If you go to bed tonight as a believer in Christ, why do you think you’ll wake up a Christian tomorrow? The fact that you’ve been a Christian for a long time? Your own willpower? You feel confident that you’re strong enough to keep loving God?

If these reasons are enough to stem your fears, you probably have not considered your circumstances closely enough. We have a powerful enemy whose entire campaign is to destroy our faith. You still have sin that lives in you and seeks to eat away your hope. You live in a body that goes bad, and every night’s sleep brings you closer to a day when your mind might lose its traction, and with it, your “rock solid” hold of God and the gospel.

Christians should have steel-strong confidence that they will remain Christians until they die. But it is precisely not because of our strength, our willpower, our solid determinedness to believe in Christ. Rather, it is because God himself has sealed us with his Spirit. The only way a Christian can wake up without faith is if God withdraws the down-payment of his Holy Spirit — and this he will never do.

Look at the Book is John Piper’s effort to help teach people to read the Bible for themselves. It’s an ongoing series of 8–12 minute videos in which the camera is on the text, not the teacher.

As part of this initiative, Desiring God has partnered with local churches for regional events focused on particular passages of Scripture. This is Part 8 in a series on Ephesians called “Seeing and Savoring the Splendor of God’s Sovereign Grace.”