Don’t Just Hope You’ll Go to Heaven By Rick Warren
“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 asked people if they are going to heaven or hell, many of them will likely 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.
It’s foolish to be unprepared for what we all know is inevitable: death. The most recent statistics show that mortality rates in the world remain 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. And, at the same time, you’ll never go to hell because of someone else’s choice.
It’s your choice! You decide where you’ll spend eternity.
This’s why Christmas and Easter are so important. If Jesus hadn’t come at Christmas, and then if he hadn’t died and come back to life on Easter, we’d be in a hopeless situation. 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, “You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-14 NLT).
For more Daily Hope with Rick Warren, please visit pastorrick.com!
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