Assurance of Salvation When You're Wondering If You're Really Saved

Some people know exactly when they crossed the line into faith. Others have been in church their whole lives and were never asked the question directly: are you actually saved?

The two things the Lifeline points to

Mickey Mitchell built the Lifeline around two main points: driving the stake — the moment you actually accept Christ — and growing Christ-like, the lifelong process after.

"How you get to the point of accepting Christ, and then how you grow in your faith to achieve as close to Christ-likeness as you can before you go on to the other side."

The tool isn't meant to replace the Bible or add a new layer between you and it. As Blake puts it, using it hasn't replaced his Bible, it's made him more efficient with it. It's there to make a 66-book, two-testament library navigable for someone who doesn't know where to start.

How do you know if something's real?

Mickey's answer leans on an analogy: if you're handed ten counterfeit $100 bills, they can look convincing on their own. But hand you one real bill to compare them to, and the fakes fall apart.

"Whenever we pour our lives into the Scripture, and we get to know the Scripture... we can say, ah, that's a pretty good job. But it's counterfeit."

Knowing the real thing well enough to recognize what it isn't, that's the practical use of assurance, not just a feeling.

A man who knew about Christ but had never met Him

Mickey tells the story of a mentor, a devoutly Catholic man he respected for years but had never talked faith with directly. After a near-fatal hospital stay, the two went turkey hunting, and Mickey finally asked him: if you died, are you sure you'd go to heaven?

"Yeah, I'm pretty certain," the man said.

But when Mickey walked him through the Lifeline and got to the stake of salvation, everything changed. He was in his 60s.

"Mick, I was 21 years old when I did that," he said

Realizing only then that he'd never actually driven the stake at all. Years going to Mass, decades of quiet generosity, and he'd never had the moment. The next morning, Mickey got an email. His friend had used the same sheet of paper that night to walk his own wife through it. She had her moment for the first time, that night, after years of marriage to a believer.

"My friend knew all about Christ, and he knew he had met Christ and had him living in him, but he really doesn't know what he had. His wife had never met him, but she knew all about him."

Knowing about someone and knowing them aren't the same thing, for a spouse, or for Christ.

What if you're not sure you've had that moment?

Mickey's second story is rougher. A construction foreman he worked with, "man's man, ego out the top," brushed off every conversation about faith for years. Then his 21-year-old son died in a motorcycle accident, and Mickey was the first person he called. He broke down in a cul-de-sac. When Mickey started walking him through the Lifeline and got to the part about praying, the man cut him off, grabbed the pencil and pointed to the cross himself.

"Mickey, I'm right there. I don't need to pray."

Mickey didn't argue the mechanics.

"That's between you and God... but as far as I'm concerned, you just did it, my man."

The "fire insurance" debate

Blake raises a real pushback he's heard from other pastors: framing salvation around avoiding hell, "fire insurance," can build faith on fear instead of on what Christ actually gave. Mickey's answer doesn't fully resolve the tension, and he doesn't pretend to:

"We don't know really who accepts Christ and who doesn't. Only God knows that. And if God is pursuing that person, then how he gets to that stake — whether it be a gradual kumbaya session, or whether it be somebody preaching about hell — I don't care... Hell is not a smokescreen. It's a real deal."

However someone arrives at the moment, the moment itself is what matters, not the route that got them there.

If you're not sure

If you've spent years in church, know the stories, and still aren't sure whether you've had that moment — you're not the first. Two of the stories above are men well into adulthood who hadn't. The Lifeline walks through it in plain terms, the same way it was walked through with them. Visit The Lifeline Tool to be part of the community. Watch Mickey and Blake tell these stories in full on The LifeLine Radio Show → Salvation Prayer

Full conversation transcript

Blake: Hey guys, welcome back to the Lifeline radio show. Today we're going to do it a little differently, and we're going to take a minute and just explain what the Lifeline is, the foundation of why we're here, what the tool is, how to use the app, and how this app will meet you right where you are, no matter where you are on your walk — whether you're coming back to faith, this is your first time experiencing anything with Jesus, or if you've been in church for years, this tool is something that you can use in your everyday Bible study. Blake: Well, hey man, what's going on? With today's conversation, we're talking about the Lifeline in general terms — things that we think are important for people to understand when using the tool and understanding what we are doing here. So, first question: what do you think are the big main points of the Lifeline — the biggest points to understand whenever getting in and digging in with the tool? Mickey: I feel as though the Lifeline is for everybody that walks on Earth. And the reason for that is because it's all about the Bible. It is 100% biblically based. The Lifeline is the part that gets everybody thinking. The Lifeline has two main points to your question. Number one is driving the stake, and number two is growing Christ-like. Those are your two biggest points. How you get to the point of accepting Christ, and then how you grow in your faith to achieve as close to Christ-likeness as you can before you go on to the other side. Blake: And I think that's what really biblical study and everything boils down to. There's so many subjects — anger, grief, all these different things that we talk about in our daily lives. But really what it boils down to is that the Bible, this new covenant, was given to us as our way to heaven through Jesus Christ. And I think that's such an important part of your biblical study — finding what resonates in your life, because we all deal with different struggles at different times. Blake: Where do you see the Lifeline fitting into someone's life as they're going through struggles? Mickey: Dive in and figure out God — figure out what God tells us about how to live our life. So I see the Lifeline as being the roadmap of our journey in life. Blake: Right. I think the Lifeline gives us so much depth to a playbook. I feel like the Bible gives us a playbook of how we can live our life more Christlike. Even when the apostles are writing their letters, there are verses that apply directly to today. And I feel like the Lifeline takes all of those verses and chapters and words and gives us real-life application for those little nuggets of truth. If I'm dealing with something, I can go to a place and get a lot for exactly what I'm dealing with. Mickey: You keep using the word playbook, and it reminds me of one of my friends who coached in the NFL for years and years. When we first began our friendship, I was so intrigued by someone who had coached in the NFL for so long that I asked him — after you played football through middle school, high school, college, and then the NFL, when you get to the NFL, after you learn the playbook, why do you continue to have to do that? He said, ""Mickey, you never get away from the fundamentals. Whatever position you're playing, you never get away from the fundamentals. You're always training your basics."" Well, there's no difference in living our life for God and reading our Bible — we never get away from the fundamentals. Blake: What blows my mind in today's world is there are areas of Scripture that I don't think we're supposed to wrestle with, that have whole sectors of Christianity believing and abiding by a certain way of thinking that isn't right. So what are your thoughts on that gray area, and how can people use the Lifeline tool to give some answer to questions that are being answered in different ways by different denominations of Christianity? Mickey: The only way that you can address those things is if you know the real thing — otherwise you can be fooled into following the counterfeit. If I have a counterfeit $100 bill, and you give me ten of them, all exactly alike in their counterfeit, I can go out there and feel like I'm going to spend $1,000. But whenever you hand me a real $100 bill, I can take that and compare it to the counterfeit, and I can say — ah, it's close, but it's not exact. Whenever we pour our lives into the Scripture, and we get to know the Scripture, and then we pick up the other counterfeits, we can say, ah, that's a pretty good job. But the right promoter, promoting this — the immature people could be taken astray. You can compare it back to the real thing, and you can see it's counterfeit. And the master promoter is Satan, our enemy. We don't know exactly how he works, but we know he works. So you either have to believe it or you don't, and I believe it, and he's at work. So in today's time, to answer your question — how do we know when something is not real or it's fake — we have to know the real thing really, really well, so that whenever the fake comes to us, we can look at it and say, we love you guys, but that's fake. We have to know the real thing. And it saddens me to see so many people get taken down the road of following the fake or the counterfeit. Blake: The Lifeline tool is so important for those early believers — people who are just coming to know Jesus especially — because whenever we're first starting out on this journey, it's so overwhelming to have this 66-book huge Bible that's split into two pieces. One side is pointing to a guy, and one side is what's happened because of the guy, and there are all these prophets pointing to the future who point directly to him. Then he comes and fulfills prophecy. There's a lot going on in these 66 books. Whenever you first start — I have friends going through this now, who grew up in church and got to their mid-to-late twenties and say, ""I don't really know anything about the Bible. I know some of the stories, but I couldn't tell you if they were Old Testament or New Testament."" What the Lifeline tool is so wonderful for is that early time, and Bible study in general. I use it in my Bible study now to go in and basically have a conversation with the Bible — where does it talk about this, what is it — and I use the tool to take me to the Word. I have my Bible hand in hand. It hasn't replaced my Bible. It's made me much more efficient with my Bible. So I think that's such a key emphasis for using the Lifeline tool — it's not replacing Jesus. It's certainly not replacing the Bible. It's not replacing anything. It's here to enhance and streamline your ability to be more and more like the way that we're called to be. Mickey: A story comes to mind that gives, I think, the perfect picture of what the Lifeline will do. There's a man who was one of my number one mentors, and truly one of the smartest men I've ever been around. I looked up to him so much that I never really had a discussion with him about the Bible or about my faith. He was Catholic — Catholic to his core, and his wife was Catholic to the core too — and I figured that's good enough. They went to Mass. He probably gave more money away than anybody I know, but he didn't tell anybody. I just kind of saw some things happen. So anyway, I held him to a high standard, quite a bit older than me, and he went into the hospital and almost died. During that time, I often thought, God, you've got him. I was mature enough to know it wasn't up to me, but I never had that discussion with him. So he gets out of the hospital, and now he's going to live, he's going to make it. And he and I went turkey hunting, and after the turkey hunt, we're sitting in a little house that I had in Franklin, and I told him, ""Larry, if you die, are you pretty sure you'll go to heaven?"" He said, ""Yeah, I'm pretty certain."" I said, ""Well, I do this thing — right in the beginning of the Lifeline,"" so I went through the Lifeline with him. Whenever I get to the stake of salvation — now, he's older in age — he gets excited, and he says, ""Mick, I was 21 years old when I did that."" But he said, ""Catholics don't teach us this. This is profound. I don't know that my wife has ever done this."" So the next morning, I got one of the coolest emails I've ever gotten in my life from my friend. He said, ""Mick, you don't know what yesterday meant to me. I used a sheet of paper from the Lifeline last night to show my wife. And she developed a relationship with Christ. She had her aha moment yesterday, last night."" My friend knew all about Christ, and he knew he had met Christ and had him living in him, but he really didn't know what he had. Blake: Right. Mickey: His wife had never met him, but she knew all about him. Well, that is the Lifeline. That is it. That is drawing out the picture of our life from the first breath you take to the last breath you take, and everything in between — all biblical. Blake: I do want to have a short conversation and put a little emphasis on that. You just brought it up — the aha moment, the driving-the-stake moment. The Lifeline tool is something you've had since the early 2000s, and you've led countless people to Christ — not saying that it's you, but using this tool that God gave you. And that aha moment looks different for different people. Kind of like you said — these are people who've spent their whole lives in the Catholic Church and never learned this specifically. His wife had never had that moment. He, praise God, already had years prior. But for the people out there today who aren't sure if they've had that — what is driving the stake of salvation, the aha moment? How would you describe that to somebody who's been in the church, but hasn't necessarily had that moment? Mickey: Well, if I drew it out, it would be that you're getting closer and closer to that as you grow in your life — you're getting closer and closer to that moment that I call the aha moment. But then when you factor in different personalities that people are born with, and everything else we're built with — I take, for instance, a big old construction guy, man's man, ego out the top, one of the best foremen I've ever had. And he didn't want to talk about God. We talked about it a few times at lunch, somebody would bring it up, we'd have a discussion, and he would always blow it off. As sad as it is, his son, 21 years old, died in a motorcycle accident. He found out that the first person he wanted to call was me. So I met him in a cul-de-sac and watched this big, strong guy break down and say, ""I can't handle this alone, and I'd like to find out."" And he gets his aha moment. But as egotistical as us men are sometimes, whenever I get to the part of praying, he didn't care anything about praying — he grabbed the pencil out of my hand as I'm drawing, and he points right to the right side of the cross, and he says, ""Mickey, I'm right there. I don't need to pray."" I told him, ""That's between you and God. I don't have to pray. I don't have to stand on one foot. But as far as I'm concerned, you just did it, my man."" So if there's anybody out there on the planet that God is pursuing, that if they will watch the Lifeline being done, they will accept Christ. Blake: Also, there's a little bit of controversy on fire insurance. There are some people in the church — I've heard some pastors talk about this — that say it's a dangerous way to look at it. Because if you're ever telling people that you're getting it for fire insurance, that's not — you know what I mean — like our faith in Jesus shouldn't be founded in a fear of hell. It should be in an appreciation of what he's given us, this free gift. So I just wondered what your thoughts are on that, and what fire insurance means in this case — because what I do like about the way you break down the Lifeline is that fire insurance doesn't come in until after the stake is driven. And I think that's an important factor for people who might disagree with that. Even in the example — the fire insurance doesn't come in until after the stake is driven. We shouldn't be as fearful of hell afterward just because we have fire insurance. What I think fire insurance is a good thing for is the other people in your life who aren't safe. Mickey: Well, you ready for my — Blake: I'm ready. Mickey: Okay, we have a different thought. I do like the way that the Lifeline is put out — that we have fire insurance after the stake. But first of all, we don't really know who accepts Christ and who doesn't. Only God knows that. And if God is pursuing that person, then how he gets to that stake — whether it be a gradual kumbaya session, or whether it be somebody preaching about hell — I don't care. But if hell was a smokescreen that wasn't real, but it's used as a smokescreen to get people saved — kind of like some people use smokescreens to sell stuff online late at night, this special tool that's going to do this, and you order it, and when it breaks the first time, that's a smokescreen. Hell is not a smokescreen. Hell is a real deal. But at the end of the day, hell is not a smokescreen. It's a place of a lot of smoke, but it's real. So I think God led me to put fire insurance down there for a reason, because it's exactly that. And so if you want to discuss hell before that, to get you there, I'll tell you about hell. I don't care how you get to the stake of salvation, as long as it's biblical and as long as it's God doing the work."