Are You Sure? Loving Messages to a Church Group

By Louisa Clayton

Are you going round in circles in your Christian faith and getting nowhere? Are you sure you can’t go deeper? Are you even sure you’ve started the Christian life? Are you sure Jesus really, really, loves you? Are you sure the past has been forgiven for ever? Are you sure your faith is a living faith, and not just a dry religion of duty? And perhaps most important of all, are you sure enough in your faith to be willing share it?
Louisa Clayton writes loving and encouraging messages to everyone living the Christian faith who wants to go deeper with greater trust ‒ and explains how to make a start if you’ve been putting it off!

• Language: English
• Publisher: White Tree Publishing
• Release date: Jan 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781913950798

Book preview

About the Book

Are you going round in circles in your Christian faith and getting nowhere? Are you sure you can’t go deeper? Are you even sure you’ve started the Christian life? Are you sure Jesus really, really, loves you? Are you sure the past has been forgiven for ever? Are you sure your faith is a living faith, and not just a dry religion of duty? And perhaps most important of all, are you sure enough in your faith to be willing share it?

Louisa Clayton writes loving and encouraging messages to everyone living the Christian faith who wants to go deeper with greater trust ‒ and explains how to make a start if you’ve been putting it off!

ARE YOU SURE?

Loving Messages to a Church Group

by

Louisa Clayton

This edition © White Tree Publishing 2022

eBook ISBN: 978-1-913950-79-8

Published by

White Tree Publishing

Bristol

UNITED KINGDOM

More books on https://whitetreepublishing.com

Contact mailto:[e-mail]

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this abridged edition.

Scripture quotations from the NASB, New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.

Contents

Introduction

About the Author

Chapter 1 Three Personal Questions

Chapter 2 What will I do?

Chapter 3 Lord, What Will You Have Me to Do?

Chapter 4 Do You Believe That I Am Able to Do This?

Chapter 5 Satan’s Palace

Chapter 6 Satan’s Craftiness

Chapter 7 A Living Devil and a Living Saviour

Chapter 8 Christ’s Sympathy with Us When We Are Tempted

Chapter 9 Danger Ahead!

Chapter 10 Prisoners of Hope

Chapter 11 Christ’s Coming for His People

Chapter 12 The Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ

About White Tree Publishing

More Books from White Tree Publishing

Introduction

The chapters were originally a series of talks Louisa Clayton gave to a local church group. She published the talks in book form in 1906, with the title Winning and Warning. This book, Are You Sure? is an updated edition, with Bible verses in the modern English of the New American Standard Version of 1995.

Whether you are a Christian with a faith going back many years, or a new Christian, or a seeker, we strongly recommend that you read this short book through to the end. There is much value to be found in every page.

In the original book, Louisa writes, With simple trust in His love and wisdom to use this little book as He may choose, and committing it into His hands, I now send it forth.

About the Author

Louisa Clayton ran various Bible Classes and Church Groups, and was the author of several Christian books, some appearing in serial form in Christian magazines.

Because Louisa Clayton mentions incidents in China several times in her writing, we initially identified her as the wife of Arthur Sowerby, where she kept her maiden name. The couple were missionaries in China, returning on furlough just before the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 when many of their fellow missionaries and friends were massacred.

It turns out that this is not our Louisa Clayton. In one of our copies of The One Great Reality, in her dedication Louisa gives her address as 3 Somerville Gardens, Tunbridge Wells, which is in Kent. Using this information to carry out further research, we are now able to identify her correctly.

Louisa was born in 13 February 1845 in Stella Hall, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland and died on 1 February 1931 at her home in 3 Somerville Gardens, Tunbridge Wells, Kent at age 86.

Her father, William Clayton Clayton, a Barrister at Law, was initially called William Clayton Walters, changing his name after the death of his maternal aunt, making generous donations to various Christian groups. William Clayton was the author of Notes on the Sign or Sacrament of Holy Baptism, published in 1835.

The family obviously moved around a lot. In the 1851 Census Louisa was age 6, living in Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex with her parents and three brothers: Edward age 13, William age 11 and Albert age 8. In 1861 the family was in Terrace Road, Hampton, Middlesex. In 1871 and 1881 in Bishop’s Downs House, Speldhurst, Kent. By 1871 Louisa was the only sibling living with the family. In the 1891 Census, Louisa’s father William was 91, and her mother Esther Elizabeth was 90.

Louisa ran Christian groups for mothers and also for men and women. For the last thirty years of her life she led groups in Rusthall, two miles away from her home. At White Tree Publishing we would love to add to this information. If anyone has some reliable details, we can add them here for the benefit of new readers.

The following notice appeared in the Times on 3 Feb 1931:. CLAYTON - On Sunday, Feb. 1. 1931, at 3, Somerville-gardens, Tunbridge Wells. Louisa Clayton, daughter of the late William Clayton Clayton, Barrister, in her 86th year. Funeral Rusthall Church, Tunbridge Wells. Thursday, 12.15 p.m.

Louisa Clayton’s published books are:

* The London Medical Mission ‒ c1873

* The Story of Mission Work among the French in Belleville, Paris ‒ c1878

Loving Messages ‒ c1884

Heart Lessons ‒ c1885

Wilderness Lessons ‒ c1885

The Three Fs ‒ c1886

Winning and Warning 1906

The One Great Reality ‒ 1916

Eternal Realities of the Present Life ‒ ?1928

*Note: We need confirmation that these two titles, although listed on a bibliography website, are by our Louisa Clayton.

Chapter 1

Three Personal Questions

WHEN we go to see a doctor, we know we will be asked personal questions about our bodies. When we go to God, He always asks us personal questions about our souls. We may not like being asked personal questions, but when we are feeling ill we are willing to do anything to get better.

We can never be cured of the disease of sin until we are willing to let God have personal dealings with us. God is waiting for each one of us to come directly to Him, saying, Father, I have sinned.

Whether we know it or not, we each one have the disease of sin in our souls. The Lord Jesus is the only Physician who can give us health and salvation. Has the Holy Spirit made you feel sick of sin? Have you ever felt that it is not all right between your soul and God?

If we know what our bodily disease is, then we can use the remedy, and so it is with our souls. It is very important to find out what we are in the sight of God. In Jeremiah 8:4-6 God says,

"Do men fall and not get up again? Does one turn away and not repent? Why then has this people, Jerusalem, turned away in continual apostasy? They hold fast to deceit, they refuse to return. I have listened and heard, they have spoken what is not right; no man repented of his wickedness, Saying, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone turned to his course, like a horse charging into the battle"

Did you notice in that last verse that God is listening to hear us say something? He is listening for us to say, What have I done? God sees that we are walking in the broad road which leads to destruction, and He calls to us to stop. Have we ever come to God saying, What have I done? The mistake we often make is this, we measure ourselves by others instead of asking ourselves, in God’s presence, What have I done?

We may be upright and moral in the eyes of man, and yet altogether wrong in the sight of God. In the broad road which leads to destruction, there is a clean path as well as a dirty one. You may think because you are a good-living person that you are not in the broad road, but this is a delusion. God’s word says, "All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way (Isaiah 53:6).

Notice that little word all. It means you, and me, and everybody. Until we are stopped by the voice of God calling to us by His word and Spirit, we are all going our own way ‒ and our way is not God’s way. The turning point is when we see that the whole of the past life has been wrong before God, because the heart has been wrong.

Have we ever said to God, I have gone astray like a lost sheep? Let us search, and try our hearts and ways, and turn to the Lord. Are there not secret sins which God sees in our hearts? What is the greatest sin of all sins? It is unbelief. Perhaps you think, "That is not my sin. I have always believed."

But can we each say, I am a sinner saved by God’s grace? To believe in the Lord Jesus Christ means that we have received Him as our Saviour. Have we received Him? Are we a new creature in Jesus Christ? Has there been a change in our heart and life? Can we say, "The old things passed away; behold, new things have come"? (2 Corinthians 5:17).

A few days ago, a dear Christian woman was telling me about an illness she had some time ago, and how God’s Spirit had led her to Jesus. Then she added, Since then, everything has been different. God’s grace has come into everything.

She had been a very good woman before, and outwardly she seemed to be a Christian, but she was walking in the clean path in the broad road.

If you think you have always believed, it is plain that you do not know what it is really to believe, because until we see our sinfulness we do not really trust Jesus as our Saviour.

"Sinners can say, and only they,

How precious is the Saviour."

Everyone may believe that there is a Saviour. Everyone may be willing to acknowledge that Jesus is the only One who can save. But this is not enough, unless we can say, "Jesus is my own dear Saviour. He came to save sinners, and He has saved me." Can we say this? There can be no real believing until there has been repentance.

Repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ must go together. What is repentance? It is a change of mind. It is turning from sin to God. It is the Holy Spirit showing us that we are not right in Gods sight. It is coming just as we are to God, and saying, What have I done? Lord, show me myself.

Why is it we are so slow in coming to Jesus, and trusting Him? It is because we are trusting something else. It is just as God says in the passage in Jeremiah we have been reading, They hold fast to deceit. That means they are holding fast what will disappoint them.

If we think our prayers, or our own doings, will help to save us, it is like holding fast to deceit, and we cannot trust Jesus fully until we let go of every other refuge. The Lord is calling to us to return to Him just as we are, but we refuse to return. We are not willing to be saved in God’s way.

Do you feel troubled in your mind? Is it dark in your soul? Do you feel as if you were in a dark pit? A man once went to a minister, and told him he had been touched by his sermon, and meant to live a better life.

The minister said to him, You are like a man at the bottom of a pit, and you see your Saviour at the top, and you mean to climb up to Him.

Yes, said the man, that is it. I mean to climb up to Him.

You never will, was the answer

Anyhow, said the man, I’ll try.

Some time after, the minister met him, and asked him, Have you got out of the pit yet?

No, was the reply; but I am still trying.

Several months passed away, and then the man met the minister again. He looked so bright and happy, and gave him such a hearty shake of the hand, saying, "The Lord laid hold of me when I was down at the bottom