I heard a silly story about heaven.
It goes something like this.
A man died and went to the pearly gates and was waiting to get in. Peter was standing there with a book opened. He asked the man’s name and the man asked if Peter could please open the gate. Peter said, “That’s no problem. But you need 2,000 points to get in.”
The man thought to himself, “Well this shouldn’t be too hard. I’ve lived a good life.”
He said, “Okay, all I need is 2,000 points. So here’s my story.
I was raised in a Christian home and started attending church in the womb. I’ve got Sunday school attendance pins that reach down to the floor. I went to a Christian University and a Christian grad school. I married a missionary pastor’s daughter. We have three wonderful children, two girls and a boy. All of our children are grown and married and have amazing families of their own.
My oldest daughter runs a non-profit ministry in downtown Vancouver that specializes in feeding the homeless. Their family ministers to thousands on a weekly basis.
My son is an environmental science professor at UBC, teaching the next generation how to care for our planet.
And my youngest daughter is a missionary with her family in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She oversees an orphanage that ministers to about 100 babies and toddlers.
I was an elder in my church. We gave annually over 40 per cent of our income to the church and the poor.
I was also one of the vice-presidents of our bank. My wife and I gave our lives to help secure low-income mortgages for needy families in the Lower Mainland.
We also started and sustained a national micro-finance business loan program for villages in Rwanda.
So how am I doing?”
Peter replied, “That’s great. You get one point. What else have you done?”
“Good Lord, have mercy,” the man stammered.
“That’s it,” Peter said. “You can enter in.”
Getting into God’s good books isn’t about our work. It’s about Jesus’ work.
Here’s the deal of your lifetime. You give Jesus your sin and your life, and he gives you his righteousness and his life.
You will never get a better deal than that.
It’s the deal of deals.
It’s free to you, but it cost God a lot.
And it’s all through God’s amazing grace.
Brad Warner is associate pastor at Burnett Fellowship.