Skip to main content

How good do you have to be to get into Heaven?

This is an excerpt from A.W. Tozer's, "Daily Pursuit" of a friend of his vising a fallen woman on her deathbed.

Story:
The woman said to him, "Dr. Reich, you're a good man, but you don't know me.  I'm a terrible woman, just terrible.  I'm not worthy for you to sit here by my bed."

He quietly said to her, "You're dying."

"I know I'm dying," she said, "but I lived a terrible life, a vile life."

"God will save you."

Looking at the Dr., she said, "Not me, no, no.  I'm not enough.  My goodness can't get me in."

Picking up on her attitude he said, "Sister, if your goodness can't get you in, your badness can't keep you."

"Is that so, Dr. Reich?"  And she began to cry.

"That's right.  If goodness can't get you in, badness can't keep you out."

Verse:
"For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace." - Romans 6:14

My Thoughts:
Salvation is difficult at times to fully grasp for someone who has been in church their whole life.  Can you imagine how difficult of a concept it must be for someone who hasn't experienced God's grace to comprehend?

Then you get into the whole works vs. faith debate from some people.  Search the Bible and let me know if you find how much it says you have to pray to get to heaven?  How much you have to give?  How much you have to serve?  The only thing that you have to do is believe and place your faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

"We are righteous because we have been saved by faith in Christ Jesus.  Our actions and behaviors reflect our salvation.  They don't contribute to it."

The greater the "badness" in your life, the more God's grace abounds.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

2020 is Hindsight...Finally!

Wow, what a year! 2020 could literally be an entire decade, maybe more, of history, change, and lessons rolled up into these twelve months. While many aspects of 2020 were kind of sucky and we would like to forget them, it will certainly be a year to remember. And it will be enlightening when this year is looked back on in 10, 25, or 50 years to be discussed. I wonder if we'll seem like geniuses or idiots? Probably both to some extent! While there is so much that I could consider and analyze about this year, I'll try to break some of it down into four dimensions - Physical, Spiritual, Mental, and Social/Emotional. These are events and happenings from my world and perspective and I'm trying to be open in sharing and would love to hear from others on events you found most transforming. Physical When COVID cause gyms to close, that messed me up. Our town and state were late to be hit with severe cases and therefore later than many across the country to close up shop. I'm n...

Worship > Fellowship

I believe that worship, true worship of God, is more important than fellowship with other believers.  Now I'm not saying that fellowship and relationships aren't important.  But I am saying that if I'm not worshiping God, if I'm not right with him, then my other relationships can't be right.  My fellowship and worship with him is more important than my relationship with my wife, my son, family, friends, my church, and my community.  Think about it.  How can I love my wife like Christ loved the church if I don't love Christ?  I wouldn't know how to love without knowing him.  Why should she submit to me if I'm not worth submitting to?  And yes I do believes wives should submit, but I also believe that won't be an issue as long as she's submitting to a godly husband.  (Ephesians 5:22-25) Our love for others must flow from our love and worship of God.  1 John 4:19-21 reads, "We love because he first loved us.  If anyone says,...

Do You Need Revival?

"Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in You?" - Psalm 85:6 The thoughts below were in my devotional this morning by Dr. Lee Sheppard: "So how can we know if we need revival in our lives?  Well, we need revival when our salvation has lost its joy, when our sin does not break our heart, and when we make little to no effort to witness to the lost.  We need revival when worship becomes boring, when we are at odds with believers and see no need for reconciliation, and when we fail to believe God for the impossible.  We need revival when we have to be begged to give and serve in church and when we would rather make money than give money.  We need revival when we have to be entertained to be drawn to church and when we are indifferent to the fact that there are 2.5 billion people on the planet who have never heard the name of Jesus.  We need revival when we don't regularly see the supernatural evidence of God's power and when ...