Quotes from an old timer (Philip Doddridge, 1702-1751) that ask the question: ‘Is my belief real or just seasonal?’
For the one whose belief in God is casual not converting:
You must distinguish between what is at most being only near the kingdom of heaven, and becoming indeed a member of it.
You own that there is a God; and well you may, for you cannot open your eyes but you must see the evident proofs of his being, his presence, and his agency. You behold him around you in every object. You feel him within you, if I may so speak, in every vein, and in every nerve. You see, and you feel, not only that he has formed you with an exquisite wisdom, which no mortal man could ever fully explain or comprehend, but that he is continually near you, wherever you are, and however you are employed, by day or by night…[Yet, what will become of you when you are] surprised into the presence of a forgotten God; torn away, at once, from a world to which your whole heart and soul has been riveted.
When you have declared war with sin, was it with every sin? And is it an irreconcilable war, which you determine, by divine grace, to push on till you have entirely conquered it, or die in the attempt?
Vain are all your religious hopes, if there has not been a cordial humiliation before the presence of God for all your sins; if there has not been this avowed war declared against every thing displeasing to God; if there has not been this sense of your need of Christ, and of your ruin without him; if there has not been this earnest application to him; this surrender of your soul into his hands by faith.
The only acceptable response to God’s question: ‘Why should I let you in?’
Choose, therefore, whether you will go out, as it were clothed in sackcloth, to cast yourself at the feet of him who now sends you these fair and gracious terms of peace and pardon [i.e. the gospel promise that Christ has paid for our sins and compensated for our sin-stained obedience]; or whether you will hold it out till he appears sword in hand, to reckon with you for your treasons and your crimes, and for this neglected response to God’s gospel messenger among the rest of them…There is in your conscience some secret apprehension, that this rejected, this opposed, this derided Gospel, may after all, prove true.
Signs or indications that we really do believe:
If we are not “led by the Spirit of God, we are not the children of God” (Romans 8:14). You will then, if you are a real Christian, desire that you may “be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18), that you may have every power of your soul subject to his authority.
To fight, not only the commission of evil but even the distant “appearance” and probable occasions of it (1 Thessalonians 5:22).
You are not to measure your growth in grace, only or chiefly by your advances in knowledge, or in zeal, or any other passionate impression of the mind, no, nor by the fervor of devotion alone; but by the habitual determination of your will for God, and by your relentless desire to obey his commands, submit to his disposal, and promote the highest welfare of his cause in the earth.
Encouragement to press on in fighting sin and nurturing faith:
It is the office of the blessed Spirit to purify the heart, and to invigorate holy resolutions…Amidst all the opposition of earth and hell, look upward and look forward, and you will feel your heart animated by the view.
A soft and delicate life will give temptations more force, which might easily be subdued by one who has developed the habit of “enduring hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (2 Timothy 2:3).
But while the darkness continues, “go on in the way of your duty.” Continue the use of God’s resources: read and meditate on the Bible, pray, yes, and sing the praises of God too, though it may be with a heavy heart.