Are You Going to Heaven?

“Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.” – C.S. LewisDeath is terrible. So much so, that even though Jesus knew he was about to raise Lazarus from the grave, he still wept at his funeral.Most of you know my wife’s mother, Bev, recently passed away. The funeral was Wednesday, the burial on Thursday. We knew it was coming. Bev told us she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s five years ago. She hasn’t been able to speak for the last two years, and she’s been in hospice for the last two months. Linda stayed with her in her parent’s home around the clock the last week of her life, sleeping on the couch next to her hospice bed. So her death was not a surprise, but it was still very hard.Bev was a wonderful woman, and a wonderful mother-in-law. Kind and generous to everyone, she worked hard to encourage everyone she met. Every drive to Chicagoland after we moved here, she’d come with a carload of cookies and fudge to deliver to the friends she met just by visiting her daughter and coming to church with us.But more than anything, Bev loved Jesus. And she was not shy about it. I think people got tired of her telling them about how Jesus saved her. She told everybody, and if she couldn’t remember whether she told you yet, she’d tell you again. Bev knew that she was going to heaven, and it was the most important thing in the world to her.It was when she was with us, and it’s even more so today. Today, she has realized the hope she lived with since Linda was two.I do a lot of funerals. I have a lot of conversations with people shortly before they die, and I always talk with them about heaven. But it never gets old to me. These people, many of them special to me, who were just as alive as me and speculating about what heaven will be like, are now there. The actuality of heaven is now as real to them, as this earth is real to you and me.All of us are heading towards eternity. Will it be heaven for you?That’s a very serious question. I don’t know that there is a more important question that anyone could ever ask you. Do you know if you are going to heaven? It’s something you can know, and something God wants you to know.“This is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life. I have written this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life.” – 1 John 5:11-13 NLT