Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart Quotes

“Faith is not the absence of doubt; it is continuing to follow Jesus in the midst of doubt.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Likewise, we continue to follow Jesus as we struggle with sin. Repentance ushers us into a life of greater struggle, not out of one.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Often the strongest evidence of my growth in grace is my growth in the knowledge of my need for grace.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“If repentance were perfection, none of those people repented. Repentance, however, means recognizing Jesus' authority and submitting to it, even though you know your heart is weak, divided, and pulled in conflicting directions. Repentance includes a plea for God to change your inconsistent divided heart. (Psalm 86:11; Mark 9:24)”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“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.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Repentance is not subsequent to belief; it is part of belief. It is belief in action-choice that flow out of conviction. Repentance literally means "a change of mind" (in Greek, metanoia; meta-"new", noia="mind") about Jesus. Repentance is not merely changing your action; it is changing your actions because you have changed your attitude about Jesus' authority and glory.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“There are times, even now, when I look at my heart and wonder how I could possibly have been “born again.” Moments in which I care more about what’s coming on TV that night than I do the spread of the gospel in the world. Moments when God feels distant, almost like a stranger. My emotions for Him are lukewarm, if not downright cold. I don’t jump out of bed hungry for His Word, and my mind wanders all over the place when I pray. Or I fall to that same old temptation again. For the thousandth time. Or moments I doubt God’s goodness, even His existence. It’s not how I feel all the time, or even most of the time, but it is how I feel some of the time. And then the question hits me again: Wait a minute . . . Am I really saved? How could I be, and still have feelings like this? What do you do in that moment? Pray “the sinners’ prayer” again? Should I call my old church and have the pastor warm up the baptismal waters? The answer is relatively simple in that moment: keep believing the gospel. Keep your hand on the head of the Lord Jesus Christ. No matter how you feel at any given moment, how encouraged or discouraged you feel about your spiritual progress, how hot or cold your love for Jesus, what you should be doing is always the same—resting in the gospel. Rest in His finished work. That’s all you can do. It’s all you need to do. It’s all God has commanded you to do.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“There is One who remains faithful even when we doubt; One who is a firm foundation when our steps falter; One who holds on even when we let go. Keep your eyes on Him. He is faithful. He said, “It is finished.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Repentance is belief in action.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Repentance Is Not the Absence of Struggle; It Is the Absence of Settled Defiance”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Wanting to repent is the sign God hasn’t abandoned you. It is God, after all, who puts in us the desire to come to Him.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Paul said that it is only as we are overwhelmed at the glory of Christ's sacrifice for us that we are transformed into glory ourselves-the glory of people who serve God because they crave God and who do righteousness because they love righteousness.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Faith that looks anywhere else but Christ will find not assurance but incessant doubt. Only by resting entirely in his finished work can the troubled soul find peace.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Our feelings can quickly deceive us—a weakness our Enemy loves to exploit. He loves to approach us in the midst of a temptation, or in a time of spiritual defeat or depression, and tell us that if we really belonged to Jesus we would not feel this way. He tries to use our feelings to get us to doubt our faith. “Feelings,” however, are the fruit of faith. They should never be its source. Around our church we say, “Don’t feel your way into your beliefs; believe your way into your feelings.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“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.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“As I noted at the beginning of this chapter, a perversion of the doctrine of eternal security has become common in evangelical circles. This perversion presents salvation as a contract “signed” with God that God can never get out of, no matter what you do. Once you’ve signed the contract and prayed the prayer, you’ve got God trapped. Scripture does not present salvation that way. 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.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Most people hope that they are “good enough” to earn God’s approval, to get on His “A-list.” Comparatively speaking, they think, their sins have not been that bad. So as long as God grades on the curve they’ll be fine. But this is direct defiance of “the testimony” God has given about Jesus. If we could have been “good enough,” would Jesus really have had to die? What kind of God would have done that to Jesus if there were another way?”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“we think that we have spiritual life in ourselves—that we are worthy of God’s acceptance, or that we can be good enough to earn God’s approval if we just try a little harder, or that God knows we are doing our best and will accept our good intentions—we reject God’s testimony about the indispensability of Jesus and call Him a liar. The testimony is that we are hopelessly wicked, spiritually dead, and without hope apart from God’s intervention.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Even after we have been saved our sinful flesh craves unrighteousness. In fact, the presence of the struggle itself can be affirmation that God’s Spirit is at work within you. Before God’s Spirit came into you, you didn’t struggle against sin—you ran toward it eagerly! An unbeliever might “struggle” with sin, but typically they are struggling only with its unwanted consequences or the feelings of guilt and shame that accompany it. A believer’s struggle is much deeper. Their struggle is with the wickedness of the sin itself and the grievousness of its offense to God.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Even after we have been saved our sinful flesh craves unrighteousness. In fact, the presence of the struggle itself can be affirmation that God’s Spirit is at work within you. Before God’s Spirit came into you, you didn’t struggle against sin—you ran toward it eagerly! An unbeliever might “struggle” with sin, but typically they are struggling only with its unwanted consequences or the feelings of guilt and shame that accompany it. A believer’s struggle is much deeper.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“It is only through assurance of love that we find the strength to endure all manner of opposition, doubt, and trial.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“The Enemy—one of whose names in Scripture is “the Deceiver”—loves to keep truly saved believers unsure of their salvation because he knows that if he does they’ll never experience the freedom, joy, and confidence that God wants them to have. But he also loves to keep those on their way to hell deluded into thinking they are on their way to heaven, their consciences immunized from Jesus’ pleas to repent.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“A faithful father does not leave his kids wondering whether or not he loves them. When I have to go away on a trip, I don’t say to my kids, “Daddy will be back soon . . . or maybe he won’t. Maybe I’m not really your daddy at all. Maybe my real family lives somewhere else. You’ll just have to wait and see if I come back. Sit around and think about that while I’m gone, and let that compel you to become better children.” That”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“God wants the intimacy of sons, not just the service of slaves.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“That’s what true obedience is—beyond merely adhering to a set of regulations; it is doing so because you deeply and truly love the One commanding you.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“You can “ask Jesus into your heart” without repenting and believing, and you can repent and believe without articulating a request for Jesus to come into your heart.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“Truly admitting unworthiness and inability is difficult because we have spent our whole lives trying to prove we are anything but unworthy.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“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.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“That would not produce love and loyalty in my children. It might produce a little fear-based obedience, but it’s only a matter of time until fear-based obedience turns into father-loathing rebellion.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved

“If we think that we have spiritual life in ourselves—that we are worthy of God’s acceptance, or that we can be good enough to earn God’s approval if we just try a little harder, or that God knows we are doing our best and will accept our good intentions—we reject God’s testimony about the indispensability of Jesus and call Him a liar.”
― J.D. Greear, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know for Sure You Are Saved