BLESSED ASSURANCE

Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.  Heb. 10:22

One of the great Christian hymns is the well-known “Blessed Assurance.”  The melody was written by Mrs. Joseph Knapp.  Her husband was the president of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. One day Knapp invited the prolific hymn writer Fanny Crosby to her home.  Knapp wanted her to listen to a new melody she had composed.

Knapp sat down at the piano and began playing the melody.  As she played she asked Crosby what thought were coming into her mind—what the melody suggested to her.  Crosby responded, “Mrs. Knapp, your husband deals in life insurance.  My heavenly Father deals in assurance.  This melody suggest to me: Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.”

The word “assurance” means an inner confidence.  Assurance is a sense of security.  It also speaks of a sense of belonging and acceptance.  In Christ we are accepted as children of God.  In Christ we have the absolute confidence that our guilt is gone and our sins are forgiven.  In Christ we have complete assurance that the gift of eternal life is ours.

The book of Hebrews reveal that as children of God we can have “the full assurance of hope until the end” (Heb. 6:11) and the “full assurance of faith” (Heb. 10:22).  It is certainly not God’s will for His children to be filled with uncertainty.  The plan of salvation offers much more than nervous anxiety regarding our salvation.  God longs for us to be filled with assurance.

Satan hates it when a child of God accepts Christ by faith and receives the blessed assurance of forgiveness, pardon, and freedom from guilt.  Ellen White wrote, “Satan is ready to steal away the blessed assurances of God.  He desires to take every glimmer of hope and every ray of light from the soul; but you must not permit him to do this.  Do not give ear to the tempter, but say, ‘Jesus has died that I might live.  He loves me, and wills not that I should perish.  I have a compassionate heavenly Father; and although I have abused His love, though the blessings He has given me have been squandered, I will arise, and go to my Father’” (Steps to Christ, p. 53).

In the parable of the prodigal son the father accepted his boy back home.  With his father’s signet ring placed on his finger, the wayward son received the absolute assurance of his father’s love.  Like the prodigal son, we too find love, acceptance, and forgiveness in the Father’s heart.  What confidence, what security, what hope, what blessed assurance.