Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Am I Really Saved? 6 Birthmarks of Genuine Faith Every Christian Should Know | Jonny Ardavanis

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

Are you struggling with doubts about your salvation? You're not alone. In this powerful message, we explore the 6 biblical birthmarks of genuine saving faith that can give you confidence in your eternal destiny. To clarify, we must not ever confuse the fruit of salvation with the root of our salvation, which is faith in Jesus Christ. 📖 What You'll Learn:    •    The difference between false faith and saving faith    •    How to examine yourself according to Scripture (2 Corinthians 13:5)    •    Why God wants you to have assurance, not doubt    •    Biblical answers to "Can I lose my salvation?"🔑 The 6 Birthmarks Covered:Belief in Jesus ChristLove for God, His people, and His WordObedience (fruit, not root of salvation)Humility before GodPerseverance through trialsSteadfastness in faithImportant Note: This isn't about earning salvation through works, but recognizing the fruit that genuine faith produces. As Jesus said, "By their fruits you shall know them."Perfect for: Christians struggling with assurance, new believers, anyone wanting to understand biblical salvation, small group studies, discipleship.

This is, I think, the scariest verse in the Bible. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out demons and in your name perform many miracles? And then I will declare to them, this is Jesus speaking, I never knew you, depart from me, you doers of lawlessness. I think, first of all, some people spend their life in crippling doubt regarding their standing before God. And I just want to tell people, it is not God's will for your life for you to be unsure of your standing before him and your eternal death. destiny. Looking at the fruit of your life and examining the legitimacy of your salvation, that is not a bad thing. That is a biblical thing. And I think, too, I should have maybe started here. I really struggled with assurance, you know, for a long time. With that being said,

some people listening are in Christ and they lack the assurance that they're really truly in the Lord. And I want to just speak to those people for a moment. So we're just going to look through six birth marks of genuine saving faith. All right, last week we talked about false signs of assurance, meaning that there are people that claim to know the Lord, like these religious leaders, but they didn't in fact know him. We see this constantly throughout John's gospel. In John chapter 2, Jesus turns water into wine, and then it says at the end of John

chapter 2, it says that many believed in him, and then it says this, but Jesus on his part was not believing in them for he knew all men, meaning that they were placing their faith, so to speak, in Jesus. But it wasn't saving faith. It was, as D.A. Carson says, spurious faith. Same thing happens in John Chapter 6. It says many believed in him. Then Jesus says some difficult things, and it says, many departed from him.

In John chapter 8, you see the same thing again. Jesus says, I'm the light of the world, and it says, many believed in him. And if the chapter ended, as we talked about last episode, right there at verse 30, you would say, hey, these people got saved. This is great. But he says, hey, if you continue in my word, then you're my real disciples.

We're going to talk about that in this episode. John chapter 12 is another example. It says they believed in him, and it said, but they did not confess him because they loved the glory of man, not the glory of God. So we see this constantly throughout the scripture. People may be even familiar with Matthew chapter 7 in verse 21. Jesus says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will my father who is in heaven will enter and this is i think the scariest verse in the bible many will say to me on that day lord lord did we not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out demons and in your name perform many miracles and then i will declare to them this is jesus speaking i never knew you

depart from me you doers of lawlessness later on in matthew 13 jesus says that there are people that claim to know god that dress the same they look the same they talk the same and yet some are wheat and some are tears and the wheat are going to be gathered into the master and the tears are going to be separated and burned. Now, all this brings up a legitimate question, right? How do I know if my faith is legitimate? It's an important verse. I mean, just a thought. Read for us, 2 Corinthians 135. Yeah, so 2nd Corinthians 135 says, examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves or do not realize this about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you fail to meet the test. Yeah, I mean, it just brings up an important reality. There are

many people who profess Christ that do not possess Christ. And sadly, one of the things that we see predominantly throughout the scripture is that it is towards the most confident in their spiritual condition that Jesus, Paul gives these repeated warnings. Test yourself, examine yourself. This is really important because looking at the fruit of your life and examining the legitimacy of your salvation, that is not a bad thing. That is a biblical thing. That's why Jesus tells Nicodemus, familial pedigree never saved anyone. Affirmament. of doctrinal truth, never saved anyone. J.C. Ryle once said,

this is the most dangerous spiritual condition any person can never be in. When you're halfway to Christ, inclined to Jesus, inclined to the truth about Jesus, wanting what Jesus provides and what he offers, but not willing to give into the full demands that he lays on the center of repentance and faith in him, declaration of his lordship,

turning from sin toward righteousness. One of the most unloving things any pastor could ever do is fail to present the possibility to their people that there are some who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ in a saving way. Jesus is the most loving man who ever lived and this is, it's a predominant theme.

Well, and maybe even to broaden out, I mean, you said that would be unloving of any pastor, but to think more broadly for our listeners, I mean, if you're a parent, it's an unloving thing to leave your children. Yeah, absolutely. Just anyone in relationship with others who are professing to be followers of Christ,

like this is for you. So if in the prior episode we looked at five signs of a false assurance, maybe today we're going to dive into, I don't know if it's five or six, maybe signs that you are safe. That's called birth marks of legitimate saving faith. And I think before we jump in, just a few things. First of all, you have to ask the question, why does Jesus, why does the scripture provide these birth marks of genuine saving faith?

And it's, I think, predominantly not because Jesus is trying to squash real but weak faith. He's not trying to do that. He's mindful of our frame. the Bible, the scripture, is trying to expose false faith, not as an end, but as a means to an end because it's one of the kindest things that God can do is to open your eyes to the deception of your spiritual condition so that you turn to them in repentance. Well, and it's such a critical point. I don't want us to blow by it, but that's even a test, I think, as I'm listening to you, that's a test for my own heart as I'm walking this through or trying to discern the fruit of someone else's life, is one is a position of judgment of like, I'm trying to decide falsely on which side of, you know,

the justification line you fall on. And the other heart is a total heart of like, no, no, no, no, this is your eternal soul. Yeah, it's a love and care. Jesus cares about this deeply. Paul cares about this deeply. Peter cares about this deeply. I care about this deeply, not so that I can cast judgment, but rather that you might know with assurance which side of the line you're falling.

Yeah, if your salvation is secure. A couple of things, just I think, first of all, some people spend their life in crippling doubt regarding their standing before God. And I just want to tell people, it is not God's will for your life for you to be unsure of your standing before him and your eternal destiny. It'd be like as a father, if my child, if my daughter Lily had perpetual uncertainty regarding whether or not she was my child, that wouldn't give me any sort of pleasure. It would wound me because I'm her father. It is actually a scriptural command in 2 Peter 1 to make your calling an election sure. God doesn't want you to doubt. It's not like he holds that over your head. I want to see, you know, let's see if they really try because he wants to leave us with a little bit of uncertainty so we try harder. No, all of the Christian life flows from our understanding. of our union with Christ, and so having assurance of our salvation is actually a command.

That's biblical. Second Peter 1. Make your calling an election sure. So we're just going to look through six birth marks of genuine saving faith. And just to pile on then, we'll dive in. But in 2nd Corinthians 13.5, to your point, it says test yourself. To your point, it's not an ongoing test that one will never be assured of. Rather, it's examine, and when you know the answer, you can actually stand on that by faith. Yeah, and that's actually, it's a unique thing to the Protestant faith. meaning Roman Catholics teach it's a sin for you to have assurance. It's a sin of presumption.

It's meaning you're saying you're good. But no, actually the scripture says you can know and you can have confidence that you are for sure going to heaven. So what are the birth marks? Well, we have to start from the basics. First of all, belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't have to reinvent the wheel here. In Romans 10, it says, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Romans 1013, whoever calls in the name of the Lord will be saved. It's belief in who God is. and who God is, what he has done through the person and work of Jesus Christ. John 1125, Jesus said, I am the resurrection in the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live. Acts 1631, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. So on a quest of providing a level of certainty, I don't want to circumvent the reality that salvation is by grace through faith.

And we're going to discuss this as we go, but you have to at least know the facts of the gospel, who Jesus is, what he is done. He was a real man who was, he was God in the flesh, he lived, he died, he rose again. And as we'll continue to talk about, there is a thing called empty faith, which is why, secondly, here, the birthmark of genuine saving faith would be a love for God. In Ezekiel, when God is speaking of the new covenant, when he's speaking about what he's going to do, he says he's going to give people new hearts, and with that new heart, he's going to provide them with new affections. 2 Corinthians 517 says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, meaning that God gives them affections for himself, and we're going to talk about this for his people and for his word. I think the logical

question would be, well, how do I know if I love the Lord Jesus Christ enough? I've mentioned this to you, and you've maybe heard me say this when I was preaching. R.C. Sproul, when I answered this question, you know, someone said, how can I have assurance of my salvation? And he answered by saying, do you love the Lord Jesus Christ perfectly? No, I definitely don't. No, you don't. And he said, okay well do you love the lord jesus christ like you want to and you go no i don't and then he said well do you love the lord jesus christ at all and he said if if you have the seedlings of a genuine love for christ then you can know that uh if outside of the spirit of god and the work of god you can't love the lord jesus christ at all so part of me this is really what was a game changer for me

it provided me with a a level of solidity to stand on i knew i did love the lord jesus christ not perfectly, not as I wanted to, but I did love him and I wanted to love him more. But it's not just a love for Christ, it's also a love for his people. I don't know if you have your Bible, but you can turn to 1st John. This is one of the hallmarks of someone who's been changed. It says in 1st John 4-7, Beloved, let us love one another. For love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. It says in verse 8 of chapter 4, the one who does not love, does not know God for God is love.

line, if there is no love for the people of God in your heart, God is not taking residence within you, right? It says if you don't love other people, you don't know God for God is love. We like that verse, those three lines, there are three words, God is love, but it's couched in the context of saying one of the genuine evidences of transforming and genuine faith is you love God's people. this one just strikes me as like it's a it's also a very practical outworking and so it's um the r c squirrel questions are so powerful and having the seedlings of love for god and your soul yeah is such a obviously foundational starting point i think on the other hand it's also useful to check my own heart just saying like practically um yeah do i love the people i'm gathering with on a sunday morning

a wednesday night throughout the week those who are professing the lord and if if you're having continued hard-heartedness towards kind of many of those people in that camp it's a it's a probing question for your own heart well it is i think especially because we're in a culture that almost celebrates bitterness towards church right so first john 40 says if someone says i love god and hates his brother he is a liar for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love god whom he has not seen and this commandment we have from him that the one who loves God should love his brother also. Meaning this is just bottom line, hey, you want evidence that you've been saved. You have a love for the people of God. I mean, you might have to

pray to love certain people, you know who I'm talking about. You might have to pray, but there is a truth there. I think, you know, just last year under this second category is there's a love for God's word, meaning you see God's word for what it is. It's the revelation of God to you. We speak to him in prayer. He speaks to us through his word and through his spirit. That's why David says in Psalm 1197, Oh, how I love your law. When someone becomes a Christian, they want to feast on the honey of heaven,

and there's a reality in that. So belief, love, third here would just be obedience. You're familiar with James 219. It says even the demons believe in shudder. It says you believe that God is one, so do the demons. Do you know that demons have their PhD in theology? They affirm salvation is by grace through faith in Christ.

They know the answers. They know that Jesus died and he rose begin, and they will spend eternity in the lake of fire. And I'm just thinking back to Jesus' ministry, demons are often the ones who actually rightly identify Jesus as the Messiah in the place and time when the religious elite, the ones who knew the scriptures revealed to them at that time were failing to identify Jesus. The demons are the ones who rightly identify Jesus right away. They know them. They know the answers. They know the truth.

This is why obedience is it's not what we don't earn our salvation through our obedience. it's not the root of our salvation, it's the fruit of our salvation. Jesus says in John 1415, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. In 1421, he says, he who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. In John 1424, he says, he who does not love me does not keep my words. I mean, you can't get any more simple than this. John 15, verse 10, Jesus says, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. And just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love, we could go on and on.

even going back to first john john is you know the book of first john in the scripture is written to provide people with assurance first john one five this is the message that we had heard from him and announced you that god is light and in him there is no darkness at all if we say we have fellowship with him yet walk in darkness we lie and do not practice the truth first john two four the one who says i have come to know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him first john two nine the one who says he is in the light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now. I mean, this is just the scripture. 1 John 3.9, no one who is born of God practices sin because his seed abides in him and he cannot sin.

Now, you might be going, man, this is tough. Why is John writing this? First John 513. These things I am writing to you who believe in the son of God so that you may know you have eternal life. He's not writing this to discourage people. He's writing this to encourage them by saying, hey, first of all, this obedience is a manifestation. of a truly transformed heart. It is motivated by a love for God and a desire to honor him because he's already paid the price

for your sin on the cross. But you can't get around this. This isn't legalism. It's just the verbatim words of scripture. And again, we just covered a lot of ground really quickly. I want to slow down kind of into granny gear to make sure we're being super clear again. What you are not saying explicitly

is by following the rules of God, you are being saved. No, back in John, the one who loves the Lord is the one who keeps his commands. Wedged in First John. We're looking at this in our community group. First John 1-8, it says if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. So John is wedging amidst all of this.

You need to love your brothers. If you don't love your brothers, it's a revealing sign that you're actually not walking and write fellowship with God. And yet in there, he's wedging in saying if you say you don't have sin, you actually are deceiving yourself. goes on to say in one nine, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. John's buttressing this entire argument of re-pointing back to, lest anyone's hearing this and thinking like, oh man, sins are coming to mind. Again, am I worried about my salvation? No, no, no, no. If you love the Lord,

where do we start back in belief? We're continuing to look at some of the fruit that's going to grow out of a heart that has been placing his or her faith in Jesus. Again, just wanting to reemphasize that so that we don't get caught up and kind of people tuning out and then retuning back in and thinking all of a sudden the works are the saving faith. Yeah, and I think there's spectrums, right? I think there's some people that are so afraid of the clear call to obedience in the scripture that they label everything

that's staunch in the scripture as legalism and law. So I think, first of all, I remember MacArthur telling me this just saying, hey, it's the direction of your life, not perfection, and there's truth in that. But if there is no growth towards the image of Christ, you should take some serious inventory of your heart, right? Meaning that Ephesians 210, we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. So, yes, there's an element here where this isn't to prove our salvation necessarily. We don't try to live righteously to prove that we've been made right with God, but because we're grateful for what he's already done on the cross.

And this is even going back to one of the caveats. We want to make sure that we're, you know, for every looks, I don't know who it was, but every look that you take towards yourself in the mirror, you take 10 looks at the cross, right? And there's a lot of, there's a lot of truth in that. But bottom line, according to the scripture, if there is no good works, no transformation, no likeness into the image of Christ, then there is no proof that God has saved you by his grace. Why? Because God's grace is not only God's kindness to forgive, it's his power to transform and to your point. But what if I sin and stumble? Yeah, first time 1-9, if we confessor sins. He is faithful in rights to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all in righteousness. And then you go into chapter two of First John, my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you do not sin. If anyone does sin, which we all do, we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ, the righteous. He himself is the propitiation for our sins. What does that mean the satisfaction of the wrath of God? And not for our sins only, but also the whole world. So he's tethering back and forth between these gospel truths, but sometimes people use God's

grace as a license and a credit card to send. He's saying, no, Roman 6, shall we continue to send so that grace may abound, may it never be? How can you who have died to sin continue to live in it? So always back and forth because often, even today and back then in Paul's Day, in Christianity, in the Christian circles, there's these realms of, you know, well, we're saved by grace. You know, if you're telling me to obey, that's legalism. Then there's these other people that say, no, no, prove your salvation. It's all about morality.

It's all about external appearances. and, no, a lot of it has to do with our heart, right? So I think Paul even, you know, this is encouraging. Paul says in Romans 7, he is the chief of sinners. He says, a wretched man than I am, he decried, lamented, and bemoaned his sin. Continuing in Jesus' word, trying to obey God doesn't mean we never sin.

It means we hate our sin, and there is nothing that we cherish, no sin that is, more than we cherish Jesus Christ. Again, it doesn't mean perfection. It means the direction. you say of your life, I'm more like the Lord Jesus Christ today than I was two years ago, right? It's not a perfect line, like a perfect stock, but the will of God for the believer's life is for Thessalonians 4.3, this is the will of God, your sanctification, which is your progressive

transformation into the image of Christ. So that is God's will. And again, we're talking answers, but if I'm sitting down with you at a coffee shop, I would say, okay, do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, good. Do you see any evidence of an increased affection, an increased imitation to the Lord Jesus Christ? And if someone says no, then I would say, well, you might need to examine yourself to see whether or not you're actually in the faith. The fourth year would just be humility as a birthmark. Obviously, I think it goes into the likeness of Jesus, but much more could be said here. But I remember John McArthur telling me this when I was asking him about the subject. And I think, too, I should have maybe started here. I really struggled with the

assurance, you know, for a long time. Growing up, I knew the answers. There was no moment when I like was like, my life was changed in the blink of an eye, you know, as a kid. It's so helpful because I think it would be very easy for people to look from the outside looking in and say like, oh, this is something I struggle with. But this isn't something those who are maybe further along in their faith journey than I am struggle with. And it's definitely something pastors never have struggled with. and to your point this was like early on in our friendship i think this was this was actually a helpful point when you kind of opened up about this reality of like there were many nights as a

child where this was just as a child you know like as a teenager i think it's why i had like insomnia you know like i had i had real doubts first of all you grow up and you hear about you know people's testimonies and they're getting saved and they're like my life changed in the blink of an eye it was never drugs and everything before and they never they were repulsed by the things used to struggle with, like, I was just a good dude growing up. And I know that's theologically incorrect, but it's like I was memorizing the scripture. I knew the word of God. I started reading the Bible through in a year when I was 11. And so like from a, I was affirming, yeah, I'm a sinner, you know, I'll fall short of the glory of God. But it wasn't

until later on where I was like, man, I actually began to see my sinful heart. And I mean, I used to go to bed and I've told you this, watching movies on my, what was it called, an iPod. I was watching, iPod touch. Yeah, pistol P, you know, just to take my mind off of, you know, like the uncertainty of, like, what if I didn't wake up? And so humility is a birthmark because it says in Romans 3, every mouth will be shut before a holy God, meaning that even when we're talking about obedience, and this is true for me, it's not like I can look down that list of obedience and say, yep, doing good. Nailed them. No, and this is to your point.

Like there is an element where I see more and more the sin in my own life and because you see the righteousness and the holiness of God, which makes you broken, right? You're broken over your sin. Paul is probably the most righteous man in the world. And he says, oh, wretched man that I am, who's going to deliver me from this body of death? Yeah, chief of sinners. Yeah, so that humility stems from an understanding of your unworthiness before God. and there are no truly proud, mature Christians. So I think the more you walk with God,

the more you see His holiness and your own insufficiency, your unworthiness, it's going to prompt you a spirit in which you go, man, God's grace truly is amazing, right? So I think that would be a birthmark. The fifth thing here would just be trials. Trials provide validation and affirmation of the legitimacy of your faith. Jesus, God himself, allows us to go through trials to strengthen our faith.

I think probably there's an element where the most difficult seasons in my life are ones that make me most sure in my relationship with God, right? Because you're going, man, I sense his presence, his nearness. And MacArthur one time told me when I was asking him about it, he said, what can your faith survive? He says, you know, like that's the most legitimizing, affirming, reality is trials, right? Like God is bringing you through the fire. He's refining you. And so that would be number five. And then number six is just steadfastness. That's an evidence of salvation. Jesus says in John 831, if you continue in my word, you are my real disciples. What does he mean?

Well, I think he's just drawing our attention to the reality that there are a lot of people that start off very excited with religion. You can turn on the news that there's a revival. I'm not disparaging those things at all. Or 10,000 people were baptized. And you're like, well, great. But Jesus says, hey, there are people that start off serving, joining Bible stories. They burst through the church's doors, claiming to be changed. They could be involved in this way for years. But if you were to ask the question, what is the quality of truly transformed people? Well, it's that they remain, they continue, they abide.

And Jesus says, in my words, if you abide in my words. And you can't separate the word of Jesus from the presence of Jesus and the life of Jesus. So it just means to remain with who God is. It means you walk with them. is what is known in theological circles as the perseverance of the saints. But I like that idea. R.C. Sproles used to call it the preservation of the saints,

meaning it's not my power to hold on to God. It's his power to hold on to me because salvation from beginning to end and in the middle is all a work of God's grace, God's power. That's why we're saying he will hold me fast, not I will hold me fast. And I can't remember if it's from like a prior episode

that you've actually put out, or if it was something you'd mentioned in passing ones, I feel like John McArthur's come up a couple of different parts of this episode. But you had a conversation with him related to this exact topic where maybe he asked a probing question of you related to maybe steadfastness. Am I teeing this up or you were calling? I don't know.

No, but I'm going to butcher this. But it was something to the extent of he asked you, like if you could lose your salvation, you take it from here. No, I just, John McCartner told me in regards to the question, how can I have assurance of my salvation? He said, one of the things that you have to answer right away, is that you cannot lose your salvation. Once you remove that as a possibility,

then you can ask, was I ever saved in the first place? And then he said, Johnny, if I could lose my salvation, I would, right? Totally. If it was up to me to secure my salvation, to hold under my salvation, to cling to it, I would lose it every single day. In fact, to think that you could possibly lose your salvation and you haven't would be the epitome of pride.

I was going to say it's such a revealing question because I feel like every Christian who hears that instantly nods along of like, oh, my goodness, it's so encouraging because if I could lose my self-age, I absolutely would. It's such a delineating question. Yeah, no, you have to be convinced of that. You have to be convinced that Jesus says that I will give them eternal life and no one will ever snatch them out of my hand. That's John 10. You can answer this question regarding the eternal security and that's a vital doctrine, John 6, John 10, I'm the good shepherd. And I keep, I maintain. my own. So you might ask the question as people do, like, what about the person that used to say they were a Christian that is no longer walking with God? And the answer is given to us in the scripture in 1st John 219, they went out from us, but they were not really of us. For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out so that it would be shown that they are not

of us, meaning people that truly reject and walk away from God, they were never saved in the first place. That's what the scripture says. That's not like my spin. It just says, here, they went out from us, but they were not really of us. For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out so that it would be shown that they were never of us in the first place. Just real quick, that's not Hank Bowen. That's not Johnny Ardvanus. That's first John 219.

Yeah, that's John. Yeah. Inspired through the Holy Spirit. So I think because I'm not just a preacher or a podcaster, but a pastor who interacts with real people, just a few things. Some of the people listening to this are not Christians and need to examine themselves and turn to Jesus Christ. If there is in your heart no love for Christ,

Christ, no love for his people, and no hunger for his word, you are wanting for evidence of genuine transformation. With that being said, some people listening are in Christ, and they lack the assurance that they're really truly in the Lord. And I want to just speak to those people for a moment, because Jesus' words to the weak in faith are always conjoined to the reality that he is mindful of our frame. He knows that we are bruised reeds. He knows that we are smoldering wicks. And to those who are saved, but waver in their assurance, Jesus would compel them to fix their eyes on the finished work of Christ.

I think of the man who says, Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief. That's a prayer that God answers every time because it's in alignment with his perfect will. And when we see our sin, and that's what Satan wants to do. We talked about this last Sunday. He's the accuser. He points at our sin and says, look at them.

That's why I love the hymn when Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within. Upward, I look and see him there who made an end of all my sin because the sinless Savior died. My sinful soul is counted free. And so all of those precious truths because it might seem humble and contrite to constantly, oh, my sin, my sin, my sin. But it's actually possible, even in the realm of this question, to put our sin center stage instead of God's glory and his mercy and his love. And so one of the reasons why people can struggle with assurance for so much is because they're always looking to the man in the mirror rather than to the finished work of Christ. And so if you're always looking at your sin and yourself and constantly examining yourself to see whether they're in your faith, you're never going to have assurance because our assurance is not provided by what we see is provided on what Christ has done. And so you want to make sure you're not abusing that, right, on the one hand.

But I think there are a lot of people who live as navel gazers and always are stripped of assurance. And because they don't have assurance, they don't have joy because the joy in trials and all of those things is built upon the foundation of a solidity of confidence. I am a child of God and heaven is my home. And I just also, I think for someone that was genuinely saved, for them to strengthen, struggle with assurance, I really do think breaks the heart of God. It's not God's will. And I'm not saying that in a way where people need to feel more shame. I just would want people to know that to go to bed uncertain of whether or not,

if you died in your sleep, you would wake up. And if you're a Christian, that's not something that brings God joy. It's, again, something that grieves God because he's a father. I was just thinking, back to your analogy that you opened with. I mean, if you just think about your girls or if I think about my kids, that would bring me no joy and how fallen and malformed my love is for my children in relation to God's perfect love for his created beings, who he paid for with the supreme cost of his son.

I mean, it just, it like breaks your heart to imagine. It's a helpful, I think, metaphor to kind of point us in the direction tangibly of God's love you. Yeah, and I think probably one of the thing is it's going to be hard for you to have assurance of your salvation if you have secret sin in your life. And so I think sometimes people want the confidence that they're standing before God while they're clinging to something in the darkness. It goes back to your obedience.

If there is something that is you're hiding in the darkness, you need to confess that to the Lord and to other people and allow for him to cleanse you. this goes back to first john one nine if we confess our sins he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse them from all in righteousness but you have to actually want that cleansing and this is why i said if you cherish your sin more than you cherish jesus christ practically meaning you're clinging to something even though you don't want to your actions are revealing yeah your actions are revealing something and at least robbing you of your assurance because you cannot lose your salvation but do you know what you can lose your joy and your assurance

And this is more of like a, I don't know if it's a brotherly challenge, but you said something really important that I don't want us to brush pass. You need to confess that to the Lord. And then also for many people listening, I've known I've needed this in my own life at times. You need to confess it to other people of, I'm sure there's some cohort of people listening to this that actually know settled in their heart. There's a brother or sister they need to go confess that sin too. and don't short circuit, don't get this far in the podcast

and allow yourself to justify your own sin in your own mind and kind of shoot it up to the Lord for confession. Well, sin thrives in the dark. Absolutely, and then fail to bring it to accountability. And say it uses it to continue to rob you of your assurance. And, I mean, there's no one that is more thrilled by your lack of assurance than the devil. And so, just to reiterate, we're saved as a work of God. God. It's all of a gift of his grace. We don't earn our salvation. Our obedience doesn't merit

his kindness. It does, though, according to Jesus, it reveals that he's actually given us a new heart. Because when he gives us a new heart, he gives us new affections, new desires, new motivations that want to obey him. And it's compelled and constrained by the love of Christ. We have a love for his people because we've been adopted into the same family. There's a humility because we see his holiness and we consequently see our sin. There is an element where we're steadfast in trials. And we remain in his word and ultimately again this is not perfection it's the direction and every single year i hope to to become more and more like the lord jesus christ and i'm so grateful that god doesn't taunt us with the uncertainty but he provides the assurance he wants us to have it and he gives it to us that's

That's why Ephesians, it says that the Holy Spirit is the seal of our inheritance, because we have the Spirit of God within us in Romans that cries out Abba Father. So anyways. It's just my prayer that there's, who knows, one Johnny Art of Annas, 15 years kind of behind you on laps or on the track, that maybe this can be an encouraging conversation. So appreciate your vulnerability in the conversation, Johnny. Yeah, you got it. Thanks, Hank.

Thanks.