Dear Clint,
Pilgrim's list of articles is a must-read for you, whether the pastor has ears for it or not. I cannot add anything to that material other than a general observation.
Your pastor is clearly doing what nearly all modern pastors do--having the believer look
only inwardly to the state of his own heart or
to his progress in moral behavior for assurance of salvation. The apostles, however, exhibited such bold assurance as they did, precisely because they constantly looked first,
outwardly to
the work of the sovereign God, displayed in the atonement of the Lord Christ to be their assurance.
To be sure, such a faith produces positively-changed behavior, but so, as your pastor states, can a thousand worldly, fleshly and even devilish influences. However, only the believer in Christ will see himself, with the eyes of faith, simultaneously falling short of the Law of God--the more sanctified he is, the more fully he will know how wretched a sinner he is--and, being driven back to the Gospel of God, fully robed in the righteousness of Christ--he will know that the righteousness of Christ has been imputed to him by faith. Those outside of Christ must always measure their security by their own perceived--and deceived--view of their own inherent righteousness--of which they have none at all. But Paul states the grounds of his, and our own, confidence:
And because of him (God) you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord." (1 Corinthians 1:30-31, ESV)
This is the confidence which anchors the assurance of salvation.
