When I was in 1st grade, I used to like watching cartoons after school. One day I saw one with a highly accident-prone cat who got himself into the strangest mishaps by chasing a clever mouse, who kept himself just out of reach. Each time the cat was taunted into chasing the mouse, he was led into dangerous territory and violently killed, at least temporarily. When he died, two elevators appeared side by side. One went up to heaven with an angel, the other down with the devil to the fiery dungeon. As the cat arrived at the elevators, he was informed that since he’d been bad in mistreating the mouse, the DOWN elevator was the one for him. He pleaded for another chance to go back and try again to be good enough for heaven, and his request was granted.
I’d been taught the truth in church and at home by my parents, so I said to my mom, who was watching with me, “That’s not right, is it? You can’t be good enough to get to heaven, right?” That night my parents fully explained to me how Jesus had come to die on the cross to pay the full price for what I owed God. A few days or so later, I trusted Jesus Christ as my Saviour, and He forgave all my sins so that I could go to heaven when I die. Since then, I’ve found that God loves me more than I can understand. He has been a wise Guide, a reliable Source of strength, and a faithful Provider of unlimited comfort in every situation I’ve ever faced.
Jesus will do the same for you!
All you have to do is admit to Him that you have done bad things that anger God and that you can’t earn heaven. Then you ask for His forgiveness because of your belief that His death on the cross was for you. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” the Bible says. (1 John 1:9)
We can’t rely on ourselves or on trying to be “good enough” to get to heaven. We must just put our faith in Him that He was punished in our place so the bad things we’ve done will be erased by God.
If you do that, believing that Jesus rose again from the dead, you can be absolutely sure that Jesus will take you, just as you are, and take away the bad things you’ve done that anger God and save you from God’s anger when you die. The Bible in Romans 5:9 gives you that guarantee: “Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through Him!”
Will you let Jesus save you now?
Will you accept Jesus’ free gift of eternal life and reward in heaven?
Heaven is a place I want you to go to with me! It’s a place where you’ll never be lonely again. You’ll never be angry again. You’ll never be bored again. You’ll never be hurting or feel left out again.
And you can get your ticket there from Jesus right now, because God will hear you pray asking Him to save you. “For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved,” says Romans 10:13.
Here’s what you need to say to the Lord in prayer right now to be saved (the prayer itself doesn’t make you right with God, but believing in your heart what the prayer below says DOES):
“God, I admit I have done bad things that you didn’t want me to do, and I understand that Your word in the Bible says because of this, I don’t deserve to go to heaven when I die. Nothing I could ever do or give could erase my sins and get me to heaven. But Your word promises that if I believe Jesus died to be punished instead of me for what I’ve done wrong, and rose from the dead, I will become Your child and be loved by You forever. I ask You now to forgive what I’ve done because of the innocent blood Jesus shed on the cross. Please save me by erasing the bad things I’ve done from Your record of my life. Right now, I accept Jesus as my own personal Saviour. Thank You for Your guarantee that because I am now Your child, I will live in heaven with You forever!”
Tag: knowing God
God: Get to know Me — 1 John 1, part 2
The next excerpt from the study of 1 John 1:
Verse 2 “that life was revealed, and we have seen it and we testify and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us”
Christ is eternal, and He was with the Father from the very beginning. He became a man so that He could reach out to us on behalf of God the Father, revealing to us who God is, and so that He could be our advocate before God the Father, providing us salvation and eternal life.
Verses 3-4 “what we have seen and heard we also declare to you, so that you may have fellowship along with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”
This message John and the others had seen and heard was being declared to us. This is because God the Father wants to have fellowship with each of us. He wants to have a relationship with us through His Son Jesus Christ.
When we don’t have that relationship, God is just some distant, unknown being. Perhaps we believe He is there. Maybe we just hope He is there. Maybe we want to know Him, but we don’t. We pray and wonder if our prayers can be heard. We don’t know if God loves us and hears us. We want guidance from Him on what to do, but we don’t hear His voice. So we feel a spiritual aloneness.
But this is not what God wants. Jesus came, and this message is being proclaimed to us, so that we might have a relationship with God—knowing Him, living with Him, and sharing all of life with Him. He wants to give us eternal life in heaven. He wants to hear our prayers. And He also knows the joys of this life are made complete only in fellowship with Him and in telling others about Him.
Tune in tomorrow, as in the next paragraph of 1 John 1 we find out what the message is—what we need to believe and trust in so that we can have this relationship with God and receive eternal life.
Walk of Faith - Dave Bunnell 