"Salvation is of the LORD." -Jonah 2:9

To those who struggle with assurance, saying, "There are so many times that I do not feel saved," I would remind you that, before you came to Christ, there were many times you did not feel lost! Did your lack of "lost feeling" that time mean that you weren't lost? Of course not! For feelings have nothing to do with whether or not we are lost. Do you not see that it is the same with respect to whether or not we are saved? Martin Luther said it well when he wrote: "For Feelings come and feelings go, And feelings are deceiving; My warrant is the Word of God; Naught else is worth believing." There it is! God's Word! There is our foundation. The Scriptures never instruct us to feel, but to believe. If you do not feel, believe anyway! It does not say, 'For by grace are you saved through FEELINGS.' Feelings are a look inward, at ourselves. Faith is a look outward at Christ. Feelings change because they look at a changing object...

"In all these things we are more than conquerors through H im that loved us." -R OMANS 8:37 [KJV]   Those who know nothing of their own heart, of their own infirmities, of their own frailties, of their own inward or outward slips and backslidings, know nothing of the secret of superabounding grace, nothing of the secret of atoning blood, nothing of the secret of the Spirit's inward testimony. They cannot. Only in proportion as we are emptied of self in all its various forms, are we filled out of the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. Now you, perhaps, (I address myself personally to some poor, tempted child of God, that in touching one, I may touch others,) are a poor, tempted creature; and your daily sorrow, your continual trouble is, that you are so soon overcome; that your temper, your lusts, your pride, your worldliness, your carnal, corrupt heart are perpetually getting the mastery. And from this you sometimes draw bitter conclusions. You say, in t...

“ All the ground of a believers righteousness and salvation, and exemption from the Law, sin, and the curse, is from the nature, office, and transaction or work of Christ, and Gods accounting, or imputing. Christ stood clothed in our nature, betwixt God and man, and in that with all the sins of believers upon Him, God having laid on Him the iniquities of us all. In His Office He obeyed, suffered, satisfied, and offered up Himself, and now sits as a Mediator to perpetuate or make His sacrifice, obedience, suffering, and righteousness everlasting; and thus bringing in everlasting righteousness; and God accounts, reckons or imputes all that is done in our nature, as done by us, calling things that are not, as if they were; and in His person, as in our person; and thus He is made sin for us W ho knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” - Gospel report by preacher John Saltmarsh, 1649 A.D.