Hebrews 11:1-2 tells its readers that, “Now faith is the assurance
of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by
faith our ancestors received approval.” Most people I know, and this
includes pastors, need people and promises they can count on. We
also know that in the church, however, are two kinds of people: promise
keepers and promise breakers. Preachers generally embrace the former and
avoid the later, however un-theological it may be. After all, preachers
are human too. We want to deal confidently with folks who are in
ministry with us. Yet, we all know the all too human shortcoming of
forgetting what we promise—or simply refusing to do things that we had
committed to earlier.
When I attended the University of Texas, I
had a wonderful professor named Dr. James Kinneavy. Rhetoricians
generally recognized Kinneavy as one of the world’s leading authorities
in the academic discipline of rhetoric. I loved to meet with him and
soak up all the wisdom and knowledge that he dispensed without even
realizing it. He knew Plato, Aristotle,
Isocrates, and
Augustine
backwards and forwards—and so many other great rhetorical scholars as
well. The problem was that although he could cite any text in
Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics or
The Rhetoric by both chapter and
verse, he could not remember lunch dates he made with me to discuss my
reading assignments. We would make a lunch date and three times out of
four he would fail to appear. He always apologized, but after a while
anyone might get gun-shy when setting plans for lunch with him. We all
want to count on promises made by others. This is perhaps most
especially true about the promises God makes to us.
John Wesley
was one of those great souls who spent much of his life looking for
assurance or what Hebrews might call the “things hoped for, the
conviction of things not seen.” He searched scripture, church history,
church doctrine, and the minds and hearts of all he respected. Yet, the
peace and inner calm he sought continued to elude him. Finally, as
Methodist lore tells the story, Wesley found that peace of mind in the
assurance of God’s love at a little church on Aldersgate Street, as he
listened to someone read Luther’s preface to the commentary on the book
of Romans.
The United Methodist Book of Worship puts it this way: “On
Wednesday, May 24, 1738, John Wesley experienced his “heart strangely
warmed.” This Aldersgate experience was crucial for his own life and
became a touchstone for the Wesleyan movement (United Methodist
Publishing House, 1992, p. 439).
Generally, the feeling of
assurance is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Some people get it immediately
upon conversion; while others, like Wesley, search for it for many years.
My guess is that assurance is like the missing remote control for the
television. About the time we stop looking for it, then it finds us.
Assurance
is the calmness people sense and feel when they know God has
sent Jesus to save and redeem us. It is an inner testimony by the
Holy Spirit that God loves us and offers us salvation in Jesus. But
assurance is not an equivalent to knowledge. Rather, assurance is more
like a promise that we completely and fully believe, accept, and trust.
This “faith” then gives us the confidence to lead lives that befit the
gospel. As Paul himself says, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (
2 Corinthians 5:7).
As believers, the bedrock of our ability to
live abundant lives is to have confidence or assurance that
God, revealed in Jesus Christ, is our ultimate anchor.
Every other idol, whether in nature or even in our own success, is a
chimera. These objects of false confidence are fleeting and
untrustworthy. Faith in Christ is the only trust in abundant life that
we believers can grasp.
As people of faith we live between two
alternatives. One alternative leads to countless questions that
eventually bring us back to where we began. The other alternative is to
live in faith until the Holy Spirit grants us that inner peace with God
we call assurance. I grasp at this second option because, after all,
hasn’t God already given us everything else?