Hope At 7 - May 13 - Can you be sure you are going to heaven?

Hope At 7

Hi there everyone!

Welcome to Hope at 7 tonight. I hope you’ve had a great day with whatever you’ve been up to today. It was a beautiful day out so I hope you’re getting a little bit of the Shuswap sunshine as summer is rolling in. Bob is off tonight for Hope at 7 with a Town Counsel meeting and so I’m back with you again.

Hope you got to jump in for the intro song of the day. For a chance to win a $10 Timmy’s gift card. We’ve given away like 3 of them so far. And last night’s theme music was music from the Indiana Jones movies and so our winner is Emily Watson. Congratulations, we will be getting you your gift card!! And so remember the first to comment with the right answer on the theme music will win the gift card!

Tonight we’re going to continue with the You Asked for it topic series. We’ve spent time together looking at How we can trust faith, why there is suffering and How do we know God is real. Well tonight we’re going to look at another interesting topic. Can you be sure you are going to heaven?

Heaven is an amazing topic to think about isn’t it? I remember as a kid when I’d think about heaven I’d think about all the best things about this planet that we live on. At the time it would have been thinking about playing all the time or hanging out with my friends or endless amounts of ice cream or something. Or never anymore home work. I don’t know if you ever found yourself in that same bucket.

The innocence of a kid is pretty cool. But the reality is that that young Germiko’s view of heaven isn’t too far off of what we know heaven is. Heaven we know is this amazing place where God is. And now that I’m a little older and can appreciate that a diet of just ice cream isn’t probably the best thing the thought that heaven contains the best thing that this world has to offer is pretty correct, and we’ll get into the nuts and bolts of that in just a few mins.

I also find that this is a topic that sits heavy on a lot of our hearts doesn’t it? And I think it does because we know deep down what our lives look like and I feel like we beat ourselves up because we know that in reality we probably don’t deserve heaven because we are people who are broken and messed up at times. That’s a hard statement but I know for myself as I look back on what I’ve done I know that theres nothing I could do would cause me to deserve to be in heaven with God.

But, and this is a big but, the good news is that our access and acceptance into heaven has nothing at all to do with anything that we have done or could do, which is what I hope we’ll uncover tonight. It has everything to do with Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross for us and our sins.

So in trying to figure out whether or not we can be sure we going to heaven, we might want to start with what the bible says it takes for someone to get into heaven. Well, Romans 10:9 says, “9 If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.” It’s pretty clearly that all we have to do, the only requirement is that we need to declare that Jesus is God and believe that God raised him from the dead. That allows us to be saved and to be called a follower of Jesus. Its as simple as us making that initial declaration of faith, Jesus I believe in you and I’ll follow you, that seals the deal for our acceptance into heaven.

And we’re also told by John 3:16, a famous verse that, “16 “this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” So if you’re saved and believe in Jesus you will have eternal life and that takes place with God in heaven. This simple truth that we can hold onto.

And so what is heaven. Revelations 21:3-4 says this about heaven, “God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them.* 4 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.” It’s also described in the book of Luke as a paradise. Heaven is this amazing place that God has prepared for us, that is perfect where there is perfect love and acceptance.

So how can we know that we can be in heaven?

Bob talked a few days ago about trusting the bible. We need to trust in these verses that when we believe in Jesus that we are saved and that we have access into heaven.

Cause this whole discussion really hinges on the validity of God word and our faith in it. We went through how we know the bible is true so we understand that we can trust the words that are contained within each of these pages. And we’re told to have the faith and to trust in these amazing words of God.

But as I mentioned before, as people we don’t always rest and stay in this place we sometimes let our feelings and emotions take over and they will tell us that there is no way that we can either deserve heaven or that there can’t be a place as amazing as heaven, where their is no pain suffering and only joy and celebration with God. Or we look around us and we see the brokenness and pain around and it’s hard to let sink in that God loves all these people so much and wants them to turn to him, to be saved and be in heaven with him.

By virtue of being a Christian we are given this amazing hope through Jesus. There’s a great quote that’s found in the 4 spiritual laws tract that says, “We as Christians do not depend on feelings or emotions, but we place our faith (trust) in the trustworthiness of God and the promises of His Word.”

And so we have to hold onto these promises. That God will not leave us of forsake us. That he has great plans for us. That he loves us, that he’s preparing a place for us. Because that’s who God is, that’s who our creator is. He’s not going to just leave us to our own devices here on earth. He put into place this opportunity for us to be able to be in heaven with him.

And the cool thing is that because this only hinges on our saying yes to Jesus it means that we can’t earn our way into heaven. None of us could do any amount of good that will allow us access into heaven. We can try to be a great person but it won’t be enough. And you know what. If that were the case, there would be no way for us to know if we ever did enough. We’d be guessing our entire life on whether we made the cut. There would be no certainty if it was up to us.

The certainty that we can have. The best news that I have for you. Is that the only thing that was enough was what Jesus did on the cross. And that should be a breath of fresh air for us. All we need to do is to trust and believe. And i believe that through that God molds us into the people that he wants us to be.

That’s how we can be sure we are going to heaven. God promised us, that if we believed in Jesus that he will accept us. And we can trust God can’t we.

Let’s pray together.

Songs - Song that I’ll repost from Bob