Valley Bible Fellowship

The stability that comes from assurance

August 17th, 2008

A couple years back I experienced a weeklong bout of severe and debilitating vertigo, caused by a virus that attacked my peripheral nervous system. I awoke one morning to a world that was spinning so fast that all I could do was screw my eyes shut and half-crawl, half stagger to the bathroom where  I clung to the fixtures in wave after wave of nausea. I’m a fairly strong, can-do guy and this experience left me weeping and helpless. It was such a terrifying and intimidating ordeal that it left me with a deep and abiding sense of compassion for anyone suffering from the condition.

Do you sometimes experience “spiritual vertigo”? What I mean is, are you sometimes knocked out of a sense of balance (shockingly so) in your walk with God in faith? Do you find that your response to a situation, or the inner workings of your thinking and feelings toward God and His ways is just out of kilter with what you know it ought to be? This instability, or disconcerting onset of vertigo, sometimes stems from the lack of a sense of assurance of our salvation. We think we need to perform to a certain standard to merit or deserve God’s approval and in so doing we fail that standard and lose our sense of assurance, and the spinning times of doubt, indifference and anguish begin. We fight all the harder to regain our balance, which often seems to make the problem worse.

Here’s some reading you might find encouraging, and a way out of the vertigo trap. It’s a gathering of short articles written by some careful Biblical thinkers around the world, and it’s called the Imperium Testamentum collection on Eternal Security (Vol 1). You can find the whole collection here. Also, scroll down on that page and find the article, #71, An Anchor for the Soul Hebrews 6:13-20, written by Eric L Peterman , or you can link directly to the article here. Do let me know what you think and may the Lord help you to regain your stability, in His grace.

Entry Filed under: Assurance, Sanctification, Theology