Articles

Poems on Assurance

’Tis a point I long to know,
Oft it causes anxious thought;
Do I love the Lord, or no?
Am I His, or am I not?

If I love, why am I thus,
Why this dull, this lifeless frame?
Hardly, sure, can they be worse,
Who have never heard His name.

Could my heart so hard remain,
Prayer a task and burden prove,
Every trifle give me pain,
If I knew a Saviour’s love?

When I turn my eyes within,
All is dark and vain and wild;
Filled with unbelief and sin,
Can I deem myself a child?

If I pray, or hear, or read,
Sin is mixed with all I do;
You that love the Lord indeed,
Tell me, is it thus with you?

Yet I mourn my stubborn will,
Find my sin a grief and thrall!
Should I grieve for what I feel,
If I did not love at all?

Could I joy His saints to meet
Choose the ways I once abhor’d,
Find at times the promise sweet,
If I did not love the Lord?

Lord, decide the doubtful case,
Thou who art Thy people’s sun:
Shine upon Thy work of grace,
If it be indeed begun.

Let me love Thee more and more.
If I love at all, I pray;
If I have not loved before,
Help me to begin today.

now read on ..............

What is this point you long to know?
Methinks I hear you say, ’tis this —
I want to know I’m born of God,
An heir of everlasting bliss.

Is this the point you long to know?
The point is settled in my view —
For if you want to love your God,
It proves He first has loved you.

I want to know Christ died for me,
I want to feel the seal within;
I want to know Christ’s precious blood,
Was shed to wash away my sin.

I want to feel more love to Christ,
I want more liberty in prayer,
But when I look within my heart,
It almost drives me to despair

I want a mind more firmly fixed
On Christ, my everlasting Head;
I want to feel my soul alive,
And not so barren, or so dead

I want more faith, a stronger faith,
I want to feel its power within,
I want to feel more love to God,
I want to feel less love to sin

I want to live above the world,
And count it all but trash and toys,
I want more tokens of God’s grace,
Some foretaste of eternal joys.

I want — I know not what I want,
I want that real, special good!
Yet all my wants are summed up here,
I want to love! I want my God!

Is this the point you long to know?
The dead can neither feel nor see;
It is the slave that’s bound in chains,
That knows the worth of liberty.

So where a want like this is found,
I think I may be bold to say —
That God has fixed within thy heart,
What hell can never take away

However small thy grace appears,
There’s plenty in thy living Head,
These wants you feel, my Christian friend,
Were never found amongst the dead.

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