Growithim, Indonesia.
Who wants to obtain a ticket to Heaven? If you do, let us hear this devotion.
If we are planning on going to visit a city or country using an airplane or train, the staff at the gate will ask us to show our tickets. Then they will let us enter the gate and have our flight or ride.
But what about our ticket to Heaven? To find out, let us read from the book of Revelation.
“And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.”
Revelation 7:2-3
It is written that those who received the seal of God will be saved from the ruin and eventually enter into His kingdom. And we now might ask, “What is the ‘seal of God?’”
First, “the seal of the living God will be placed upon those only who bear a likeness to Christ in character.” (The SDA Bible Commentary, Vol. 7, 970.3)
Second, “the seal of the living God is placed upon those who conscientiously keep the Sabbath of the Lord.” (The SDA Bible Commentary, Vol. 7, 980.2)
Then, why there are many who do not receive the seal of God? It is because they do not bear a likeness to Christ in character nor keep His commandments. They, who claim as “Christ followers,” are unwilling to leave their earthly pleasures behind, unwilling to deny self nor bear the cross. And at the end, they will be upset as they do not receive the seal in their foreheads.
That’s why the Bible says, “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” (Romans 6:11-13)
May this devotion remind us to always hold the “ticket” to Heaven, that is to ask God’s guiding hands that we always have His character and obey all His commandments.
God bless us all. Amen.