“One way to know whether you have experienced God’s saving grace is to look at your own life. Do you see a track record of conviction for sin and repentance? Repentance, you know, involves more than feeling bad. It means turning away from the sin about which you feel bad.
William Arnot insightfully put it like this:
“The difference between an unconverted and a converted man is not that the one has sins and the other has none; but that the one takes part with his cherished sins against a dreaded God, and the other takes part with a reconciled God against his sins.”
Do you see the difference? The non-Christian might feel bad about a sin, but ultimately he takes his sin’s side against God and continues in it. The Christian, on the other hand, feels bad and then takes God’s side against his own sin by waging war against it.”
–Mark Dever in his chapter on Habakkuk in The Message of the Old Testament: Promises Made