Assurance of Salvation (1)

Knowing you are a true believer:
(1) Those that belong to God, the Spirit of God witnesses to them that they are sons. There will be some intimations, and insinuations, and hints, though the Spirit of adoption witnesses not fully and gloriously to the soul always, because we are not fitted for it. There is something in us renewed by the Spirit; there is something of the new creature. When a Christian cannot hear God say to his soul, 'I am thy salvation,’ yet a man may see a work of grace. There is a love to God, to the ordinances, to the people of God; a mourning because he cannot mourn; a sighing, because he has not a heart pliable. There is a work of the Spirit that helps him in his worst condition. Besides, there is a spirit of supplication in some measure. Though he cannot make set discourses to God, yet he can in a manner lay open his sorrow and grief to God. They be broken words, perhaps, but God can pluck sense out of them. Again, a Christian in the worst condition, God not only shines on him through the cloud, but there is a spirit in him that sighs to go through all thick clouds to God. It is promised. 'The Spirit will help our infirmities when we know not how to pray’ (Rom. 8:26). Communion with God is never broken off where there is the Spirit of adoption. If they could embrace Christ, they would not leave him. If they could not embrace Christ, they would touch the hem of his garment. They will not yield to the stream altogether but strive against it. And though they be carried away with the strength of the stream, and see no goodness in themselves, yet they that be with them shall see a spirit striving to another condition than they are in. Something of Christ’s, something of God's Spirit there will be in them. And take them at the worst, they will appear better than the natural man, that thinks himself a glorious man, though he has nothing but for show and fashion.

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Richard Sibbes 'Refreshment for the Soul.'
A Heavenly Conference, pp. 101-03
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