What makes you

Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves.

Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates? ~ 2 Corinthians 13:5

When is the last time you examined yourself by the Word of God.

What is it that make you a Christian? Are you a Christian because you “think” you are a Christian? (Matt 7:22) Is it because you feel like a Christian, because your heart tells you so? (Jeremiah 17:9)

Before you answer these questions, “permit me to ask some which are not less important. Have you peace with God? Have you the remission of your sins? Has God revealed his Son in you? When you examine yourself, do you feel that Christ is in you the hope of glory? Have you received the “Spirit of adoption, witnessing with your spirit that you are a child of God?” Have you ever beheld the light of God’s countenance, and felt the powers of the world to come? Do you taste the heaven which faithful souls enjoy even in this life, “the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto them?” Is your soul athirst for the living God? Does it pant after him as the thirsty hart after the brooks of water? Do you count all things as dung and dross for “the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus?” Are you no longer conformed to this evil world, but do you live as a stranger and a pilgrim upon earth? Do you press with joy toward the heavenly Jerusalem in which are already your treasure and your heart? Does your soul ascend to God, even as the flame toward heaven? Do you celebrate in all your conversation the praises of him “who has called you out of darkness into his marvellous light?” And do you find within you the humility, the patience, the disinterestedness, the renunciation of the world, the holy joy, the tender zeal, the constant sweetness, the desire to be with Christ, the modest gravity, the unfeigned love, which characterizes true believers?

If these questions do not surprise you; if the Spirit of God has enabled you to sound the depths which they contain; if your most lively concern be, that you experience those heavenly dispositions only in a low degree; and if it be your most vehement desire that you may grow in grace every moment, until you feel all the power of the resurrection of Jesus, - you are a child of God, you are born again!” [John Fletcher]