Are You Prepared?

You’re probably aware I’ve been battling cancer for five years. I’m sorry to say my treatment has had to come to an end, any further treatment won’t help, and might cause further problems.

My cancer appears to be growing slowly, but it has lodged in the lining of my lungs.

I became a Christian when I was 20. I didn’t ask God to set his love on me back then and choose me to be his in Christ (Ephesians 1:4), and so I can’t complain he has now asked me to walk this road. 

People often talk in terms of “living with cancer”, but the apostle Paul is more helpful when he says that “to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).

What does the future hold? Well, there are many passages in the New Testament that focus on heaven and eternal life with God. Often people will think in terms of doing your favourite activity, like golf, or bingo, forever in a party-like atmosphere. 

But the New Testament focusses on God the Father and Jesus the sacrificial lamb at the centre of heaven, with a vast circle of saved sinners (and I’m not writing as anything other than as a sinner who has been forgiven by Jesus), focusing their shared delight upon the centre of heaven. Maybe this is what the old pictures of harps on the clouds were trying to convey.

The gospel clearly states that we cannot enter heaven by trying to be good. We all have sins in our lives. These sins need to be wiped away, forgiven, because nothing unclean can enter God’s heaven. This is why Jesus died as our substitute on the cross. 

I want ask you, are you prepared for heaven? Only by being forgiven is the door opened, and it’s open very wide indeed.

GRAHAM ERRINGTON