming more loving. I'm feeling convicted over sin, and I can see some ways that I'm treating others are not loving, and I want to be more loving.

I, I've been down and depressed, but the Bible says some things about joy, and I feel like I should work on these things. So knowing that God's spirit is there, seeing some evidence of his spirit in you, that's a really important threefold test. And then the third is the fruit that that produces, which is your changed life.

So as you look back over time, you're not asking, am I now a perfect person, but do I see that I've become more loving, that I've become more joyful, that I have more peace in my life, that I treat people well, that I'm patient, that I have self control. These kinds of things, this change that you see in your life over time, these are confirmations that what you believed, what you said you believed, you actually believe.

And so you, you see what the Bible says a Christian is, you see the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life, and then over time, you see that he's actually been producing the fruit that he was cultivating, and your life has changed to some degree. So ask yourself those kind of questions, spend some time praying, should you find that you're not really a believer, just do what the Bible says to do to become a Christian.

Turn from your sin, apologize, confess, declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, give your allegiance to him, deny yourself, take up a cross, follow after him, trust in the Lord alone for salvation. Now, there's no works you can do to save yourself, there's not like, I need to try harder and do better, or maybe like, it'll wash out in the end, or maybe God really knows my, my heart.

Hey, newsflash, God does know your heart, knows it a lot better than you are, and he can see the wickedness there, very plain, but he's willing to wash that heart clean through the blood of Christ. Jesus's blood is the atonement for our sin. It pays the price in full and there is no forgiveness apart from it, but there's full forgiveness in it.

So think about that. Now if you realize, you know, I think I really am a Christian. I believe, you know, what the Bible says a Christian believes to become one. I think I have a sense that the Holy Spirit's in me. I'm understanding the word more and more. I am feeling conviction, and then as I look back over time, seems like, yeah, I can see some ways that God's really helped me grow in some areas.

I see some change in my life. That's a really good sign. And you want to turn away from these doubts that you've had before. John Piper, no, John MacArthur, I think, one of the Johns, who I respect, asked the question, as you look back, you could sum it up saying, Do you now love the Lord? Genuinely, you have a love for the Lord and you want to be pleasing to Him.

Things like that are really good evidence. And you have struggles. We all do. That's normal in our walk. But those struggles should become less and less as Christ becomes more and more and we go and live for His glory. So I hope this has given you some confidence. And if not, confidence giving you the tools that you need to understand how you can become a Christian.

With this though, take this then, then and go, okay, here I am in the middle of nowhere. I live in a town most people have never heard of. God has been kind to save my soul and to help me have some confidence in the fact that he has. Now, what does he want me to do with this? He wants you to go and represent him.

So today, just think about how can I help others experience the kind of joy that I have now in Christ. How can I help fulfill the responsibility God has given me to bring him glory way out here in the middle of nowhere, worship him, praise his name. As you're out there in the middle of nowhere, you're one of the few people doing what God made all people to do.

And his glory is seen through you in a really special way. So be encouraged by that. So let's recap. If you've ever wondered if you're really a Christian, you're not alone. It's normal. It's worth sorting out because it's there either to help you become a real Christian or it's not from God. And you want to not have those kinds of thoughts kicking around in the back of your mind.

The Bible is a really big book, but even though it's a big book, it's really clear on the matter of salvation. And you can look into his word to see what a Christian really is. And then to evaluate if you really are one, and you can know, the Bible tells us that we should have some confidence in the fact that we're Christians and knowing empowers us to be healthier Christians.

Well, I would encourage you to, to maybe go back to chapter three, episode three, if this is your first time listening to this podcast, starting in episode three, that's where we began this series that I'm calling Rural Reset, where we just get back to some of the basics of the faith. So that we can be healthy Christians who live in the middle of nowhere and fulfill the purpose God has called us to there.

It's 21 day course, rural reset starts in episode three. It's totally free here on the back to morality podcast. Hey, I'd also like to know who you are. You're out there in the middle of nowhere. I'm out here in the middle of nowhere together. We're supposed to demonstrate the glory of God in places that most people aren't thinking about.

So if you'd head on over to back to morality. com. There's a way for you to sign up for our email and also a place that if you'd like to reach out and just say, hi, you can do that on the form there. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time on back to Rurality.