Don’t Just Hope You’ll Go to Heaven
By Rick Warren
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“And this is the testimony:
God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the
Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” (1
John 5:11-12 NIV)
If you were to head out to a mall today and ask people if they are going to Heaven or Hell, you’ll likely hear them say, “I hope I’ll go to Heaven.”
But hope just isn’t good enough. I pray
that’s not your answer. Your eternal destiny is too important not to know for
sure.
Only a fool would be unprepared for what
we all know is inevitable: death. The most recent statistics show that
mortality rates in the world are 100 percent!
You’re not guaranteed another minute on
this planet, much less another hour. Don’t put off the most important choice
you’ll ever make.
The Bible says in 1 John 5:11-12, “And
this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his
Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does
not have life” (NIV).
That’s about as clear as you can get. If
you have Jesus, you have life. If you don’t have Jesus, you do not have life.
You have a choice.
You won’t go to Heaven because of someone
else’s faith. You’ll never go to Hell because of someone else’s choice.
It’s your choice! You’ll decide where
you’ll spend eternity.
This is why Christmas and Easter are so
important. If Jesus hadn’t come at Christmas and if he hadn’t died and come
back to life on Easter, we’d be hopeless. Nothing we do would matter. You
wouldn’t have this choice.
The cross is the answer to our deepest problem
— our separation from God.
The Bible says, “When you were dead in
your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive
with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our
legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it
away, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-14).
God nailed everything that separated you
from himself to the cross. But God won’t force you to make the most important
decision of your life.
It’s in your hands.
It’s time to choose
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