Sometimes, just reading the comics in newspapers — yes, I still read REAL newspapers — can provide great opportunities to tell folks the truth about the most important things in life.
In this case, that most important thing is Heaven.
If you believe there is something beyond this life, would you call it Heaven? And if you would, who do you think goes there?
In this Hi and Lois comic strip involving a conversation between twins Dot and Ditto Flagston, Ditto make a very strong point. Do you believe what he says to his sister?
As it’s understood by many people, Heaven is where people can actually spend eternity in the presence of the creator of the universe and His Son, Jesus of Nazareth. No one has to be a ‘goody-goody’ (which I assume means a smug or obtrusively virtuous person) to qualify.
In fact, Heaven is populated mostly by people who are anything BUT ‘goody-goody’. It’s occupied by those who often:
- struggled to get their lives in any kind of order;
- battled with drug, gambling or alcohol addictions;
- missed the mark when it came to treating others well;
- wrestled with temptations such as pornography, infidelity and crime.
Maybe this leaves you unimpressed. Maybe you feel like the late, great Groucho Marx, who once said “I wouldn’t join any club that would have me as a member”.
If that’s the case, you’ll miss out on something so extraordinary that even the writers of the Bible struggled to describe the glories of Heaven with simple words.
So if you and I don’t need to be a ‘goody-goody’, then what DO we need to spend eternity with God and Jesus? It’s simple:
- accept that Jesus died on a cross as a sacrifice for all the wrongs things you’ve done and all the right things you’ve failed to do;
- confess all those moral crimes to God and express sincere regret and remorse for them (also called repenting);
- believe that Jesus rose from the dead after three days in the tomb, to crush the power of death for everyone who follows Him;
- ask Jesus to become your Lord and Saviour.
Looking for evidence that I’m not just blowing smoke? Paul, a man who had a life-changing spiritual encounter with Jesus, put it like this: “If you openly say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from death, you will be saved.”
When you do these four things with humble honesty, then Jesus comes into your heart and begins to transform your life.
He gives you wisdom to truly discern what is good and what is bad in the eyes of God (it’s often very different from what our culture suggests) and strength to obey God.
He gives you the ability to see that everyone on this planet has the same intrinsic value in God’s eyes. That means, in the words of author Philip Yancey, “There is nothing we can do to make God love us more. There is nothing we can do to make God love us less.”
He gives you the understanding that no one can earn their way into Heaven; it’s a gift from God to everybody who freely decides to make His Son their Lord and Saviour.
So, you (hopefully) have a better understanding of Heaven. Interested in learning more? Yes or no, post your thoughts below and let’s have a conversation.
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