[metmom]

ping

[Gamecock]

**The joy you experience after your faith has been tested and proven genuine is largely due to your present blessings and assurance of salvation.**

In my life I have I have seen that multiple times. Thanks for posting such a profound truth!

**assurance of salvation**

Makes me think of J. Gresham Machen's last words I’m so thankful for the active obedience of Christ. No hope without it.

(FWIW Machen fought the liberalism growing like a cancer in Princeton. He and others eventually left and founded Westminster Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.)

[caww]

.....”The joy you experience after your faith has been tested and proven genuine is largely due to your present blessings and assurance of salvation”....

The Hymn “Through IT All” came to mind as I read that....recalling dark moments in my life where like Mary at the Tomb I wondered where Jesus had been taken from me for I could not see Him through my tears.

Still... because of those times I leaned harder on what I could not see... and sang the old hymns to the Lord when I could not find words to pray.

When I came out on the other side I learned there are some things God wants us to ‘KNOW’ that can only be learned in the fire of affliction and uncertainty.... Like Daniel who was thrown into the fiery furnace, and Job who lost friends family and all he owned....who both became my mutual friends as I walked those roads of such great uncertainty and loss....and Jonah as well....all men who learned that there is no pit so deep that HE is not deeper still....so too I learned.