BLESSED ASSURANCE

365 Days of Thanksliving — Day 346

Oh goodness, where to start. It’s been a productive Friday, one that leads directly into a busy weekend, starting tomorrow.

Now, I know Saturday always follows Friday—you don't need me to tell you that. What I mean is that while Saturday is normally my day of rest, tomorrow will be anything but. I was asked to say a few nice words for a man at his memorial service. When you’re the only pastor in town and the request is made personally in your office, how do you say no? I didn’t, obviously.

The thing is, I’d never met the man. I never had a conversation with him, nor was I ever able to minister to him. Truly, those kinds of services—for me, anyway—are always the most difficult.

For the last two weeks, I’ve been wrestling with a heavy question: how does one say "a few nice words" about someone you’ve never met? In my world, a request like that usually means the family is hoping for an assurance of heaven—an assurance of salvation. While I adore the hymn "Blessed Assurance"—it is truly one of my favorites—an assurance of salvation is something I simply cannot give tomorrow, as hard as that sounds. While I can offer a blessing, I cannot grant assurance of what I do not know.

Blessed assurance… Hmm.

Honestly, I don’t know if that’s what the family meant when they made their request. To be completely transparent, while I’m honored to speak at the service, my prayer is that God will lead me to preach to the living about their own relationship with Christ.

I hope the deceased had a relationship with Jesus, though that wasn’t made known to me. All I heard was that he wasn’t able to attend church in the final years of his life due to health-related reasons. Church attendance is great, of course, but I’ve known avid churchgoers who don’t truly know God, let alone carry that blessed assurance in their hearts.

To me, that “blessed assurance” is one of the greatest gifts of all time—if not the greatest.

If you know, you know. Some of you understand with every fiber of your being the full measure of God’s blessed assurance. In my humble opinion, one either has it, or one doesn’t. It isn’t gained by works of righteousness or simply trying to be good. It comes entirely through God’s grace in Jesus Christ—faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone.

You can actually see it in people: that steady joy of praising Jesus all day long with all their being; that perfect delight in their hearts; resting in Christ and knowing that deep happiness and blessing, all while watching and waiting for His goodness to take us to our heavenly home.

Two men from my church recently passed away, and they were both so visibly at peace with God. They had that blessed assurance. I hope and pray the man I’ll be speaking about tomorrow had it as well. About him, though, I simply don’t know.

Tomorrow, I’ll be preaching to the living. Because when people are grieving and looking to be comforted, the best comfort I can possibly offer is the Gospel of Jesus Christ—along with a prayer asking God to give them that blessed assurance before it’s their time.

Today, I’m thankful for that blessed assurance myself, and for the many people I know and truly love who share it. So here is my question to you tonight: not what you’re thankful for, but do you know for yourself that blessed assurance of which I write?