"I have tried so many times to get saved, but I just can?t make it. I?ve been to the altar and I?ve prayed at home, but I don?t feel any different," said the young man at whose home I was calling.

I had prayed desperately with him at the altar the night before, but he had given up after about an hour and gone home. I had called with the intention of giving him further help.

"So you don?t feel any different?" I questioned. "What has that to do with it?"

"Are we not supposed to feel it?" he demanded.

"To be sure we sometimes feel blessed," I replied, "but when we don?t feel we may know just as certainly that we are saved. We are saved by faith and we are kept saved through it."

"Yes," returned the young man, "I?ve heard about taking it by dry faith, but I?m not going to take it that way. I?ve got to know it, and to know it I?ve got to feel it."

"My dear young man," I replied, "there is no such thing as dry faith when directed toward Christ, for it then becomes living and potent. There is no other way to be saved except through faith."

"That?s just the trouble," complained the young man. "Too many have tried to take it by faith and have failed. No, I want to feel it, then I?ll know it."

"Do you make feeling the basis of all knowledge?" I asked. "Do you have to feel that two and two are four in order to know it? How do you know that two and two are four?"

"Why that is axiomatic," he replied. "Everybody knows that. My teachers have told me so, and experience tells me so."

"Then feeling has nothing to do with it?" I inquired.

"Certainly not," he replied.

"But," I persisted, "suppose some day you got the feeling that two and two were five and you just couldn?t shake it off. Would you then lose faith in your teachers and experience and go to believing that two and two were five because you felt it?"

He thought for a minute before replying and then he said, "No, feeling has nothing to do with it. Two and two are four regardless of how I or anyone else feels."

"Just so," I replied, "and the promises of the Bible are true, regardless of your feeling. You are saved by faith in them and the One who gave them. If you confess your sins He is faithful and just to forgive your sins! God has made a contract with you. Your part is to confess; His to forgive. Do you believe that God would keep His part of the contract as quickly as you would yours?"

"Yes," he almost shouted, "I do."

"Well, if your part is to confess, and you?ve done it, what is God?s part?"

"To forgive," he replied.

"And if you have done your part," I persisted, "and He would be as quick to do His, what has He done?"

"According to His Word He forgives," was the response.

"Well," I asked, "would you want anything surer and truer than His Word? Isn?t it true regardless of how one may feel? If you are ever saved it will be because you believe God?s Word. Do you believe it?"

"I do," he replied.

"And do you believe that promise?" I countered.

I shall never forget the look on his face as the truth gripped him. He slipped to his knees, and looking up toward heaven he earnestly thanked God for saving him. Yes, he had some feeling after that. No man can realize he is saved without feeling better; in fact much better. But it is not the feeling better that saves him. Faith in Christ and His promises brings the victory and keeps one in victory. Do not gauge your religion by your feeling. Let me give you a better measuring stick. Here it is: "According to your faith."