I prayed the prayer, I go to church, and I have never once felt saved. Is something missing, or am I fooling myself?

“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.”

The sons of Korah wrote this for someone cut off from the temple and from the worship that had once carried him. The psalm's whole method is to speak to yourself rather than only listen to yourself. The writer is not waiting for the feeling to come back before he addresses his own soul. He tells it what is true and instructs it where to put its hope.

“These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.”

John writes late in his life to churches unsettled by teachers claiming a superior spiritual experience that ordinary believers seemed to lack. He states his purpose plainly: that they may know, not that they may feel. Assurance in this letter rests on what Christ did and on evidence like continued love and obedience, rather than on the intensity of anyone's inner life.