 I get so many messages from people who are so afraid of whether or not they've lost their salvation. They said, brother David, I messed up here. Did I lose my salvation? Brother David, I looked at a woman to lust. Did I lose my salvation? Or they'll ask questions. Like, if I die and the last thing I did was sin, do I go to heaven or hell? Well, the reason they're asking that question in the first place is because they don't understand how salvation works. I mean, imagine, this is what some people imagine, that they're driving down the street, they look at a woman, maybe jogging by, they have a lustful thought, then suddenly a diesel truck comes and wipes them off the road, they die in that moment and now guess what? They think they go to hell. That's not how it works. If that was how it worked, then not only were we saved by the cross, we were saved by the cross plus good timing. Make sure that you don't sin right before you die. How do any of us keep that standard? You never know. So that's not how salvation works. Now, just because you lose your confidence in your salvation doesn't mean you've lost your salvation. Let me say that again. Just because you've lost your confidence in your salvation doesn't mean that you've lost your salvation. Having said that, when you walk with the Holy Spirit, you have better access to that confidence in what Christ has accomplished for you. The Bible says in Ephesians chapter two verses eight and nine, for by grace are you saved through faith in that not of yourselves that is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So obviously, biblically speaking, God does not consider faith a work. All that's required of us is that we believe. Romans chapter 10 verse nine says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Galatians three, six in the same way, Abraham believed God and God counted him as righteous because of his faith. So it's by faith that you are saved. Now I want you to visualize a tree. Visualize a tall tree with roots that go deep into the ground. Now, some people imagine that if salvation were a tree, the roots are good works and the fruits are salvation. That's not how it works. I wrote about this years ago, it's called diga salvation tree. You can put it up on Google and it'll come up. So if you're imagining salvation as a tree, you must know that the roots are not good works. The roots are faith. The fruits are good works. So good works are not the roots of salvation. They're the fruits of salvation. We don't do good works to be saved. We do good works because we are saved. Imagine an operating table. Now you go in for an operation. You don't come out of that operation to go, man, I did a really good job. I did a really, if you're operating on yourself, okay, I don't know why you would do that. It's very dangerous, but nobody's gonna operate on themselves. Why? Because you need the surgeon to do his work. Well, Jesus is the surgeon of the soul. So salvation is like getting on the operating table. You've really got nothing to do with it other than you surrendered yourself to the table and then the physician does his work. It'd be like if I wrote, you would check. You would have to have faith to deposit that check, but you wouldn't have done anything to earn that money. In the same way, we have faith to receive salvation, but it's still a free gift and requires no works. Again, faith is not considered a work. So once you understand that you are sealed by the Holy Spirit, your confidence in your salvation goes through the roof. You're no longer walking around paranoid wondering, did I sin enough to lose my salvation today? Imagine this. Imagine before you was a long hallway and on one side of that hallway is a door and all the way on the other side of that hallway is another door. Now, the first door before you is called justification. Justification is your position. Your position once you are saved is sinless, blameless, holy, spotless. Once you put your faith in Christ, you switch records with him and now you receive that perfect unblemished record. So justified means you've been declared in the courts of heaven, innocent, justified. It's done, okay? Now you open that door and you shut the door behind you. That's justification, you're saved. Now that process in the hallway is called sanctification. So the first door justification is your position. The hallway sanctification is your process. But no matter where you are in the hallway of sanctification, you're still past the door of justification. You may take 10 steps forward, 12 steps back, five steps forward, two steps back. Doesn't matter. God is not looking for you to be perfect. He is looking for you to be submitted to the process of being perfected. Progress not perfection, that's sanctification. And so as long as I'm in that hallway with sanctification behind me, I am saved. Now you ask, well, what if I slip up? Well, that's a step backwards. But so long as you are justified and in that hallway of sanctification, so long as you are in the process, you're saved. So justification, the first door is your position. The hallway sanctification is your process. The door all the way at the other end, that is perfection, that's glorification. That's when you're done. Now here's what the scripture says. Ephesians chapter one, verse 14, the spirit is God's guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him. So here the scripture tells us that the spirit of God in us is God's guarantee. It's the deposit, it's like the assurance that it belongs to you. The scripture also says in second Corinthians chapter one, verse 22, and he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy spirit in our hearts as the first installment that guarantees everything he has promised. So the Holy spirit has been deposited in us to show that we belong to God. So when you walk with the Holy spirit, the confidence in your salvation is boosted through the roof because you recognize the work that he's doing. Now again, just because you've lost the confidence of your salvation doesn't mean you've lost your salvation. It just means you've lost your perspective. Now watch this. I wrote this down to help you understand Ephesians 1, 14 and second Corinthians 1, 22, which I just read. In Jewish wedding culture, the father of the groom would usually be the one who picked the bride for his son. So that's what would happen in Jewish wedding culture. The father would pick the bride. After the father of the groom found whom he believed to be the choice bride, he would approach the bride and her family. There would be a written marriage agreement made like a contract. After the written agreement was finished, it was customary, watch this, for the father of the groom to give a gift to the father of the bride. The gift acted as a deposit for the bride. It was a promissory note, a guarantee of the groom's intentions to marry. Once the deposit was made, the intent to marry would become official. The Jewish wedding traditions, like many Jewish traditions, mirror the spiritual realm. Just as the father of the groom selects the bride, so God the father has chosen to give the church to his son. And just as the father of the groom leaves a gift representing a promise, so God fills you with his Holy Spirit, his divine promise. When the groom left the gift for the bride, it was him saying, I'm coming back to get you. The Holy Spirit in you is the promise of God saying I'm coming back to get you. So walking with the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of salvation.