Heaven on earth by Thomas Brooks (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read Chapter 3 (Containing the several hindrances and impediments that keep poor souls from assurance; with the means and helps to remove those impediments and hindrances).
Today Brooks looks at impediments 'that keep poor souls from assurance':
(i) despairing thoughts of mercy;
(ii) men's entering into the lists of dispute with Satan about those things that are above their reach, as about the decrees and counsel of God;
(iii) the want of a thorough search and examination of their own souls and of what God hath done and is a-doing in them;
(iv) mistakes about the work of grace;
(v) grieving and vexing the Spirit of grace by not hearkening to his voice;
(vi) doubting souls and making their sense, reason, and feeling the judges of their spiritual conditions;
(vii) men's remissness, carelessness, laziness and overliness in religious services and in the exercise of their graces;
(viii) men's living in the neglect of some ordinance or in the omission of some religious duties;
(ix) immoderate love of the world;
(x) the secret cherishing and running out of their hearts to some bosom, darling sin.
Excellent advice about trusting feelings: 'To make sense and feeling the judges of our spiritual conditions, what is it but to make ourselves happy and miserable, righteous and unrighteous, saved and damned in one day, ay, in one hour, when sense and reason sit as judges upon the bench ? Hath God made sense and feeling the judges of your conditions ? No. Why, then, will you ? Is your reason Scripture ? Is your sense Scripture ? Is your feeling Scripture ? No. Why, then, will you make them judges of your spiritual estate ? Is not the word the judge, by which all men and their actions shall be judged at last ? ' The word that I have spoken,' says Christ, ' shall judge you in the last day/ John xii. 48.'
Trust the word of God, not your feelings.
Next week's reading
Read Chapter 4 (Containing several motives to provoke Christians to be restless till they have obtained a well-grounded assurance of their eternal happiness and blessedness).
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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