When Faith Comes Alive | Andy Brown

When Faith Comes Alive | How to Know You Have Eternal Life | 1 John 5 Sermon

How can you know that you are truly saved? What evidence does a living faith produce? In this sermon, “When Faith Comes Alive,” we study the book of 1 John to discover three biblical signs that the life of God is actively working within a born-again Christian.

Beginning with the history of Camp Toccoa, Currahee Mountain, and the World War II paratroopers, this message illustrates a powerful spiritual truth: life leaves evidence. Just as a living town, a living person, or a newborn child displays unmistakable signs of life, genuine faith in Jesus Christ produces visible spiritual evidence.

Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:3, “You must be born again.” The new birth is not the result of religious performance, good works, church attendance, morality, or personal achievement. Salvation is a gift of God’s grace, received through faith in Jesus Christ. However, when God gives new life, that new life begins to transform our love, desires, priorities, obedience, relationships, and confidence before God.

This sermon examines three evidences of genuine salvation:

1. New life produces a new love.
According to 1 John 3:14–18, those who have passed from spiritual death into life develop a new love for Jesus Christ, a new love for other Christians, and a sacrificial love shaped by the cross. Biblical love is more than words or emotions. It moves toward people, serves others, meets needs, and reflects the love Jesus demonstrated by laying down His life for us.

2. New life produces new desires.
According to 1 John 2:3–6, knowing Christ creates a growing desire to obey God, imitate Jesus, turn away from sin, and walk as Christ walked. Christians do not obey perfectly, but the Holy Spirit changes what they want. Genuine believers grieve their sin, practice repentance, and increasingly desire God’s will more than the approval, success, wealth, or values of the world.

3. New life produces confidence and assurance.
According to 1 John 5:11–15, eternal life is found in Jesus Christ. Christian assurance is not based on our performance, feelings, morality, or ability to earn God’s approval. Our confidence rests entirely on who Jesus is and what He accomplished through His perfect life, sacrificial death, and resurrection.

This message also explores one of the most reassuring promises in Scripture:

“Whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and He knows everything.” — 1 John 3:20

When guilt, fear, doubt, or shame causes your heart to condemn you, your hope is not found in trying harder. Your hope is found in Jesus Christ. God accepts believers on the basis of Christ’s righteousness, not their personal merit.

The central truth of this message is simple:

New birth creates new life, and new life leaves evidence.

Examine your life—not merely your past religious experiences, but your present relationship with Jesus Christ. Do you see a growing love for Christ and His people? Do you desire to obey God and turn from sin? Is your confidence resting in your own performance or in the finished work of Jesus?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

You might not know it by ever going and visiting there, but my wife is from a pretty significant place in Georgia. She's from a place called Takoa, Georgia. And some of you are like, oh, I've heard of that. And you say Tocoa Falls. Well, that's a different side of Tokoa. That's not quite where Tocoa, but it's close, close. But in Tokoa, there's this mountain that's there. And Takoa is in between the valley of this mountain. This mountain is called Kurhee Mountain. And of course, Kurhee Mountain was the place that during World War II, as the army was deciding that they needed to have a group of a new type of soldier, a type of soldier that would arrive on the battlefield differently than anything that had ever been tried before. Instead of deploying them by tank or by jeep, they would deploy them by airplane. And they would, of course, fly over, and these men would jump out of this airplane, and they would be called paratroopers. And so you can go and you can visit Camp Tokoa. You can go and you can see vestiges of what used to be. And matter of fact, it's one of those types of towns that is not unlike many towns that maybe we have visited and seen. They're places where life used to be. You can ride around and you can see that there used to be industry here, but now this industry is just overgrown with kutsu vines and leftover machinery when the industry moved out. Go over railroad tracks that have now been abandoned, where the trains used to come by to deliver freight, but well those train tracks are silent now. And then you go to a different part of town, and you can see where now the life of the town is. Because the lights are on, because people are there walking around. You know, that teaches us something important that I want to teach you. Life leaves evidence. Life leaves evidence. There is evidence that you can look at something and you can say there's something that is alive that's here. And the same thing, by the way, happens in a soul. It doesn't just happen in a town, it doesn't just happen in a place, it happens in a person. You can look at your life and you can see whether or not there is life in your soul. After all, remember what Jesus said? Jesus said as he was talking to one of these religious leaders, his name was Nicodemus. He said, You must be born again. He said that, of course, in John chapter 3. So if that means that there is an opportunity for us to experience the very life of God inside of us. And so the question that I want to ask you this morning is, Is the life of God living inside of you? Now listen to me carefully. I don't want you to go back and talk about what used to be. It's almost like you're going down memory lane in your own heart and in your own mind. Well, I used to read my Bible, or I used to go to church, or I used to prioritize God and his things in my life. No, no, that's not memory lane. That's memory lane. That's not what I'm asking you to go down. I'm asking you instead to look at your own life and see whether or not you can see the life of God living inside of you. I want to talk to you today about this title, When Faith Comes Alive. And I want you to take your Bibles, please, and join me in the book of 1 John, chapter 5, all the way towards the end of your Bible. Remember 3 John, and then there's Jude, and then Revelation. So go all the way back to the right part of your Bible, and then go backwards to the left, and you'll find this book of 1 John. And I want you to look particularly at 1 John chapter 5. See, John's writing to a group of people that are Christians. These Christians have been inundated with false ideas and false ideologies and philosophies. Some are taking, this is many, many generations after the life of Jesus, and some have tried to take advantage of this life of Christ. And they've come to the Christians, and they've said, you know, you really can't look and see if there's any life in you at all. But John writes something startling in 1 John chapter 5 and verse 13. Listen to what he says. He says, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. I want you to underscore that word know in your Bible. You can know whether or not you have eternal life. Now think about that statement for just a moment. It's pretty incredible, isn't it? You sitting here this morning, you can know without a doubt that you're going to heaven. You can know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you belong to God, that you have eternal life, not only waiting for you out yonder, but visible in your everyday experience right now. You see, remember, what is all this based upon? This eternal life is not based upon what we can do. And see, oftentimes I know that even as I say this, as I was thinking about how to present this to you, I don't want your mind to get trapped into some kind of performance-driven mentality. After all, I'm asking you to look and see if there's any evidence of the life of God inside of you. But I don't want you to get trapped in that performance-driven mentality. Because oftentimes that's where our minds just simply sit. They sit in thinking about, all right, what have I done? What have I done? No, no. I'm asking you to do something different. I'm asking you to look at your life and see whether or not you see the life of God living outside of you, from the inside of you. This again is all based upon, let me show you this scripture now. I've already said it, but let me show you. John chapter 3, Jesus, he's having this beautiful conversation with this man named Nicodemus. Now, Nicodemus, he was a Pharisee. What does that mean? It means that he was a teacher of the Old Testament. And he would go, and when people came to synagogue, they came to see Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a well-respected man. And Jesus said to him, after Nicodemus came to him and said, you know, you must be some kind of great teacher because you're doing all of these things. Everybody in the synagogue is talking about you. We want to know what's the message that you're really telling us. And then Jesus says to him, right off the bat, in John chapter 3 and verse 3, he says, You must be born again. In other words, Nicodemus, you won't know your right from your left. You won't know eternity from with God or without God, unless here's the secret I want to give you. He says, Nicodemus, you must be. Not should be, not ought to be, not maybe one day will. He says, Nicodemus, here's the problem. You must be born again. And you think about it, for those of you who are alive this morning, you can look and you can see that there are evidence that you're alive. There are evidences that you now are a living person. And some of you have been alive so long you don't even remember that you're alive, but you still are. You are alive. I can remember, for example, when my little girl was born, all of a sudden it's like there was no life. We're waiting, we're waiting, we're waiting, we're waiting. I have to tell you this story. I don't have time to tell you the story. I'm really working well to get my sermon down because I have three services coming up, and I don't need to preach 40 minutes. I need to do 30 minutes. I'm saying all this out loud so that you can hear me. Not so you can hold me accountable because I don't want you to anyway, you understand. But I can remember my wife, um, she's having an epidural, and you know what that means. It means that the baby's coming quick, and she still holds this against me. I'm over there eating a steak burger, my goodness. And I'm looking at her, she's laboring, I'm like, you're doing great, honey, you know. First baby. Not quite the story, but it's close. Amen, Katie. It's close, right? It's very close. And all of a sudden, we have this moment of anticipation, anticipation, anticipation, and then all of a sudden the baby comes. And all of a sudden, our life changed in an instant. When that little girl came, our whole life as we knew it shifted from one reality to the next. And what a beautiful image that Jesus gives us. He talks about your life right now as it relates to eternity, as it relates to God, as it relates to forever. He relates that and he says, You must be born again. Now, did my little girl, did she have any say in the matter of being born? Absolutely, she didn't. She didn't. She just showed up based upon circumstances that predated her. Now that's not a one-to-one analogy, but it's pretty close. Because you and I, if we're born again, then that means that something preceded us. What was it that preceded us? What preceded us was God's call on our life that we responded to. Now that Jesus is out of the tomb, that the whole gospel of grace has been unleashed upon this world. And there's no more unleashing that upon this world than there is putting Jesus back in the tomb. Now there is a reality. Now there is a command. Now there is this opportunity for every man, woman, boy, and girl to respond to Jesus appropriately and repent. Jesus comes up to Nicodemus and says, Nicodemus, you can't get to heaven by all your good works. You can't get to heaven by your performance. You can't be right with God based upon what you do, do, and what you don't do. Instead, what does Jesus say? You have to be born again. Here's the principle that I want you to write down. And really, here's the whole summary of the whole sermon here this morning. New birth creates new life. And new life leaves evidence. New life leaves evidence. And so what I want you to do is I just want you to simply look at your life. And there again, please hear me because you're gonna fall into this trap. Because this is just how you're wired. You always want to justify yourself. I'm not asking you to justify yourself. This is not you trying to drum up something that's not there. You can't do it. Any good that you have will never amount to anything that God will receive. No matter how much you give of your time, your talents, your treasures, no matter how much you sacrifice, no matter how much you try to live a great life, a good life, a godly life, you can never do enough to be accepted by God. Because our acceptance, you know this, but I want to say this: our acceptance is not based upon what we do, it's based upon who he is and what he's done for us. And thank God who he is. He is a God of benevolent omnibenevolence, he's a God of omniscience, he's a God of omnipotence, he's a God of all grace. And he, not because he had to, but simply because he wanted to. He invited you into his life forever. That's great news. It's news that you now know. It's news, listen, that you respond to and that faith now begins to grow. And so when the life of God is truly in you, what is it that that life begins to produce? That's the question. When that life of God is already inside of you, what is that life that it begins to produce? And there again, just to reiterate, but I want you to see it, and I want to say it clearly, the marks of the new birth, which is what is all through the book of John, he's writing, that's a summary statement of the reason that he's writing. He's writing so that we can know that we have eternal life. The marks of new birth are not achievements that you simply add to salvation. Instead, they're an overflow of what God has already given. And so, what I want to do today is I want to give you three evidences of the life that God has already given you. And I want you to write these down. And here's what we're gonna do: we're gonna study the book of 1 John together this morning, and we're gonna look at where John says this. We're gonna see there are some no language that he uses, K-N-O-W, knowledge language that he uses that reinforces finally where we get to in 1 John chapter 5. Three great evidences of the life that God gives. All right, number one, new life produces a new love. New life, the first thing that it does is it affects your affections. The first thing that this new life does is all of a sudden it awakens you to these affections that are now yours in Jesus Christ. Turn with me, if you wouldn't mind, to 1 John chapter 3. Let's go backwards, and I want you to see this language in the Bible here. 1 John chapter 3, and look in particular, let's look at verse 14 through 18. Listen to what it says. It says, We know. Now that's important. See, we're reinforcing what he's already mentioned. These things we write unto you so that you may know that you have eternal life. And let me just say this automatically. There may be some out here that are listening to me that you don't know if you have eternal life. The Bible says that you can know. Before you leave today, my prayer is that if you're here today and you say, Well, Pastor, I don't know if I have eternal life. My prayer for you is that God in this message will awaken you to the realities that are already yours, or he will save you if you're not saved. Listen to what he says. He says, We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Whoever does not love, everyone who hates his brother, verse 15, is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life, abiding or remaining in him. And then he keeps going, look at this next phrase. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us. We then ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and truth. So let's look at this passage then. What are some of those evidences that we have a new love? Our first love is Christ. What do we love now? More than anything else, boy, we love Jesus. You know why we love Jesus? Because the Bible says we love because he loved us first. Matter of fact, in 1 John it says, by this we know love. And we just read that. What is that telling us? It says, this is the way that we know love. You can call it love outside of Jesus. You can call it something, and no doubt our world is filled with calling all types of things outside of Jesus love. But the truth is that there is no love outside of Jesus. And that's a pretty provocative statement, isn't it? The only way for us to know truly what love is is for us to be able to see and respond appropriately to Jesus. Jesus is the one that our hearts now are tied to, that our hearts belong to. We know, for example, that He loves us so much, and our only response is to love Him. One of the things that happens when the very life of God is poured inside of us is all of a sudden we have this brand new love that burst on our conscience, that burst on our sight, that burst on our affections. All of a sudden, now what is the true motivation of our heart? It's not love for self. That used to be the center. That used to be the place where we would go and find what I should do. But now we're reoriented because we're overwhelmed by the fact that Jesus Christ loves us. Jesus Christ loves us. I don't know if you need to hear that this morning. Maybe don't just make it out there, but make it personal. Jesus Christ loves you. God himself loves you. And some of you are like, well, how could he? He doesn't know. Yes, he does, doesn't he? He knows everything that you've ever done, everything that you hope to do that you didn't do, everything that you haven't yet done. He knows it all. And he looks at you based upon the life of his son that was given for you on the cross. And he looks at you with a hundred hallelujahs, with an infinite amens, and he says, I love you. Matter of fact, this love is played out in particular in the book of Song of Solomon, where here is this lover describing his love, and he says, I love you with a love that is greater than love. Oh, I love that. What kind of love is there that's greater than love? I tell you, it's the kind of love that God has for you. And now all of a sudden you're motivated by this love. It's almost a swelling type of atmosphere and experience that you have that sort of lifts you up and has you float all around the sky. What's wrong with Andy? He's just in love with Jesus. That's all. And you know what the greatest compliment you can give me? Not preacher, you made it out of here in 30 minutes. That's not the greatest compliment. The greatest compliment is you know what? You make me want to love Jesus more. If I could have any benefit to you, it would be for my life to display this radical love that I have for Jesus. And that love would make you want to love him more. But what do we know about Jesus? He himself is love. Remember, the Bible says in 1 John, God is love. But how did he show us what love is? He didn't just simply exist in love, he decided to share that love with us, a new love. Not only will we love Christ, we'll also love his people. We'll also love, as John called it earlier, the brothers. That is, those who have the same confession that we do. Now we're not talking about the Baptist, we're talking about all the Christians through the ages. We're talking about all of those who belong to Jesus. And Jesus said, one of the markers of your life will be that you love the people of God. And you know, we got a lot of people that say that they love the people of God, but we don't ever see them around the people of God. Well, that's a problem, isn't it? Uh there's a there's a, you know, it's like coming to the family reunion. It's like, well, I love my family, but I just don't like to see them. What do you do you really love your family? One of the markers that we have upon our life is that we love our brothers and sisters in Christ. And you know, there's something that draws us all together because after all, you think about how strange your confession is. You believe that a previously dead man who now is alive is one day going to come riding back in the sky on a white horse. That's truly what you believe. You know how strange that sounds on the media today? You know how strange that sounds, that this is the this is what ties us all together? And there you you're so weird as it relates to the rest of the world, but you're not the only weird one. You've got another weird one, who's your brother and sister in Christ. And John says it plainly, he says that how can we say that uh that we love Christ and hate our brother? How can we say that that we love God's word, but we want to, or his word and who he is, but yet we want to isolate ourselves from the grace that he's bestowed upon another. You can't simply love Jesus and just have it, you know, you and Jesus. It's more than that. It's us in Jesus. Yes, there's a personal relationship that you have with Jesus, but it's more than just your personal relationship with Jesus. It's also the other person's personal relationship with Jesus. And it's how you can take your personal relationship with Jesus and from that overflow let it flow into encouraging the life of another brother or sister in Christ. The other thing that the Bible says clearly that our new love will not only be Christ and his people, but it also will be one that will be shaped by the cross. Shaped by the cross. And what do we know about the cross? Jesus Christ sacrificially gave himself for others. And so what does that mean? It means that we'll we will look at our own lives and say, how can I serve others? We'll have this type of love that not only loves Christ, but then is motivated entirely by Jesus Christ. And you can't help but think about Jesus Christ except think about the cross. And what is that cross? That cross is when God moved towards us definitively to show us just how much he was for us, to show us just how much he loves us, to show us what it means for us to love and be loved. In other words, this type of love is not just love that's to be adored and looked at. It's this type of love that always moves outward. It's this type of love that always moves towards someone more significant. In other words, The type of love that we have is a love that's motivated by Jesus Christ and sacrificially gives itself to others. So that's the first evidence of this life of God living inside of you. The first evidence is affection. Let's go to the second evidence. The second evidence is desire. This new life is going to produce in you a new desire, a new desire for you. In other words, now we're testing our motivations for loving what we love and doing what we do. Let's look at, for example, in 1 John chapter 2. Let's go back to 1 John chapter 2 and let's look at verse 3. Here's another one of those no words. It says, And by this we know that we've come to know him if we keep his commandments. Whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word in him, truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him. Whoever says, whoever says he abides in him, notice this language, ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. Now let's flip ahead to 1 John chapter 3 and verse 3. It says, And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself just as he is pure. Now some of you here, you say, Well, you know, I love Jesus. And I have an uncle who was in law enforcement for many years, and one of the things that I remember him saying is he never locked up a criminal that said that they were guilty. In other words, you can make your mouth say anything. You can tell me all day long that you have love for Jesus. But now this presses into our desires. Ask yourself a question: do you truly desire to obey God? Do you truly desire to obey God? In other words, we're talking about the changing of the wants that you have. All of a sudden, this life is being poured in you. You feel like that you've been born again. You have been born again, and now new life produces evidence, and this new birth produces evidence of a new life. It's not what used to be, it's what is now. It's this living faith, it's this vibrant faith, it's this faith that is yours, it's this faith that is alive. And one of the things that we look at our life and you say, you know what? I don't do what I used to do before Jesus. I don't want those things anymore. There's a true change that has happened in my life. Now, all of a sudden, I look at the commands of Jesus Christ, where I used to think about Christianity, and I used to think it's just nothing but a bunch of rules and regulations for me to try to follow and always end up failing. Now, all of a sudden, my heart is now captive to his word. So now all of a sudden, I find myself desiring to obey. And if we're honest, we're not talking about you always obeying. That's not it. But it's that you have this desire now, according to Romans chapter 7, as Paul is writing this out. He says, the very things that I want to do, I can't do or I don't do. And so there's this internal conflict that's within you because all of a sudden now you're not who you used to be. You now have received Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. And you know what that means? It means that you have received the person of the living God through the Holy Spirit, who now lives his life inside of you and changes your wants, your desires, everything about you so that it's no more of you. It's no longer you who live, but it's Christ who lives. And the life that you now live is motivated by the cross. It's motivated by a desire to walk as he walked and do exactly as he does. In other words, you want to imitate Christ. You want to have as your as your North Star, as your compass, as your hero, Jesus. I can remember early on in my ministry, I had heroes that I wanted to try to emulate and imitate. And Lord, let me be like, fill in the blank. Let me be like this saint that I knew. And then I thought to myself, you know what, Andy? The problem is that you're aiming way too low. Some of you say, give me faith like Daniel, right? We've even seen that. Give me faith like Daniel. Let me be like Moses. And you know, Moses is sitting there saying, What are you doing? Why would you want to be like me? Don't you know that I didn't make it into the promised land? Make me be like David. Nobody wants to be like David, right? I'll tell you another one, Lord, let me be like Job. Have you ever prayed that? No. None of us would ever, Lord, no. Please don't let me be like Job. We have as our North Star this person, this life. We now get to imitate. And it's imitation, listen. Listen to this. It's imitation by surrender. It's not imitation by performance. It's imitation by surrender. It's you coming to the end of yourself. And realizing that it's no longer Andy who lives. But it's Christ, Colossians says. It's Christ who is my life. And when we up and when he appears, I'm gonna be just like him. I want to obey God more than anything else. And it grieves me when I don't obey him. I wonder, does it grieve you when you don't obey him? And some of you are Christians this morning. And some of you are doing just like this with sin. You're flirting with it. You're trying to think, well, you know, maybe a little bit. Maybe, you know, it's you know, it's a you're on the edge. Your desires are being pulled by the world and its ways. But one of the things that we know is that we're no longer held captive by sin. Instead, our hearts are captive to Him to want to obey Him, to want to imitate Him. We have turned from sin. And our constant life is repenting and trusting in Him. I'm turning from sin, I'm turning from self, I'm turning from my ways, and instead I want to have His way for my life. I want His way more than anything else. Because what I truly know is that anything else is me living like a dead man. Anything else is me putting on grave clothes. Anything else doesn't show the life of God inside of me. It shows what God has come to condemn. It shows what God has come to judge. It shows what God has come to free me from. Why would I want to put those old chains back on? Why would I want to put those clothes that don't fit anymore? Why would I want to put those old rags on when He's given me the righteous robes of Jesus Christ for me? In other words, I'm no longer impressed by the world. And this is one that we constantly have to challenge ourselves with. The world no longer impresses us. We are so worldly more than we realize. Because we are so impressed, if we're honest, the world impresses us more than we care to admit. Because, and you say, well, how do I know if I'm impressed by the world? Just look at your goals. Is at the top of your list to live godly? Is at the top of your list God's goal for your life? Or at the top of your list, is it all the ways of the world? Live happy, have money. Nothing wrong with living happy, and nothing wrong with having money. But if godliness isn't at the top of your list, then brother and sister, you're showing that you're impressed by the world. Impressed by a system that Jesus Christ has come to disarm, dismantle, and one day destroy. What does that mean? It says that you are living as a born-again Christian, but you still are in your diapers. You still hadn't learned to walk. As the author of Hebrews says, I've got so much more that I want to tell you, but you can't even chew meat yet because you're still on the bottle. The third thing for us to write down is this new life, and this is my favorite. What does this new life do? It leaves you with confidence. Confidence not based upon performance, but confidence based upon who he is and what he's done. Listen to it. 1 John chapter 5, look at verse 11. And this is the testimony that God gave us. Eternal life. Now the ESV doesn't have a comma there, and I believe it should. This is the testimony that God gave us: eternal life. Life, if we were to go back and we don't have time, but if we were to go back to chapter one and read the first four verses, you know what we'd see? John grounds everything that he's going to say because he realizes that it's going to come across as performance, performance, performance. He grounds everything that he says in the indestructible, undeniable, perfect life of Jesus Christ. This is the testimony that God gave us: eternal life. And this life is in his son. You see where you're located now? You can be free this morning with the confidence that you have eternal life. You can know that you have eternal life. You say, How do I know? Listen, you're simply saying, I'm trusting in Jesus. It's not just, oh well, I'm forgiven. That's how I know I have eternal life. No, no. It's not simply that. It's just as easy as being forgiven. That's not, yes, we are forgiven. But what's the confidence that we have? Not that God will accept me despite myself. That's not what Christianity is. It's that Jesus Christ, God will accept you on the basis of who Jesus Christ is. And my hope is spilt on him and his righteousness. Then he goes on and he says, Whoever has the Son has life, and whoever does not have the Son does not have life. And then listen to what he says next. I am writing these things to you so that you may know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have eternal life. And then listen to the next verse. Listen to it. He says, this is the look at this word. Confidence. And some of you this morning, I don't have confidence. You can. Because it's not based upon performance, it's based upon him. He says, this is the confidence that we have toward him. If we ask anything, according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the request that we've made of him. In other words, our confidence comes by his love for us. Not our love for him. Some of you are like me, and you say, Boy, I sure do love Jesus. Let me tell you something. You don't love him as much as he loves you. Your love can come nowhere close compared to his love for you. You have confidence to know that you have eternal life is a gift. Not something you can earn, not something you deserve, something that he gave to you. You have assurance beyond a shadow of a doubt that you belong to him because you've received him as your Lord and Savior. You have confidence when you pray, confidence that God hears you. One more passage of scripture that I want to share with you. Go back to 1 John chapter 3 and let's look at verse 19. Listen to it. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our hearts. Listen, some of you this morning, I need my heart reassured. Listen to this verse. This is my favorite verse in all of 1 John. This we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our hearts before Him. For whenever our hearts condemn us, whenever our hearts condemn us, have you ever felt like your heart was condemning you before God? John is writing to you. He says, Reassure our hearts before Him. For whenever our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts. And guess what? He knows everything. And you know what that everything is? That everything is you. And he accepts you, not based upon what you can do, what you should do, what you hope to do. His acceptance of you is based upon what he has done for you. And guess what he does? He takes that life that he's given and he offers it to you. And here's what he says simply accept it by faith. Not by merit, not by what you hope to do. Accept it by faith. Why? Because it's God's good grace towards you. And my friend, if you'll do that, God, your glorious Savior, will give you confidence, assurance, and you'll walk around with this new reality living inside of you, saying, you know what I am? The most important thing about me is not what I think, it's what he says. The most important thing about me is that my life is now hid in Christ. I am now born again. And I humbly want to ask you this morning, have you received him as your Lord and Savior? Is the confidence that you have based upon what you do? Or is your confidence based upon who he is? Jesus, thank you so much for saving us. Thank you, Lord God, for demonstrating your love to us when we were still sinners. You saved us not based upon our merit or effort. You saved us based upon who you are, and we are so grateful. Father, give us, Lord, those who are here, and maybe they they felt this heart that condemns them. I pray that they would rest upon Jesus. That they would have this disposition that says, not well, I used to believe in Jesus, or one time I took the preacher's hand, or one time I responded, but Lord, I believe right now in Jesus. And Father, there are others in here that they don't know Jesus. They don't think about the things of God, they're impressed by the world. They have fooled themselves into thinking that they're Christians, but they're basing that all upon some experience, not because of something now. Father, my prayer is that you would convict them of their sin and that you would show them whether or not they're a Christian. And if they're not a Christian, let them call upon the name who saves. In Jesus' name. And everybody said, Amen.