Assurance (Theology), Christianity, Salvation 

"If there were a Guinness Book of World Records entry for 'amount of times having prayed the sinner's prayer, ' I'm pretty sure I'd be a top contender," says pastor and author J.D. Greear. He struggled for many years to gain an assurance of salvation and eventually learned he was not alone. "Lack of assurance" is epidemic among evangelical Christians. In Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart, J.D. shows that faulty ways of presenting the gospel are a leading source of the confusion. Our presentations may not be heretical, but they are sometimes misleading. The idea of "asking Jesus into your heart" or "giving your life to Jesus" often gives false assurance to those who are not saved -- and keeps those who genuinely are saved from fully embracing that reality. Greear unpacks the doctrine of assurance, showing that salvation is a posture we take to the promise of God in Christ, a posture that begins at a certain point and is maintained for the rest of our lives. He also answers the tough questions about assurance: What exactly is faith? What is repentance? Why are there so many warnings that seem to imply we can lose our salvation? Such issues are handled with respect to the theological rigors they require, but Greear never loses his pastoral sensitivity or a communication technique that makes this message teachable to a wide audience from teens to adults. - Publisher.

Noted pastor J.D. Greear addresses the important but rarely explored topic of Christians who doubt their salvation or have an unclear notion of what "asking Jesus into your heart" really means. 

Notes:
Baptized four times -- Does God even want us to have assurance? -- Jesus in my place -- What is belief? -- What is repentance? -- If "once saved, always saved," why does the Bible seem to warn us so often about losing our salvation? -- The evidence you have believed -- When you continue to doubt -- Appendix 1 : What about baptism? -- Appendix 2 : The indispensable link between assurance and the doctrine of justification by faith alone.