At the end of your life there will only be one thing that matters and that is God’s judgment of you. What will you hear Him say? It will not matter how pretty you were, how much money you had, whether you came from a well off family or from a family that struggled to make ends meet. It will not matter if you had two parents or one parent or no parents around. It will not matter what others thought of you, whether you were “accepted” or not. There is only One who will determine if you are accepted and what He will say to you will echo in your ears for all of eternity.
Matthew 7:21 Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.
What is His will? What will he be looking for in you?
John 6:40 For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”
Very simply, God’s will is that you believe in Jesus Christ who He sent into the world to save you from your sin…to die for you, to be raised from the dead and to ascend into heaven.
John 6:39 This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.
Now this belief is not merely an intellectual belief. You can look at a chair and believe that it will not fall apart if you sit in it but it is not until you actually sit in the chair do you believe that it will hold you up. In the same way, you can believe in Jesus but if you are not reading His Word and doing what He says to do then you are only giving intellectual assent to his claims. You are believing with your mind but not with your heart. Those who will come to him on the last day and say, “Lord, Lord” and He rejects them did not believe with their heart but only with their mind.
Matthew 7:22,23 Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’
They did not obey.