Heaven

Heaven and hell are some of the least popular parts of the gospel among nonbelievers. Nobody likes the idea of consequences for our actions and judgement for our sins. If I would ask a young child if she would rather live in a world free of any consequences or in a world with consequences what do you think she would pick? What would you pick? We like being able to do whatever we want without any negative consequences. On the other hand, if I would ask a young child if she would rather have consequences for others or live in a world where others can do whatever they want without any consequences I’m sure she would pick a world with consequences. We don’t like when others do evil acts and get away with it. We long for justice and when someone does something evil in our society we want to see the person pay the consequences for the evil act, we don’t want the person to get away with it.

Many people who do not believe in God still believe in heaven, but most people who don’t believe in God don’t believe in hell. Nobody wants hell to exist, not even Christians, but at the same time a universe without hell would mean a universe without justice. God is merciful, but he is also a God of justice. If God let everyone do whatever they want and enter heaven he wouldn’t be a loving God. Not every criminal in this world will be captured and held accountable in a court, but no criminal will escape God’s judgement at the end of life. I once heard a pastor preach on the topic of hell and he said that anyone who has come face to face with pure evil in this world can fully understand why there is a need for hell. If there was no hell, what would hold us back from taking revenge on each other? When you have seen and experienced pure evil hell becomes a comforting thing, because you know that nobody will ever escape justice in the end.

We have all sinned and nobody will enter heaven without having first surrendered their life to Christ. We are not all murderers or rapists, but we have all sinned. I consider myself to be a good person, but I have sinned and deserve judgement just like anyone else. I don’t deserve heaven, heaven is God’s free gift to me when I surrender my life to Christ. I have never cheated on my spouse, I have no criminal record, I have never killed anyone, but I’m still a sinner.

Once I kissed a guy who was interested in me although I knew he was engaged to someone else, not a nice thing to do. I was also a part of groups who bullied other kids both in elementary school and in high school, not a loving thing to do. I used to steal a lot of stuff from different stores when I was in high school, that’s not good. I’m not going to list all the sins I’ve committed in my life so far but my point is that we are all sinners although we like to view ourselves as “good people”. I’m not a good person, I’m an imperfect human-being and I’m a sinner. My final destination after this life is hell, unless I surrender to Christ and accept Jesus into my heart. When I surrender to Christ I’m forgiven for all my sins. I have access to this forgiveness because Jesus chose to take the punishment that I deserved, he was willing to go to hell for me, so that I would never have to experience that. Imagine that you were sentenced to life in prison and someone shows up to take that prison sentence for you, so that you are free to go. Jesus did that for each one of us, we are all “sentenced to hell” for what we have done during this life, but Jesus took our sentence upon himself and was sentenced to death in our place.

I have no fear of death at all, if I die tomorrow I’m ready. Don’t get me wrong, I hope that I will get to live for many more years but I’m not afraid of death. What I’m afraid of is that not everyone that I love will be in heaven with me one day. I’m fully aware of the fact that only those who have surrendered their lives to Christ will enter heaven. When my Grand Mother died five years ago I was sad, but at the same time I had peace, because I knew that I would get to see her again one day. I knew that my Grand Mother had faith in God and was a believer. I don’t know where all my friends and family members stand with God, if they have surrendered their lives to Christ or not. We all have to make that choice for ourselves, nobody else’s faith can save our souls. Each one of us have one life to decide if we will surrender our lives to Christ or if we will choose to rather reject God. You can have all the knowledge in the world about God but it isn’t before we surrender to God that our soul is saved. The reason it takes any effort at all to surrender to God is that our spiritual enemy is pulling hard in the other direction, keeping us away from God and away from our purpose. One of our spiritual enemy’s most common tactics is fear, he can use fear to keep us away from a lot of good things that God has for us in life. Fear of what others will think of us, fear of the future, fear of pain etc.

One interesting thing that I learned about heaven and hell as a new believer a few years ago is that hell means complete separation from God and heaven means to be with God forever. We often imagine heaven to look like something we have seen in the movies. Our idea of hell can also be based on what we have seen in a movie. The Biblical description of heaven is simply a place free of evil, a place where we are with God forever. Hell is a place where we will be completely separated from God, which means we will also be separated from anything that is good, anything that is love. Whether we are Christians or not, none of us knows what it’s like to be completely separated from God. In this present world, not all of us are interested in God but he still loves every single one of us. God is constantly present in our lives whether we notice him or not. None of us are completely separated from God in this world.

This present world is a mix of good and evil. There is no place on Earth where there is only evil, there is always a little bit of good in the midst of all the darkness. There is also no place on Earth where there is only good, evil is always present. We can have a wonderful day at the beach with our family, until we end up in an argument with each other. We can also be going through something very difficult in life but in the midst of all the darkness we have a hope that things will get better. Our present world is always a mix of evil and good. God is with us, but our spiritual enemy is also present. The hope of heaven is that it’s coming around the corner. When our souls are saved and secure in Christ we have a peace and hope that nothing can take away from us. Once we are saved we can not loose our salvation. The storms will keep coming in this life but we can face every difficulty with confidence, hope and peace because God is with us. If God is with us, then who can be against us?

Excellence

Pastor Holly Wagner from Oasis Church in Los Angeles teaches a great sermon about excellence in this video. Holly talks about how God calls us to strive for excellence in whatever we do. Excellence means we won't do our job half-halfheartedly, we give it our best. It means we won't do our marriage half-halfheartedly, we give it all we've got. This is how God calls us to live our lives: "Whatever you do [whatever your task may be], work from the soul [that is,put in your very best effort], as [something done] for the Lord and not for men" Colossians 3:23 (AMP)


Excellence doesn't mean "be perfect", excellence means we do the best we can in whatever we do. Excellence is about doing better today than you did yesterday, which makes it apparent that excellence will take more than just casual effort to obtain. Mediocre lives and average effort doesn't bring glory to God. God calls us to give our very best to whatever we do. If you are a painter do an excellent job at serving people this way, don't leave any paint stains on the windows and so on. If you are a nurse, do an excellent job at caring for the people who are your patients.


We can ask ourselves a few questions to determine how we are doing in the area of excellence. Are you treating with excellence everything that God has given you? Your job, are you better at it this year than you were last year? Are you giving it your best? If God has given you a family are you treating them with excellence, are you going above and beyond for them? Has God blessed you with a car? Are you treating that with excellence or are you just frustrated that you don't have a better car? When we serve people with excellence it pleases God and brings him glory. God gave everything to us, so how can we give Him anything less than our very best?


God calls each Christian to live a life of excellence. We are called to be examples of excellence in our speech, in loving others, in forgiveness etc. However, excellence will never be easy. Excellence always means stepping into something new. There is always work involved in excellence. We will never experience the life God desires for us from within our areas of comfort. It's not comfortable to change, it's not comfortable to work for excellence, but it's necessary if we are going to fulfill our life's purpose. Whatever you do, give it all you've got!

Undeserved Love

I’ve been a Christian for almost nine years now and at this point in my spiritual journey I’m starting to have some favorite chapters in the Bible. One of my favorites is Titus 3:

“Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone. 

At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit”

Titus 3: 1-5 (NIV)

One of the most counter-cultural themes in the Bible is that God loves us although we do not deserve his love. Our societies are built based on a “you get what you deserve”-mentality. We realize that you don’t always get what you deserve in life. Sometimes you do all the hard work and someone else still gets the promotion, but we like the idea of getting what we deserve. We also love the idea of others getting what they deserve, especially when they have done something wrong. Forgiveness and grace is something we don’t like very much when it comes to other people, but we do expect others to forgive us.

One huge difference between Christianity and all other world religions is that Christianity is not about getting what we deserve. God does not love us because we have earned his love or because we are such good people. God sees all our thoughts and actions, he sees our messy lives and he loves us anyway. Most of us have only experienced the kind of love that humans can give us, so we learn early on to hide our messes and only show the beautiful side of ourselves. The sad truth is that we have learned that people won’t always love us if we show them our real selves. God on the other hand, knows every single mistake we have ever done and loves us despite all that. There is nothing we could ever do in this life to loose God’s love for us. God doesn’t love the way humans love, God’s love is perfect and never fails.

God doesn’t invite us into his family because we have done so many good deeds. We can never earn our way to heaven, it’s a free gift. We receive this gift by “opening the door to our hearts” and letting God in. It’s our faith that saves us, not our long lists of good deeds. One of the most encouraging things about the gospel is that we don’t change ourselves so that God can love and accept us. God loves and accepts us just the way we are, and then He starts to transform us from the inside out through the Holy Spirit. The only thing we do is decide if we will open up to God when he knocks on the door of our hearts or if we will slam the door shut in his face. God has given us free choice, we can choose to embrace his love or we can choose to reject him.

A Story about finding forgiveness

Understanding how much God loves every single human being can be hard to grasp. Many people say they didn't fully understand how much God loves them before they became parents. As they think about how much they love their son or daughter and understand that God loves each human that much and a million times more they become overwhelmed. 


God loves every human being like a parent loves a child and so much more than that. He loves you and he loves me. He loves the people with high status in our society and he loves the people our society considers worthless and unimportant. God loves us unconditionally, there is nothing we can do to make him stop loving us. This doesn't mean that God approves of everything we do, just like no parent would approve of their children doing what is wrong, but he will never stop loving us. We can lie, steal, cheat, murder, and be completely selfish and he still loves us. Many times people who have been through much hardship in life tend to understand God's love the best. They know what living life outside of God's will looks like and feels like and they know that they have done many things wrong, so God's forgiveness becomes overwhelming to them. God's grace blows their mind.


I once heard a pastor say that the people who will come to God last are the ones who think that they are "good people" and have done nothing wrong. The murderer, the thief and the prostitute knows very well that what they have done is wrong so when they learn that God can forgive them for every single mistake and give them a new life they celebrate. The man who thinks he is a great person and that his mistakes in life are "no big deal" is the one who will come to God last. This man can not see his need for God.


The truth is that we have all done mistakes in life, there is not one truly "good person" on the planet. We have all done things that are the opposite of love, and we will have to pay the price for each mistake when this life is over unless they have been forgiven by God. God's forgiveness can't be earned, it's freely given to every person when we come to him and truly regret what we have done and ask for forgiveness.


Nobody will enter heaven without first having all their sins forgiven, we all know that, so why do so many of us run away from God? Sometimes it's because we have decided that there is no such thing out there as a "God", so we won't go looking for him. Other times it's because of our pride, we don't want to admit that we did something wrong. We all remember how "fun" it was as a child to go back to our parents and say "I'm sorry". Nobody likes the feeling we get when we need to admit a mistake, but the freedom that comes when we receive forgiveness and the weight is lifted off our shoulders makes it worth it. Carrying around the guilt and shame that comes from mistakes that haven't been forgiven is no fun way to live a life. When we receive God's forgiveness there is no more shame, there is only freedom and joy.

Rewritten

We have all said and done things in life that we deeply regret and maybe we even have entire seasons of life that we wish we could erase. We've all gone through things in life that have left us feeling ashamed, worthless and filled with sorrow and disappointment. Sometimes experiences like these can cause our hopes and dreams to die and make us fearful of the future.


The amazing news in the gospel is that no matter what we've been through, no matter what we have done in life nothing is too dark for God to handle. When we come to God he offers us forgiveness for every single mistake we have done in life, big or small. He wipes our past clean and lets us start over, we get a new life. When we let God into our hearts he starts transforming every single part of our lives and makes everything new, there is nothing that he can't fix or heal or restore. Our past will no longer define us, our mistakes no longer get to define us, we have been given a new future. God is rewriting our story. He is working in all things for the good of those who love him.

Mercy

My past embraced
My sin forgiven
I'm blameless in Your sight
My history rewritten

You delight in mercy
Mercy triumphs over judgment

Oh Love, great Love
Fear cannot be found in You
There will never be a day
You're uncertain of the ones You choose

You delight in mercy
Mercy triumphs over judgment

So I will awake
And spend my days
Loving the One
Who raised me up
From death to life
From wrong to right
You're making all things beautiful

Our good deeds can't save us

One of the most common misconceptions about the Bible and God is that it is the “good people” who make it to heaven and those who have broken the rules in the Bible will end up in hell. I think the reason we assume this is the way Christianity works is that we are so used to this way of thinking ourselves. We marry “the one” and as long as our husband lives up to all our expectations on him and keeps all our “rules” we will love him, if he breaks a lot of the rules we will eventually divorce him. When a person in our society follows the law everything is fine, but if a person starts to break many laws he or she will eventually be thrown into prison. Us humans like the idea of karma; “you get what you deserve”, but God has a totally different way of relating to us.

When God sent Jesus to Earth it changed everything, rather than “you will get what you deserve” it became “When we do something wrong, Jesus gets what we deserve.” When Jesus died on the cross he willingly paid the price for all the sins committed of everyone in the whole world and died for us, for our mistakes. The reason someone had to pay for all our mistakes was that God is a God of justice, he won’t let any wrongdoing go unpunished. When someone murders another person God doesn’t think: “Oh that’s okay, I will just look in the other direction”.

When Jesus died he took all the sins of humanity on himself, the sins from the past, the present and the future. Jesus paid for all our mistakes once and for all, so that the day each one of us will meet God we will be faultless in front of an all-powerful perfect God. Jesus dying on the cross is as if you were being sentenced to the death penalty and Jesus shows up in court and says: “Take me instead, let this person go, I’m willing to die instead of this person.” Why would anyone do such a thing? The answer is love.

“For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that anyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

John 3:16 NLT

Jesus died so that every single sin of mankind could become forgiven, but each one of us are free to choose if we want this to apply to our own lives or not. During our short lives on earth our main task here will be to either accept God and invite him into our lives or to reject God. This will be the most important decision we make in our lives, the moment we decide to accept God and invite him into our lives it changes everything, we become forgiven and washed clean of all our past mistakes. We become a brand new person (spiritually speaking that is, don’t expect your wrinkles to be gone).

We often tend to think that God wants peace on Earth today but the Bible makes it clear that Jesus didn’t come to Earth to bring peace, he came to bring division. God is interested in seeing who is with him, and who is against him. One of the places this is mentioned in The Bible is in Matthew 25:

“All the nations will be gathered in his presence, and he will separate the people as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world.”

Matthew 25:32-34 NLT 

This world that we live in today will never see peace, it will always see different forms of chaos, but when we become followers of Christ we can have peace on the inside despite the chaos that surrounds us. The good news is that this chaotic world is only temporary. The Bible makes it clear that there will be a day in the future when everything of this old world will pass away and there will be a new world where there is no more death, no more mourning and no more suffering. God will be in the world with us and we will see him face to face. The Bible talks about this in Revelation 21:

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”

Revelation 21:4 NLT

The Bible also makes it clear that Jesus will come back to Earth one day and nobody will know what day that will be, we now live in what is called the end times. One day, maybe sooner than we think, we will stand in front of the God of the universe and have to answer for all our choices in life. Our days in this life are numbered, from the day we are born our clock starts ticking, we move closer and closer to death every day and we never know what day will be our last. We are not guaranteed tomorrow, we only have today. The days we are given on this Earth are our chance to decide, are we going to choose to accept God or reject God, the rest is details.

I used to work as a nursing assistant in a nursing home when I was younger and sometimes I noticed that it seemed almost like all the good people would die quicker while the really mean people would live longer. I wondered why God would let some really mean people live for so long, while others who were so loving would die at a younger age. It makes more sense to me today. Life is short for all of us, we only have a few years on this Earth to decide how we feel about God, to pick a side. Some people seem to need more time than others to make the right choice.

Once we choose to accept God and invite him into our hearts God starts to change each one of us from the inside out through the Holy Spirit. When you see someone going from being a non-believer to a Christian you might see them start doing a lot of good things, but it is important to remember that it is never a person’s good works that saves them. The Bible makes it clear that anyone who believes in Jesus, repents and asks for forgiveness for his or her sins will become saved.

Most of us understand that for example a woman who loves God and loves people will go to heaven the day she dies. We are also aware that a man who for example was a rapist and murderer and who continued to do evil up until the moment he died will go to hell. What many of us have missed on the other hand is that even the criminal who has committed many crimes but at the end of his life becomes a believer in Jesus, repents and asks for forgiveness for all of his sins will go to heaven when he dies. We also tend to miss the fact that even the woman who thinks of herself as a good person but who doesn’t accept Jesus into her heart during her life will not go to heaven the day she dies. This is radical and couldn’t be further away from how humans see things.

Humans see love as something you earn, while God loves everyone on this earth and is willing to forgive any sin as long as the person is truly regretful and wants to turn away from his or her former way of living and start following Jesus. It is not our long lists of good things we did during our lives on earth that will get us into heaven, it is our faith in Jesus that saves us. It is so simple, yet so radical. God’s love for humanity is unlike anything else you will ever discover on this earth.

Why Did Jesus Die?

The idea that Jesus died on a cross so that our sins could be forgiven can be hard to grasp or accept. Most of us like to think of ourselves as good people. We notice that there is a lot of evil around us and we long for justice when others have done something wrong. On the other hand, when we ourselves have done something wrong, we are less interested in justice. We think that others should be able to forgive us, but we aren't as quick to forgive those who have hurt us.


We don't want to do the wrong thing, but there's something in us that make us do what we don't want to do and that makes it hard to do what is right, The Bible calls this our sinful nature. Before Jesus was born every time God's people sinned they would have to sacrifice something (traditionally a lamb) to get forgiveness from God. Imagine if every time we did something evil we would have to pay a fine, most of us would run out of money pretty quickly. You steal something, you pay. You lied, you pay. You cheated, you pay. When Jesus died on the cross he payed the price for all our wrongs. Jesus volunteered to pay for all the wrongs humanity had done in the past, the present and would do in the future.


The moment we realize that it isn't only other people around us who do evil things, but that sin is in all of us, we become very thankful to God that he removed what we sometimes call karma and replaced it with grace. Grace means that we can make huge mistakes in life and still be forgiven by God, God won't stop loving us even though we've done things that hurt others and ourselves.


The day we decide to surrender our lives to God all our mistakes and wrongs are forgiven, every single one of them. From that day on, when God looks at us he no longer sees our mistakes, he sees a new person. That is why Jesus died on the cross, to make us spotless in front of God. The thankfulness and awe that comes from being saved is what will propel us into wanting to serve God wholeheartedly through loving God, loving ourselves and loving others. Karma means that each person gets what he deserves. Grace means that Jesus got what we deserved.