"Would you miss me if I die?" my eight year old asked me. I hated to consider the thought, but I encouraged her, "I would miss you forever. But I will probably die first. And we know we will see each other again, and be together forever in Heaven, so we don't have to miss each other anymore."
My daughter thought about that a bit, and then said, "But what if I'm bad? Then I won't go to heaven and we won't be together." How do we all seem to default to that thinking? Bad people go to hell and good people go to heaven. Is it true?
While I don't want my daughter to do "bad" things, I explained to her what I believe is the truth. God loves her. Jesus died for her, and as long as she confesses with her mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believes in her heart that God raised him from the dead, she will be saved. (Romans 10:9)
Yes, her faith needs to be a live changing faith. But she will sin! And that sin will not separate her from God or keep her from heaven. Praise God!
I am sinner, and I have done lots of "bad" things. I am repentant, so to God those things are gone. But I still did them, and the world could say I am "bad." Therefore, I am so thankful that God allows bad people like me into heaven.
There is a flip side to this story, however. And that is that plenty of "good" people go to hell. There is great sadness in this. Unless God shows them mercy, there are plenty of people in the world that do good things, are kind, giving and loving, but do not believe in Jesus, and according to the Bible no one can come to God, except through Jesus.
There will be "bad" people who go to heaven, and "good" people who go to hell. We can't judge who is bad or good by the standards of the world or even the standards of the Bible. The measuring stick is Jesus: Who loves him, and want to change their life to obey his commands.
Keep living a life changing faith, so that you can show people the way to Heaven.
It isn't their behavior...it's their Savior.
Kelly Combs is a Christian wife, mom, writer and speaker. You can learn about Kelly by visiting her website at www.kellycombs.com
8 comments:
Great explantion of the Gospel, Kelly! You are a wonderful mom, too.
Thank you Jeanette, from the heart.
Thank you Jeanette, from the heart.
This is a terrific presentation of the basic Gospel message. My son's morning devotion captured this same idea. Would love to reblog this next week from my blog with your permission.
Absolutely Kari. I'd be honored. You can repost in entirety, just add a link back to my blog as well.
Awesome! Thanks. Never really reposted an entire blog post before... I just plan to copy and paste it and have a link. Let me know if you have a better way. Will be posted on Tuesday.
There are buttons at the end of each post that allow sharing via twitter, FB, blogging etc., but I've never used them. One of them says, "Blog this!" so you could press it to see what happens. Or your way of cutting and pasting works too.
You could call it a guest post if you wanted, and then put include my bio at the end in your "cut and paste."
Thanks for the suggestions. We'll see what I'm able to figure out on Tuesday morning. Will be a good learning experience for me.
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