People ask,”how do you know if you are a Christian,or not?”1John2:3-6 gives an answer-“We know we have come to know him(Jesus Christ) if we obey his commands.The man who says,”I know him”,but does not do as he commands is a liar,& the truth is not in him.But if anyone obeys his Word,God’s love is truly made him complete in him.This is how we know we are in him(Jesus Christ);Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”This doesn’t mean that only if we never sin,& always do according to God’s instructions can we be certain that we are Christians.Yes,it does mean that our hearts desire will be to know and follow The Father’s Will as Jesus did(Matthew6:38,Jesus said-“For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.”)!When we ask Jesus into our lives to be our Lord & Savior,He gives us His Spirit to be our Helper,and much of the HELP His Spirit gives us is a Right Conscience that enables us to know deep down what is Right & Wrong.Romans 7:15-23 talks about this when it says”I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work:.......For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.”When we are yet sinners,we will not have the intense internal conflict that Romans talks about.Sure,we may have an intuitive sense of something that is really bad,but not to the extreme these verses in Romans describe.But once we turn to Christ and His Mercy&Grace to save us from our sin,we will have His Spirit living inside us that our old sin nature will wage a war against.And our day to day battles with our old sin nature as we face temptations and all sorts of character/heart situations,decisions,&responses as we walk step by step through every day we live is what we will sense in out hearts&souls.This is why The Holy Spirit inside us will create in us a hunger to know God’s Heart about “life stuff”...to know what God has given us to learn about HIS HEART in His Word.We see that even Jesus got up early to pray and be with His Father (Mark1:35,”Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”),& David talks about his heartfelt hunger/desire to first seek the Lord in the mornings(Psalm5:3”My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look to YOU...”;Psalm63:1,”O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You,  my flesh faints for You...”).This is what goes on in our souls& our hearts when our Trust in Jesus alone for our salvation has opened the door of our hearts to His Holy Spirit...we have the Holy Spirit lovingly drawing us to know God’s Awesome Expressions of Love and His Great personal concern for our daily lives....we have a hunger to know more and more about HIM and HIS Love Letter to us...so we have a tug on our hearts to read His Word and to talk with Him about what His Spirit will reveal to us in His Word,& talk with HIM about how His Word causes us to think about our step by step walking throughout every day we live...& how we confront the battles lying in wait for us every day.Some battles we will win,& some we will lose...this is the “waging war” that Romans talks about.There will be the skirmishes&battles that Romans talks about in all of our days,and as we successfully confront more and more of these with God’s Word and His Spirit’s help...we take more and more ground away from the sin nature and open more and more ground up in our lives for Christ and His victories in our life making the love of God more complete in us(1John2:5”But if anyone obeys His Word,God’s Love is made complete in him.”).The hunger in our souls&hearts&lives to seek God in the mornings is a pretty good sign of The Holy Spirit presence in our lives.The proof of the pudding is who wins in our souls&hearts&lives in the skirmishes with sin we face every day...,because God Always Wins!Sure,we will have the struggles that Romans talks about...but The Holy Spirit’s perseverance in the lives of those that sincerely Trust in Christ will have more and more victories in these skirmishes as they walk every day as Jesus walked.And this is some of the “how we know”!Dear Lord...I pray for Your Spirit’s presence in my life to be the first voice I seek in the mornings,beckoning for me to spend time in The Lap of my Father in Heaven...and for Your help in kneading Your Love Letter so thoroughly into my heart&soul&life that the responses I have to the skirmishes I have with sin today are driven back and away from the ground in my life they previously claimed.I know sin will not give up,but I pray as Your Love is made complete in me...that the ground I give You to take is never taken again by the sin that previously laid claim to those areas of my life.