I often wonder how Christians that believe in the Arminian perspective can sleep at night. I would be scared to death about losing my salvation. If I can choose God, I can also unchoose God. How do I know I won't wake up in the morning and declare myself an atheist, or a Buddist, or Muslim or something else? If maintaining my belief in Christ is up to me, I'm in serious trouble. However, if God is the One that saves and chooses me, I can rest assured every night that I will wake up in the morning, love God, live for God, and follow Him each and every day; even the days that I don't feel like it. There is an expression that goes something like "Preach like an Arminian, sleep like a Calvinist." There is something to this. God calls all to repent, even though only those that are His will respond. Those that are His need not worry about their salvation because it is by God's strength we are saved and perservere, not our own.
John 10:27-28 states "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they know me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand." If we understand that the church is made up of His sheep, then we can also see Matthew 16:18 that states "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." But what do we do with those people that we all know that have wandered away from the faith, never to return? 1 John 2:19 gives us the explanation. It states "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they were of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they are all not of us."
It would be silly and anti-biblical of us to think that all those that call themselves Christian and attend our churches are His sheep. Jesus says in many different scriptures that not all those that call themselves His are actually His. This is one of the most important reasons to exposit the scriptures from the pulpit verse-by-verse in order to preach the gospel in its entirety, not leaving anything to chance. We can be led astray by "feel-good, God is love, story-upon-story" preaching that does nothing for the soul, and ultimately leads people into a false-sense of salvation.
God saves, God perseveres, and God receives all the glory.
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