Hope is not enough to get you to heaven, warns Rick Warren.
He said in his devotional that if people were to be asked right now whether they would be going to Heaven or Hell, the most common response would be: "I hope I'll go to Heaven."
"But hope just isn't good enough. I pray that's not your answer. Your eternal destiny is too important not to know for sure," he said.
Warren added that only a fool would be unprepared for the inevitability of death, especially as statistics show the mortality rates in the world are 100 per cent.
"You're not guaranteed another minute on this planet, much less another hour. Don't put off the most important choice you'll ever make," he urged, and quoted the Bible verse 1 John 5:11 to 12: "And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life."
He explained that people have a choice to include Jesus Christ in their lives or not. "If you have Jesus, you have life. If you don't have Jesus, you do not have life," he said.
Warren also said that people will not go to Heaven or Hell because of someone else's faith, because it is people's individual choices that determine their eternal life.
"This is why Christmas and Easter are so important. If Jesus hadn't come at Christmas and if he hadn't died and come back to life on Easter, we'd be hopeless. Nothing we do would matter. You wouldn't have this choice," he said. "The cross is the answer to our deepest problem — our separation from God."
It might be the most important decision people will have to make in their lives, Warren said, but God will not force them into anything. "It's in your hands," he simply said.