Lesson 1: Striving For Assurance

In penning this study, I have had but one outstanding object before me: to make as plain as I possibly can just how any troubled soul may find settled peace with God. I am thinking particularly of those people who believe the Holy Scriptures to be divinely inspired, and who recognize that salvation is only to be found in Christ, but someway have missed the “peace of a perfect trust,” and though earnestly desiring to know the Lord, are floundering in perplexity of mind or like the same anxious inquirer in his earlier experience, trembling beneath the frowning cliffs of Sinai.

Consequently, no attempt is here made to prove that the Bible is true, as both the writer and the readers he has especially in view take that for granted. People who are bothered by doubts along that line may find abundant help elsewhere, as there are not wanting plenty of good books, written by sound Christian scholars, that present unanswerable arguments for the inerrancy and the divine authority of the Bible. The trouble is that so many people who profess to want help along these lines are too indifferent to investigate, even when the opportunity is put before them. It is of really earnest seekers after the truth that I am thinking.

The clouds may at times veil my sky. Sorrows and difficulties may try my soul. New discoveries of the corruption of my own heart may bring humiliation and repentance. But this peace with God remains unchanged, for it rests not on me, not on my frames of mind or experiences, but on the finished work of Christ and the testimony of the Word of God, of which it is written: “Forever, O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven.”


In a ministry of almost half a century, this writer has had the joy of leading many to rest in Christ. And I have found that the questions that confuse, and the hindrances to full assurance are all more or less basically alike, though expressed differently by different people. So I have sought in this little study to give, as clearly as I know how, the truths that I have seen effective in meeting the needs of thousands of souls.

I have been told that in days gone by young doctors were in the habit of using a great number of medicines in their endeavors to help their various patients, but that with increasing practice and larger experience, they discarded many remedies which they found were of little use and thereafter concentrated on a few that they had proven to be really worthwhile.

The physician of souls is likely to have much the same experience, and while this may give a somewhat uninteresting sameness to his later answers, as compared or contrasted with his earlier ones, it puts him after all in the immediate succession of the apostles of our Lord, whose viewpoint may be summed up in words written by the greatest of them all: "I have decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2). Here is the sovereign remedy for all spiritual ills. Here is the one supreme message that is needed, whether they realize it or not, by all men everywhere. And this I have tried to proclaim in these lessons.

Thought Question:
How can you know that Jesus is the answer to life’s questions?
How can we get that help from Jesus?