If you die today, do you think you will go to heaven?
The faces and weird laughter I encounter on people’s faces every time I asked that question are a story in itself. Sometimes I see fear, sometimes joy, but the majority of the time there is just awkward dead silence. Not the most comfortable question to answer.
Two months ago in the Dominican Republic I walked out of a house tears falling from my eyes, because I didn’t know if I was allowed to share the gospel. My heart is heavy for the unsaved, broken for the ones that don’t believe in our Savior.
I don’t have a special calling on my life, I believe Jesus commanded us all to do the great commission. The news is to crucial to be kept to ourselves.
This month in a small community named Queenhythes on the island of Jamaica
my church family and I are wandering around, telling families, drug dealers, alcoholics, moms, dads and everyone else we encounter about Jesus and the cross. It seems like everyone has heard about Jesus, yet no one understands the cost of His crucifixion and the grace of God.
So back to the question of heaven.
If you die today, do you believe you will go to heaven?
Most common answer we encountered in the last two weeks
“I am a good person and I do good works so I will go to heaven.”
We are not good people, non of us are!
“For everyone has sinned, we all fall short of Gods glorious standard.
Romans 3:23
If we would be honest in our self examination we would soon see how sinful we truly are. May someone just examine their thought life for a day and be sure to count how many times we think of self and selfish nonsense. We are all prideful human beings.
Good works, how we could boast in each other’s and Gods presents if we could climb the heavenly latter that way. It would be glorious for our prideful already full blown heads to show off and talk about all the amazing things we have done. And that way we believe we would actually deserve heaven, after all we worked so hard for it. It would only be fair if a hard laborer will enter heaven while the person who did nothing will be locked out and thrown into the dark pit forever.
Yet the gospel of Jesus doesn’t work that way.
The gospel is love that ran blood red on a rickety cross
One blood bath made us all righteous in Gods eyes
The gospel doesn’t make sense.
The gospel isn’t fair
The gospel is Gods love for us and we will never be able to comprehend it with our narrow human minds
The gospel unites the serial killer with the single mom. The unborn child with the thief and the drug dealer with the prostitute. Everyone becomes one family through Jesus and His Holy Spirit. Hard to comprehend but all sins forgiven through one glorious sacrifice on the cross.
Faith is the magic ingredient that gives us eternal life. Faith, that we have been forgiven. Faith, that God loves us so much that he send his one and only Son to die for our sins. Faith that we don’t need to be perfect to accept the free gift of salvation. Faith that we cannot do anything good to go to heaven.
And faith that we can trust God with His plan.
Yesterday God brought us to a woman, named Denise who didn’t want to let go of her life because she was afraid to not be able to give Jesus her everything. She didn’t want to do things halfhearted or not do them right. While a total commitment to Jesus is a sign of God working mightily, perfection will never happen. We will never get things right. We will grow, Jesus will help us learn, yet we will never be able to compare to Gods glorious standard.
We told her that if we are in Jesus all God sees is His Son. He doesn’t see our sin, He doesn’t see our filthy Hearst, all He sees is the blood sacrifice and His Son.
Jesus came for the sick not the healthy. He came for the ones who saw their sinfullness and their weakness. He didn’t come for the prideful who believe they got it all figured out and rely on their own strength.
If the world would only have three seconds in Gods present they would understand the urgency to repent and accept the precious gift. Three seconds in the absolute holiness and perfection of God would make us shiver in fear. Three seconds would be enough to grasp how much we need Jesus. We would never feed into the lie of good people going to heaven ever again.
The prophet Isaiah once had an encounter with the Lord that literally scared him to death.
“It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. Attending him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet and with two they flew. They were calling out to each other,
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Heavens Armies!
The whole world is filled with his glory!”
Their voices shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke.
Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips and I live among people with filthy lips! Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of Heavens Armies.”
Isaiah 6:1-5
God always knew that He needed to give the ultimate ransom. He needed to make things right, so He can get the glory. We can never earn righteousness through our own filthy rags.
Only through Gods kind and gracious plan, salvation is ours.
“Yet God with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.”
Romans 3:24-25
One of the most heartbreaking things while sharing the gospel to the nations is the lies people have been told and the distorted truth that sank into their heart.
My prayer is that the world will see that salvation is free and that God wants all of us to come back to Him.
Love
Jen
