Experiencing the Assurance of the Holy Spirit

The spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. We come back again to this crucial and momentous and most encouraging statement in order that we may go further into its depths and have an increasingly clear understanding of its teaching. [00:19:12]

This is a work over and above all that. It's a distinct, it is a separate work from all that. It is the spirit himself bearing witness and testimony by the side of the witness of our own spirit which lead us to cry AB father. It is, in other words, the highest form of assurance that one can ever know or obtain in this world. [00:27:51]

You can be a Christian without having this assurance of your salvation. I mean by that that if you are aware of your utter sinfulness and realize that you can do nothing about commending yourself to God, if you rely entirely and solely on the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in his active obedience to the Lord on your behalf and in his passive obedience in taking you a punishment in his own body on the cross, if you are relying upon that, well then I assure you that you are a Christian, though you may lack an assurance of your salvation. [00:45:36]

The sealing of the spirit is not experimental. Another Dr. Lewis Sper in his work on the Holy Spirit patology says there is no experience or feeling related to the spirit's baptism, and that is very common teaching. They identify it with regeneration and say that it's non-experimental. [12:06:24]

The whole object of the sealing of the spirit everywhere it is referred to is in terms of our inheritance, of what we are going to receive, generally coupled with the earnest that we even have a forest on it. It's essentially experimental. [15:59:48]

It is something and this FS of course which leads to great joy and love to God. There's no instance of it here in the Bible but that you get that. Can't you feel it as you read the second of Acts, the joy, the exuberant joy that was in Peter and the others, lifting them up above their circumstances and everything, a great spirit of joy and a great love to God. [17:31:64]

The intensity of the degree varies, the thing itself is always unmistakable. It is always unique, it is always separate, it is always different from everything else, and it is always quite unmistakable. But with regard to the degree of it, of course, it may vary a great deal. [20:40:28]

This is an experience that comes and then it may go. Indeed, there are some in whose cases we can say this, that they have literally never had it again. There have been instances where a man has known this witness of the spirit once and once only, never again. [26:18:56]

It is not once and forever, but thank God it is something which can be repeated and repeated many times. There are many illustrations of this as far as I'm aware of in my reading. There is no man, no single person who had such repeated experiences of this as the great and the mighty George Whitfield. [29:19:20]

It is open to all. It's not meant only for Apostles, it's not only meant for certain exceptional Saints, it is open to all. Indeed, the New Testament Epistles seem to teach and to assume that it was universal at that time. [34:24:00]

The spirit does his own writing, but he says the spirit it never seals but it first writes. The spirit does the writing first, it makes us Christians, begins the process of sanctification in us. There's the writing, then he seals what is already written. [36:40:00]

It is very often given to those who've been mourning for it and longing for it and seeking it. You'll see that very clearly in the case of Goodfield, you'll see it very clearly in the case of John and Charles Wesley. These three men almost became physically ill and sick in mourning their sins and longing after Christ. [44:01:00]