This is not about a TV show. This is actually about the most important thing that can be determined in your appointed time on earth. I once was lost, but now I am found. If this is confusing to you, keep on reading. Currently, I am reading a book called, "Heaven" by Randy Alcorn. I would encourage all Christians to read this book. Sometimes, I think we dont really understand how amazing Heaven is. The briefest of summaries would be as follows: "Heaven is a lot like earth, just remove the sin and add the physical presence of God incarnate, which is Jesus Christ." If you need more detail, please read the Bible and the above mentioned book which is about 500 pages long.
The reason for the introduction about Heaven, is because I want to write what you must do to obtain citizenship in Heaven. (I find it a little bit humorous how theologically accurate that old song "Heaven is a place on Earth actually is, but I digress). In our society, what I am about to write will not be regarded as politically correct. (See my other blogs if you think I am concerned with being politically correct.......I am not).
The first thing that I must say, is that not everyone is going to Heaven. This is heart breaking. The reason for the heart break is that if you are not going to Heaven, then you are going to Hell. Now, I have some people say they would rather go to Hell with all of their friends and have fun. Unfortunately, in Hell you will not know your friends or God. It is a place of utter torment. Also, a lot of people do not think Heaven will be fun, but we can not even begin to imagine the joy we will experience when we are in Heaven, it is not something you want to miss. There are many misconceptions about Heaven and Hell, I will not address them today, I want to address only what it takes to get there.
If you are like me, (Hopefully, for your sake you are not) you have to plan everything. If you are going to plan a road trip you must have everything mapped out. A couple of years ago I decided to take a trip to watch several baseball games. I was going to leave Grapevine, go to Cincinatti, St. Louis, Kansas City and Oklahoma City to watch baseball games (I have a sickness). Well, before I left I google mapped the directions to every stadium and Motel 6 (They said they would leave the light on) so I knew exactly where I was going. It would seem a little silly to me to try and take a trip to a known destination without any known directions. I mean I could have headed north and I may or may not have made it to Cincy, but thanks to the map I got right where I needed to go. The directions led me to the destination. Well, in the same manner, God has given his recorded Word to lead us to his destination. His destination is his house, which is Heaven. In the following paragraphs, I would like to try and make those directions as clear as possible.
1. We all must recognize that we are lost, and without direction we are not going to make it. What does it mean to be lost? It means you are searching for a destination but you do not know how to get there. Some people are lost and don't care, some are lost and just don't know it yet. I have driven a long way down a highway before I realized I was going the wrong way a time or two (I was a teenager, give me a break). In the Scripture, lost means to be seperated from God. How do you become seperated from God? Well, the easy answer is sin. Everyone has sinned and fallen short of God's standard. In the beginning, Adam and Eve were created and had the ability not to sin, but in their free will, they disobeyed God and sin began. Every person that has been born since, was born into sin. There is one exception, but that will be discussed in a moment. If you say you have no sin, then the Scripture says you are a liar. To have no sin, you could never have lied, not even once as a child, never been angry without cause, never had a lustful thought and the list goes on and on. I have met few if any people who did not realize that at least one time in their life they did something wrong. Therefore, based on God's standard to enter Heaven we are all out of luck. The only way you can get to his house is to be sinless.
This poses a great dilemma, because the only way to get into Heaven is to be sinless, but it is impossible to be sinless. Well, when I said that no one who has ever been born without sin, I did mention one exception. That exception is Jesus Christ. This is why the virgin birth of Jesus Christ is of utmost importance. If Jesus was not born of a virgin, then there is no way to get to Heaven. Fortunately, he was, so there is. Jesus was born of a virgin, and then for about 33 years he lived a sinless life. The most amazing thing is that he was subjected to all of the same temptations that we are, yet he lived without sin. Although, he lived a sinless life, he was sentenced to death without cause. He was executed on a wooden cross between 2 thieves. Now, there are a few who say He didn't actually die, but you might want to go study how efficient the Romans were at execution. He was certainly dead, He died in my place and in yours. It was done by proxy, which is to say in the place of. I can only get to Heaven on the basis of the death of Jesus Christ.
If you are wondering about how that works......Well, he didn't stay dead, on the 3rd day, he got out of the grave victorious over sin and death. How to you acess Heaven? If you will confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and belive in your heart that Jesus raised in from the dead you will be saved from the penalty for sin. This is why we can say, "Oh, death where is your sting, o grave, where is your victory?"
