John Bunyan and his struggle for joy and assurance.

I have been reading a small book by John Piper called, "When the Darkness will not Lift". It is a small book only about 70 something pages, and at this point I have only read the introduction because I just picked it up around 10:00 last night. I am at home sick today so I will probably read the rest later today, but for right now I just wanted to show you this little glimpse into John Bunyans struggle for joy, and knowing without assurance of our salvation, we are living in terror and fear. If you want to torment my soul and torture my heart and cause the utmost terror one can feel, take away my hope of salvation. Tell me Jesus did not die for me or that His grace is not sufficient for me. If you want to know the truth, you dont have to do it because satan and his demons do it constantly already. So here is a small look at John Bunyan and his struggle, that is verry similar to my own. This will be taken directly out of John Pipers book, "When the Darkness will not Lift".
"This was John Bunyan's experience and he tells his story to encourage us to rejoice in the doctrine of justification-that there is a perfect, objective, external righteousness imputed to us that is not our own but Christ's. Bunyan is the one who wrote Pigrims Progress, which has sold more copies in English than any book besides the Bible. He was a pastor in the seventeenth century who spent over twelve years in prison because he refused to stop preaching the the word of the cross. The greates Puritan theologian and contemporary of Bunyan, John Owen, when asked by King Charles why he went to hear an uneducated tinker preach, said, "I would willingly exchange my learning for the tinker's power of touching men's hearts."
But Bunyan was not always so bold and full of gospel power. In his twenties there were terrible struggles. "A whole flood of blasphemies, both against God, Christ, and the Scriptures were poured upon my spirit, to my great confusion and astonishment.... My heart was at times exeeding hard. If I would have given a thousand pounds for a tear, I could not shed one.... Oh, the desperateness of mans heart.... I feared that this wicked sin of mine might be that sin unpadonable.... Oh, no one knows the terrors of those days but myself."
Then came the decisive moment of triumph over despair and joylesness. It was an awakening to the magnificent truth of the imputation of Christs righteousness.
"One day as I was passing into a field... this sentence fell upon my soul. Thy righteousness is in heaven. And.... I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God's right hand; there, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he [lacks] my righteousness, for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousess was Jesus Christ himself, "The same yeaterday, today, and forever" (Heb. 13:8). Now did my chains fall off my legsindeed. I was loosed from my afflictionsand irons; my temptations also fled away; so that from those dreadful scripyures of God {about the unforgivable sin} left off to trouble me; now went I also home rejoicing for the grace and love of God."

This here is a huge help for me, my righteousness is not of me but is Jesus Christ at the right hand of God. I have had a past that haunts and terrorizes my heart soul and mind almost everyday. I ,like John Bunyan, have blasphemed God in everyway possible, I hated God, and put it on display for Him to see. I remember screaming and yelling aloud, and telling God that I choose hell and the demons. I had such a hatred one could not explain. Romans 8:7 "the carnal mind is at enmity with God..." Oh, how I felt that in the depest sense possible. Enmity basically means a deep hatred, hostile, an intense feeling of dislike. WOW, that describes it, and I was in my carnal mind, not yet tasted the true taste of God. Oh how blinded I was just a short time ago. Eph. 2 :1-3, says we were all natural born children of wrath, God haters, who walked according to the passions of the flesh. We all were, and I displayed it maybe more than others, but had the same evil, wicked God hating heart as everyone else ever born since Adam. Martin Lloyd Jones said ever so wisely in the book of his sermons on the cross, "We are all natrually God haters, and if you have not realized that, you have not known these things very deeply. Do not come and tell me you have always loved God. You have not. You were born in sin, shapen in iniquity. And if you think you have always believed in God, it is because you have had a God of your own creation, not the God of the Bible." Wow, so what I felt was my natural heart hating God, something I never want to feel again. Oh the darkness, and the hatred ran so very deep. God allowed me to display my natural heart, and it is a scary and wicked thing, but my righteousness is in heaven at the right hand of God. It is not of me, I cannot make it better, nor blemish it. MY RIGHTEOUSNESS IS JESUS CHRIST!!!
Some might say, "Johnny, you gave your soul to satan, how can you be saved." Tell me, before you were saved, to whom did your soul belong, to whom was your total loyalty, and to whom did you love? That is right, the devil, and to say anything less is to contradict scripture and decieve yourself of the utter wickedness of the human heart and the unexplainable victory, and love of Jesus on the cross. If you are naturally born a child of wrath, completely controlled by the devil himself, resisting God at all cost, which includes everyone ever born, tell me what power you have over your soul? NONE! You can neither give your soul to satan, nor can you give your soul to God. We are all naturally born a slave to the devil, and in no way looking for freedom. We were all once unciouse victims cradled in the arms of the devil on the brink of the pit of eternal destruction. We all rejected God.Romans 3:12, "All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;... none seek God, Romans 3:11 "....none seeks for God." none understands, Romans 3:11 ".... none understands..."and are slaves to sin John 8:34, "..., Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits a sin is a slave to sin." and all have sinned, Romans 3:23, " For all have sinned... and it is by Gods grace that we have been sved through faith,"Eph 2:8"For it is by grace that you have been through faith", you did not choose God, but He chose you, John 15:16 "You did not choose me, but I chose you..."John 6:65 ".... no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by the Father." John 6:44, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent Me draws him." and if you are saved by the grace and mercy of God through Jesus, nothing can stand in the way, Romans 8:31-35 "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring charge against God's elect? Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall seperate us from the love of Christ?..." Romans 8:38-39 "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to seperate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus."
So there we have it, nothing but God can loose the grip of the devil that is firmly on mans heart, and nothing can loose the grip that God has on our hearts. If God graciously snatches us from the grip of the devil nothing can snatch us out of His hands, John 10 28-30 "... and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is Greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of My Fathers hand. I and the Father are one." You are saved if you call upon the Lord, Romans 10:13, "For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."
I have called upon the Lord Jesus, aknowledging my sin and damnation seeking forgivness and grace and now my righteousness is in heaven at the right hand of God the Father. Amazing Grace!!!!
I wrote this for everyone who struggles with the assurance of salvation. I do believe that the devil will torment your soul with doubt. Here are a couple quotes from Jonathan Edwards that has had a huge impact on my own struggles with assurance of my salvation.

"Let contempt be ever so geat, yet is so honorable a person as Christ undertakes to be a Mediator for the offender, and in the mediation suffer in his stead, it fully repairs the the injury done to the majesty of heaven by the greatest sinner."

"Christ suffered enough for the punishmentof the greatest sinner that ever lived."

"God can save the greatest sinner without giving the least countenance to sin. If he saves one, who for a long time has stood out under the calls of the gospel, and has sinned under dreadful aggrivations; if He saves one who, against light, who has been a pirate or blasphemer, He may do itwithout giving any countenence to their wickedness; because His abhorence of it and displeasure against it have been already sufficiently manifested in the sufferings of Christ."

"Christ by His obedience, by that obedience which He undertook for our sakes, has honored God aboundantly more than the sins of us have dishonored Him, how many soever, and how great soever."