This article is a summary of the following episode: Recovering a Supernatural Assurance
This is a conversation I have needed to have for a long time. Many believers are exhausted, anxious, and unsure where they stand with God. Not always questioning salvation itself, but questioning God’s posture toward them. Is he pleased? Is he frustrated? Is he distant? Is there a purpose to our lives at all?
What we are increasingly convinced of is this. We have lost the spiritual depth of the Christian faith. We have trained ourselves to interpret everything through what we can see, measure, and evaluate. That instinct has quietly reshaped how we think about assurance.
It is time to recover a supernatural assurance.
A Disenchanted Faith
We live in a deeply disenchanted world. If something cannot be measured, explained, or proven through visible means, we struggle to trust it. That way of thinking has bled into Christianity.
When believers wrestle with assurance, the default response is often to look inward or outward in visible ways. We evaluate obedience. We measure habits. We examine progress. We assess success, influence, stability, and self-control. We search for physical evidence to answer a spiritual question.
Scripture does not lead us down that road.
Paul tells us plainly in Ephesians 6 that our struggle is not rooted in flesh and blood. He names a real and terrifying enemy that operates in a realm beyond what we can see. That matters because assurance itself sits on that battlefield. Doubt, accusation, fear, and despair are not simply emotional experiences. They are part of a spiritual conflict.
If assurance is treated as a physical problem, we will look for physical solutions. Scripture tells us assurance is a spiritual gift that must be received, guarded, and strengthened through spiritual means.
Assurance Is Not a Work of the Flesh
Many of us grew up learning to measure assurance by sincerity or transformation. We were taught, sometimes subtly and sometimes explicitly, that confidence before God came from how deeply we meant it or how much our lives had changed.
That approach leaves us trapped. Sincerity has no clear boundary. Transformation never feels complete. If assurance rests on either, it will always be unstable.
Scripture never presents sincerity as the foundation of salvation. The Bible describes us as dead in sin, enslaved to darkness, and unable to rescue ourselves. Dead people do not rescue themselves by meaning it harder.
The rich young ruler was sincere. His obedience was real. His confidence collapsed the moment the law exposed its true demand.
Assurance does not come from how seriously we take God. It comes from how completely Christ has taken us.
Justification Silences Every Accusation
Romans 8 brings this into sharp focus. Paul asks a devastating question. Who can bring a charge against God’s elect? His answer is simple and final. God is the one who justifies.
That matters because accusations will come. They will come from others. They will come from our own conscience. They will come from the enemy who delights in pointing out our failures.
The question is not whether accusations exist. The question is whether they have authority.
They do not.
Justification is not self-declared. It is God-declared. We are not accepted because we obeyed well enough or believed sincerely enough. We are accepted because Christ stood in our place, bore our guilt, and provided his righteousness.
Assurance rests where justification rests. Entirely outside of us.
Peace Is Guarded Supernaturally
Philippians 4 tells us something remarkable. The peace of God guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
That peace is not produced by performance. It is not maintained by consistency. It is guarded by Christ himself.
Peace protects what we love and what we think. Assurance lives in that same space. When Christ is the object of faith, the Spirit brings a settled confidence that cannot be generated through discipline or habit alone.
This does not minimize obedience. Good works matter. They encourage us. They serve others. They glorify God. They are fruit.
They are not the root.
Faith Comes From Hearing
Assurance grows the same way faith does. Scripture is clear. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.
Assurance weakens when the voice of Christ is drowned out by the noise of the world or the accusations of the enemy. It strengthens when the gospel is preached, heard, remembered, and applied.
That is why the gathering of the church matters. That is why preaching matters. That is why confession, prayer, and the ordinary means of grace matter.
We are not sustaining ourselves. We are being sustained.
A Kingdom Strength We Do Not Produce
Standing in the strength of the Lord does not require physical ability, visible success, or emotional stability. A believer can be weak in body, overwhelmed in circumstance, and nearing death while standing firmly in Christ.
Strength in the Christian life is not self-generated. It is received.
Peter tells us that everything needed for life and godliness has already been granted by divine power. Not human power. Divine power.
That changes how we face temptation, doubt, and suffering. We do not wake up trying to secure our place in the kingdom. Christ has already secured it.
Christ Has Done It All
Hebrews 10 brings us to the center of assurance. By a single offering, Christ has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
One sacrifice. A finished work. A permanent standing.
Christ has paid for our sins. Christ has provided our righteousness. Christ is preparing our glorification. We are not managing our salvation. We are receiving it.
The lie that haunts many Christians is the idea that the Christian life is about getting saved, keeping ourselves saved, or proving that we are saved. That lie drains joy, weakens love, and keeps believers turned inward.
The gospel turns us outward. Toward Christ. Toward others. Toward hope.
Walking by Faith in a Supernatural Reality
We walk by faith. Faith is not wishful thinking. It is trust in a finished work that we did not perform.
The Spirit uses that faith to produce peace, obedience, humility, and love. Not as proof of acceptance, but as fruit of it.
Assurance is not found by searching ourselves. It is found by looking to Christ.
And as we recover that supernatural assurance, weary believers begin to rest, wounded believers begin to heal, and isolated believers find the courage to step back into the life of the church.
That is our prayer. That Christ would once again be seen as sufficient, present, and powerful for his people.
