Making it to Heaven

Read: “Who may go up the mountain of the Lord?” (Psalm 24:3)

We all want to make it to heaven, and to bring along as many as we can with us. This is the rationale for our walk to holiness and our work of evangelization. The question is, as we read in Psalm 24:3, “Who may go up the mountain of the Lord? Who can stand in His holy place?” What are the requirements?

First, it is for the clean of hand and pure of heart. With heaven as intended by God as we read in 1 John 3:2-3, “…we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure.” We are to live pure. We are to strive for righteousness and holiness. We are to be perfect just as our heavenly father is perfect. That is how we shall be like him.

Second, it is for one who has not given his soul to useless things. What is vain. What are the useless and vain things? These are the things of the world. We are not to indulge in these nor seek them out, nor find our consolation in them. A holy person after all is someone who is set apart. He is in the world but is not of the world. He does not pursue what the world pursues – money, power, fame, pleasure, career, honors. These are vain and useless things which we cannot take into heaven, which in fact might keep us from making it to heaven.

When one does the above, he will receive blessings from the Lord and justice from his saving God. What is justice? It is giving the other person what is due. What is due to us? It is salvation which God went to great lengths to win for us to the extent of sacrificing his own Son Jesus on the cross. Jesus won salvation for us on the cross and that is what is due to us. But we need to accept that salvation and manifest our faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord by a life of holiness. So, we can see that what we are to be is so markedly different from how people in the world are.

What the world shuns and disdains are what could lead us closer to God and nearer to heaven. When we finally make it to the mountain of the Lord, may we find many others there especially those we evangelized. That would be quite an assembly where there would be a great multitude which no one could count from every nation, race, people and town. We will need to endure and persevere, and perhaps even shed our blood for the cause of Christ. As Psalm 24:6 tells us, such is the generation that seeks Him, that seeks the face of the God of Jacob.

Let us continue to seek the Lord as we grow in holiness. Let us continue to serve the Lord as we do the work of the New Evangelization. John says in 1 John 3:1, “…The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” Let us work such that the world would meet and know Jesus, and start to live in and for him. Let us live and act such that the world would know us, to see Christ in us. This is the way we will be empowered to witness. Let us look forward to our eternal reward when we will be in God’s presence and see Him face to face.