The presence of a real faith in Jesus and His work on my behalf is my justification to claim Christ. It is the evidence of the Holy Spirit, Whose presence indicates that the promise of God in Christ has fallen on me. If I love God it is because He first loved me, so if I love Jesus I can rest in the promise that God will finish what He started in me.
The more I am ministered to by the Word of God, the more I can come to recognize if my faith is real, but there must be a point that I stop navel-gazing and start keeping my eyes on Christ. If my faith is genuine, as it grows I will trust in what Christ has done for me rather than my feeble attempts to do for myself. That's true in terms of my eternal salvation, but it's also true for success on the job, success as a father, etc. Jesus is my Redeemer in all things, so my emotional need to be a "winner" can diminish greatly as I understand that Jesus really is all I need. As my faith grows in that area, I will get off the treadmill of legalism and start doing the right things for the right reasons. That's how grace works.
You have some very odd ideas about Calvinism. I'm not sure where you've gotten your information, but I can tell you its not a very reliable source.
Well, most of my information comes from listening to Calvinists on the Paltalk chat network. I guess its possible that this is not a good representative sample. Maybe that's why I was predestined to come to this forum and ask questions.
You appear to define "faith" as a subjective phenomena so I am left wondering if it is has any visible attributes to another person? For instance would I, if present, be able to observe your faith in action and what might that look like?
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