Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

by J.D. Greear

Salvation is not a prayer you pray in a one-time ceremony and then move on from; salvation is a posture of repentance and faith that you begin in a moment and maintain for the rest of your life.

“Heart” in the Bible (Prov. 4:23) is the seat of the person. Having Jesus come into your heart, in that sense, would mean that He fuses Himself into the deepest part of who you are—that you rest your hopes upon His righteousness, lean on Him for strength, and submit to His Lordship at your core.

Ananias led Paul to call on God’s name for forgiveness of sins after their first conversation (Acts 22:16).

Salvation is not given because you prayed a prayer correctly, but because you have leaned the hopes of your soul on the finished work of Christ.

Salvation comes not because you prayed a prayer correctly, but because you have leaned the hopes of your soul on the finished work of Christ.

I can say with certainty that God wants you to have certainty about your salvation. He changes, encourages, and motivates us not by the uncertainty of fear, but by the security of love. That is one of the things that makes the gospel absolutely distinct from all other religious messages in the world.

This was the moment of truth. Men are made in these moments. (For the record, so are martyrs.)

In the same way, there are points you can never pass spiritually until you are confident that Jesus will support the full weight of your soul. There are sacrifices you’ll never make and commands you’ll never obey unless you are convinced of their eternal value.

You will never have the strength to say “no” to sin until you realize the unconditional “yes” that God has given to you in Christ.

You didn’t start to sin because you hung around the wrong crowd; you were the wrong crowd.

We were so bad He had to die for us; He was so gracious He was glad to die. When we repentantly believe that, we receive eternal life.

At our church we say that you can summarize the gospel in four words: Jesus in my place.

The moment we repentantly believe God brought back the lifeless body of Jesus from the deadness of the tomb, after His offering as a payment for our sin, we are declared similarly righteous. (Rom. 4:25)

Repentance is belief in action.

Works great. At least until your memory fails you. Or if you start to wonder if you did it right. Or if you have deceived yourself into thinking something happened that really didn’t. And what if you begin to ask, as I did, Did I really feel sorry

Conversion is not completing a ritual, it is commencing a relationship. The assurance of ritual is based on accurate words and memory. The assurance of relationship is based on a present posture of repentance and belief.

For others, however, the moment is less clear. Perhaps they were raised in a Christian home, and their awareness of Jesus’ Lordship grew over time. For them, it was more like they came to a point where they realized they believed rather than one in which they decided to believe.

And from the first time I began to speak to my kids about Jesus, I presented Him as Lord. It was literally the first thing I whispered in their ears when they were born. Over the years I have told them that if they would trust in Christ’s finished work as their own, and follow Him as Lord, they would be saved. But what if they don’t really

Children that grow up in unbelieving homes will likely have a memorable conversion to Christ where they pass from darkness to light. But I want my kids to grow up in the light. Personally, I’d prefer they NOT have an “exciting” testimony that involves years or rebellion, foolishness, and unbelief. I want each of my kids to have a nice, “boring” testimony; to be kids who spend their whole lives enraptured with what God did for them in Jesus. If and when they do have a season of rebellion, I’ll pray for a dramatic conversion, or rededication, or whatever you want to call it. But for now, I pray they’ll always look toward our Savior in submission and faith.

“One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come take up the cross, and follow Me” (Mark 10:21).

As C. S. Lewis famously said, “We don’t come to Him as bad people trying to become good people; we come as rebels to lay down our arms.”

catharsis.

Our tears do not wash away our sin. Only Jesus’ blood does.

Soon the entire cadre would be down front weeping and confessing their sins and promising to be missionaries and not date until they were thirty.

Repentance is not securing a pardon before God so that we can go on sinning with impunity; it is a choice to submit to God and to seek ceasing from sin entirely.

Peter continued to struggle with hypocrisy, cowardice, and racism even after being filled with the Holy Spirit and becoming one of Christianity’s greatest preachers. His inconsistency got so bad at one point that Paul had to rebuke him publicly!

Repentance Is Not the Absence of Struggle; It Is the Absence of Settled Defiance

Perhaps you say, “But sometimes I don’t delight in God, sometimes I delight more in sin!” But deep down do you at least desire to desire God? That is where it begins.

Faith is not the absence of doubt; it is continuing to follow Jesus in the midst of doubt.

Repentance ushers us into a life of greater struggle, not out of one. While I’ve heard of some people who were immediately released from certain sinful desires, like alcoholism, anger, or same-sex attraction when they received Christ, as a pastor of fifteen years I can say that that is not the normal experience of new believers. Christians, like the apostle Paul, continue to struggle with sin, often unsuccessfully, for the rest of their lives. The struggle is proof of their new nature. They fall often, but when they do, they always get up looking His direction.

Engaging in the mission was not a special calling that a few special followers received after many years, like Obedience 2.0 or “Platinum Medallion Discipleship.” It was inherent in the very first call to follow.13 It was for anyone who would come after Jesus. Are you actively engaged in the Great Commission, using your spiritual gifts to pursue God’s purposes on earth?

Following Jesus is about walking with Him. Walking with Him is about loving Him, serving Him, and pursuing His justice and mercy on earth. Discipleship is not a passive posture in which we stop a few bad things. We must start a bunch of really good ones as well.14 Have you become regular in your church? Are you discovering your spiritual gifts? Are you giving financially, sacrificially for the mission?

At conversion, God changes your spiritual appetites. You begin to hunger for righteousness, not sin. Christ becomes more to you than simply a figure of history or a distant ruler. He becomes a Father you cherish and a Friend you treasure. Fascination with “old things” begins to fade in the all-surpassing glory of Christ.

But I do know that if you desire in any way to make that choice right now, it is the result of God working in you.

I also know that if you want to make that choice right now, you are free to. (And, even if you are divided about whether or not you “want” to make the choice, you are still free to. Don’t sit around waiting on Jesus to do something else in your heart before you make the choice. He demands you do it today whether you feel like it or not. And just like Jesus received those in the Gospels filled with doubts and divided hearts, He will receive you, too.)

Furthermore, the evidences of this change don’t occur all at once—as in one split second you begin to despise extramarital sex and develop a deep passion for Bible study, long hours of prayer, and Christian contemporary music.

While justification (God declaring you legally righteous because of the finished work of Christ) and the new birth (God placing His living, resurrecting Holy Spirit into your heart) happen all at once, the passions of godliness grow in you only over time.

So keep your eyes on Jesus. Water the seed of new life in your heart with the word of the gospel. Rejoice daily in the fact that God’s acceptance of you is not based on how much spiritual fruit you’ve produced but on Christ’s finished work.

Keep gazing upon that truth or, as Jesus phrased it, abide in it, and you will bear much fruit.19 The seed of the gospel, Jesus said, will sprout into a harvest so plentiful it will blow your mind. Paul said it would be beyond all we could even imagine or ask for.

I’ve often heard it said that many “Christians” will miss heaven by eighteen inches, the distance between their heads and their hearts. Don’t let that be you. Let what you know to be true about Christ captivate your soul and command your behavior. Repent.

was taught to share the gospel by means of the “gospel tract.” If you’re unfamiliar with one of those, think of it as a short, tri-fold pamphlet that explains the basic points of the gospel and calls for a response. My church had a whole rack of them, ranging from the “no-nonsense, give-it-to-me-alliterated” version to the “friendly newspaper comic strip” version to the “fake ten-dollar bill with the ‘here’s a real tip, trust Jesus’” version. “Chick tracts” were deluxe, featuring a multipaged comic theme with scary pictures of demons coercing people to read versions other than the KJV. We learned how to give these tracts to waitresses or those seated next to us on planes (especially if they looked fearful). If personal interaction made you uncomfortable, you could deposit these tracts stealthily in public restrooms, leave them in library books you were returning, or (one of my favorites) asking the toll booth attendant to give it to the person in the car behind you while you paid their toll. One pastor even showed me how to hold a tract next to your car and release it so that it would land at the feet of someone standing on the side of the road as you drove by at a cool 35 mph. I wish I were kidding.

He urged his converts not to waver from their confession of faith, stating that if they did, their initial response of faith would do them no good.

This sounds like it i based on works.

These warnings ought to be taken at face value; however, if we fall away, we will not be saved in the end. But since those who are truly saved can never lose it, we must conclude that a failure to heed the warnings demonstrates that we never possessed true saving faith to begin with. How else could all these verses be true?

Abraham, whom the writer uses in this chapter (Heb. 6) as an example of persevering faith (6:15), doubted God so severely that he told another man his wife was his sister and that he could sleep with her—just to save himself!7 That’s more than just a moral lapse; that’s dirtbag behavior.

God turns hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. He transformed Saul, a Pharisaical, Jesus-hating murderer, enemy #1 of the early church, into Paul, its greatest spokesman and advocate. He can do that for you, too. You just have to ask Him.

It’s not incorrect to say “once saved, always saved.” It’s just incomplete. The full doctrine of “eternal security” is that once we are saved, we will always be saved, and that those who are saved will persevere in their faith to the end. It is true that “once saved, always saved”; but it is also true that “once saved, forever following.”

Salvation is a posture of repentance and faith toward Christ that you adopt at your conversion and maintain for a lifetime. If you permanently abandon that posture later in life, your faith was likely not saving faith.

spur true believers to continue on in the faith. We are warned that if we fall into sin and stay there that we will not be saved. So these warnings compel us to get back up and stay in the faith, thus proving we are saved.

Heeding the warnings shows that we possess the salvation that we can never lose. Failing to heed the warnings shows that we never had it to begin with.

So, if you want to know for sure that you are saved, maintain your posture of repentance toward God and faith in Christ.