This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, I want to welcome you to Diddy Drive Time Devotions. This is Pastor Tom
Holliday. And I have with me here my friend Mushi who would like to bring you
greetings from Rwanda.

Yes, hello. I'm Mushi and I'm still from Diddy City Decent Church, Decent Church
from Rwanda. I love God, God saved me 2005.

That's when I received my salvation and I was in a bad situation committing
sins. I was angry to God but now I'm a safety guy. I love God too.

And even now God is trying to lift me from different bad situations. So I'm now
good. Thank you.

That is a great testimony. We're talking this week about being a child of God
and that is what Mushi was just talking about how when we're a child of God it
changes everything. We are in day three of our look through 1 John chapter 5
verses 13 to 18 today.

And the sounds that you hear in the background today are a church that is
worshiping right next door. You may also hear the rain on the rooftop. May not
be as easy to hear my words this week but I'm hopeful that in this setting
there's something about God's word that speaks clearly and powerfully to you and
I about love.

Today as we look this third day, verses 13 to 18, as we look at these verses we
begin a look at what these verses in 1 John chapter 5 have to say about
assurance. Some things that you can know in your life. How can you know that you
have eternal life?

How can you know that the life of God is yours? How can you know for sure that
you're a child of God? In these verses John gives us absolute assurances, six of
them.

We're going to look at the first three today and then look at three more
tomorrow. God's assurances for your life. How do I know that I have eternal
life?

What assurances does God give me that I am his child? Assurance number one, the
assurance that believing leads to life, eternal life. Verse 13, I write these
things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know
that you have eternal life.

Eternal, that's the Greek word "ianos" which means God's life, the kind of life
that only God can give to us. Now you look at this and you think, just because I
asked, just because I believe, just because I started a journey of faith, I have
eternal life? No, it's not just because you asked.

It's just because you asked in God's will. It's just because you asked based on
the cross of Christ that Jesus Christ died for you. It's just because you asked
based on the resurrection of God.

It's not by your energy or even by your prayer power that you were saved. That
prayer was just recognizing what God had already done. So this is why you can
know that you have eternal life.

You've asked, you've believed, you've trusted, and just as you can know when you
sit down in a chair that has held you before, that it's trustworthy, it will
hold you again, you can know that when you trust in the Son of God, He is
trustworthy and you will have eternal life. There's a second assurance in these
verses for the child of God. There's the assurance that prayers in God's name
will be answered.

Listen to verses 14 and 15. This is the confidence. This is all about assurance,
so there's that word, confidence.

This is the confidence that we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything
according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we
ask, we know that we have what we have asked from Him. If we ask according to
His will, He hears us.

And if we know that He hears, He's going to answer. He is a loving Father. Now
notice these verses talk about asking according to the will of God.

And then if I'll do that, there is this confidence that comes in my life. That
word confidence there is the word paresia, it came originally from the idea of
freedom of speech. And we talked about this earlier in 1 John 5, that the
greatest freedom of speech in anybody's life is the freedom of speech that comes
when I have the freedom to ask before my Heavenly Father what I need from Him.

There's no greater freedom of speech. It may seem like freedom of speech to say
your opinion about some political thing that's going on. But the greatest
freedom of speech is what God has done in our lives and what we can ask of Him
because what God's done.

And here is that freedom of speech. Here is the confidence that we have before
God that if I ask in His will, He hears. Now how do I know if it's God's will?

You know it's God's will by asking. When you begin to talk to God about the
needs in your life, He'll let you know whether you're asking for a selfish need
or you're asking in His will. You know it's His will by asking.

And then you search His word and then you talk to people. But it begins by
asking. You think, I'm afraid to ask, it may not be God's will.

You don't have to be afraid. God's not going to give you something that would
hurt your life or hurt other people's lives. He answers prayers that bless your
life and bless other people's lives.

So you ask and He will show you His will. And then as you grow in Christ, many,
many, many of the prayers you pray will be directly in the will of God. And
because of that, God will answer those prayers.

That's a confidence that you can have. Now I hope that you're taking advantage
of that confidence. I have to admit that I don't always take advantage of that
confidence.

I don't always talk to God as often as I should. Put my confidence in His will.
There's something you're worried about right now.

Put your confidence in Him. Prayers in God's name will be answered. And then
there's a third assurance in these verses.

The assurance that anyone born of God does not continue in sin. That you don't
live a lifestyle of sin, a practice of sin. That it gives you a new life.

Now we're going to get to that verse in a minute. But before that, let me read
you what I would consider to be the most difficult to understand verses in 1
John. As we read through these, we're going to come back and explain what they
mean in just a minute.

Verse 16 to 18. If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to
death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin
does not lead to death.

There is a sin that leads to death. I'm not saying that he should pray about
that. All wrongdoing is sin and there is sin that does not lead to death.

We know that anyone born of God does not continue in sin. There's the assurance.
The one who was born of God keeps him safe and the evil one cannot harm him.

Now in just a moment we're going to get to that assurance that you don't have a
lifestyle of sin if you're a believer. But before we get to that assurance, here
are these verses about sin not leading to death and sin leading to death. What
is he saying?

He says if there's a sin not leading to death, you can pray and God will give a
person life. If there is a sin that is leading to death, there is such a sin, he
wouldn't have talked about it if there wasn't such a thing. He's saying don't
pray about that one.

What is he saying here? Well just to show you how difficult this is to
understand, as you read through the commentaries, there are seven basic
suggestions about what this could mean. Some people say that it's sin punishable
by death, by the courts.

Other people say it's sin that God visits with death. What's the sin unto death?
Other people say it's sins by which people are put out of the church.

Some say it's sins committed after you were baptized. I don't agree with that,
but some people say that. Other people say that there is no forgiveness for some
kinds of sins.

Again, I don't agree with that. Some people say that there's no forgiveness for
denying Jesus and who he is, and that's what he's talking about here. Other
people say this is referring to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

What is this sin which leads to death? I believe that these verses are about
physical death. They're not about spiritual death.

They're about physical death. And it's talking about the fact that there are
some who commit sins that because of those sins God's going to judge them with
physical death. Now I can't always know when that's going to be, but God does.

God does understand. And when I pray for someone, and maybe they're a believer
who's gotten far away from God, then God decides to take them home rather than
leave them here to be an example against Christ instead of for Christ, then I
leave that in the hands of God. I trust that in the hands of God.

But if you're like me, I can't always know, is it a sin leading to death or not?
So pray about all sins that people are committing. Pray about all struggles that
people are going through because of the sin in their life.

And as you pray about those, there will be many times when God will answer and
somebody will be rescued from physical death because of your prayers. I'm going
to be amazed, and I think you are too, when we get to heaven to see the power of
some of our prayers and what they did in people's lives that we never
understood. If you have a brother in Christ or a sister in Christ who's
struggling and they're falling away and you see their life going downhill, pray
for them and God might rescue them.

We're going to talk about that again as we go through this first John chapter
five. Then he ends this by saying, but for those who know Christ, I want you to
know that there is no such thing as spiritual death because you know Christ, the
one who was born of God keeps him and the evil one cannot touch him. Spiritual
death cannot be brought into the life of a believer of Christ.

Why? Because of this assurance, the assurance that we have eternal life, the
assurance that prayers in Jesus' name will be answered, and this final assurance
that those who are born of God have a new life that's given to them by God. And
that life's going to shine in this world and all the way into eternity.

Now these verses, first John chapter five, are difficult ones to understand, but
they are also verses that give us deep assurance, and that's how I want to end
as we talk to Jesus together. Jesus, thank you for your assurance. There are so
many things that we look at that could cause us to feel less than confident
about our faith, but I pray that instead of looking at the world around us or
looking at the temptations that come within us, that Jesus, we would look at
you.

And as I look at you, I see confidence, I see life, I see faith, I see hope, and
so I put my faith and my confidence in you. I trust in you, Jesus, right now.
Help me to live out a life of confident faith, not because of who I am, but
because of who you are.

And I ask this, Jesus, because I love you. I ask this in your name, amen. Well
join us tomorrow.

We're going to talk about three more assurances for our life of faith as a child
of God in verses 19 to 21.