If you live in sin and disobedience, you will not enjoy assurance.

There is a gulf between sin and peace, sin and joy, sin and assurance.

When you sin, coming alongside of it is doubt about your spiritual condition, and the Spirit of God withholds assurance.

Welcome to Grace to you with the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.

If you Google the question, what makes someone a Christian? You'll get a slew of results.

Some say a true Christian goes to church regularly, or reads the Bible daily, or prays often and gives to the poor.

The question is, why can you find so many different answers? Is the Bible somehow not clear? Actually, the Bible leaves

no doubt as to what it means to be a Christian, and one of the evidences of genuine faith in Christ

is that you have the Holy Spirit. But that leads to another question. How can you be sure you have the

Holy Spirit?

John MacArthur answers that question today on Grace to You in his current series,

Myths About Salvation. But before we get to the lesson, we recently received some letters from people who have benefited from grace to you, and I want to take a minute to read them to you.

Here is a letter from a man named

Bennett. He says, when I was saved in the 1990s, God led me to your ministry, and I read your

study Bible over and over, and read your books, and everything I could get my hands on. I had a

notebook full of notes that I had taken on your

sermons, and I must admit, I'm one of those preachers that got his start by repreaching your

messages. For over 20 years, I've been preaching to prisoners in a detention center in Riverside,

California, and I thank you for your part in that. He signs it Bennett.

Here's another letter from a woman named Carla. She says, I started listening to you in 2010 when I had a

career change and my commute coincided with your teaching on KWIL 790 a.m. in Albany, Oregon. I often shared what I learned with my husband,

and since 2013, he has been listening to you daily. You have walked with us through some dark valleys,

...