Do you know you can deserve heaven – you don’t have to assume, you can be sure. That’s what the Bible says in 2 Peter 1:5. “According as the divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through knowledge of him that has called us to glory and virtue.” Then he says, “Having escaped corruption in this world through lust, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge temperance, add, add, add.” In verse 10, he says, 2 Peter 1:10-11 NLT

[10] So, dear brothers and sisters, work hard to prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen. Do these things, and you will never fall away. [11] Then God will give you a grand entrance into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

So you can be sure you are going to heaven. He’s simply saying add all these things to yourself, all these virtues, and these virtues don’t come easily. They come as you spend time with the Holy Spirit and as you live a submitted life. Recognize your mistakes, your shortcomings, your strengths, and your weaknesses. Say, “These are my mistakes, these are my shortcomings, these are my strengths, my weaknesses, come help me, Lord.” And he says, when all these things are in you, you will not fail on earth and when it’s time, God will open wide the gates of heaven for you to enter into.

That’s where I got my understanding that you can deserve heaven from.

They say, “Oh, it’s by grace, it’s not by works.” No, sir, no ma’am. Grace gives you the opportunity to do all those things that will make you deserve heaven. Don’t drop grace and don’t give it a meaning that does not apply to it. Grace is just charis. Charis, as you look at it from the Greek, is favour. It is not unmerited favor. But that’s another thing entirely when we look at the other part of salvation that people call “once born again, forever saved.” That’s not my focus here,  it’s been treated in other articles. My focus here is the Holy Spirit and how people  Christians force Him to leave and don’t even know that he has gone.

And you find it in the time of Malachi, after the complaints and warnings He left and showed up 400 years later in the ministry of John the Baptist. Ephesians 4:30 and also 1 Thessalonians 5:19 says, “Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit; don’t quench the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit has moods, you better know Him to relate well with Him so you don’t drive Him away with sin and carnality (Isa.59:1-3; Rom.8:5-8).

We talked about salvation and works of righteousness, and we say you can’t even do works of righteousness if you don’t have the Holy Spirit. He is the active dynamo that pushes you into doing things. The Bible says in Philippians chapter 2, “It is he that will it and also cause to happen.”If he doesn’t put the will in your heart and doesn’t help you to actualize it, it will just remain dormant in your spirit. “Oh, I should go and visit that brother,” or, “Oh, I should go and buy something for that sister,” it will remain there. But if it’s from the Lord, he will put it there, he will prompt you, push you, give you the resources that you will need to make sure that the thoughts he has put in your heart come to pass.

That is the dynamo. That is the Holy Spirit. So we see that the works that justify, that prove or confirm true salvation are the attributes of the Lord Jesus Christ which he manifests in the lives of the people He dwells in (Gal.2:20). What tells me you are born again is what comes out of your mouth, your mannerism, the way you behave. Those are the things that tell me if you are born again or not. I became born again, and during the vacation went to visit my friend.  His mum said, “Andy, what’s wrong with you? Are you well?” I said, “I’m fine, ma’am.” She said, “But you look different. You are quiet. There is something about you that is different from the last time I saw you.”And I told her, “Ma’am, I’m born again.” And she was so happy because she was also born again and was saying, “Now talk to your friend so that your friend can also calm down like you.”

The works and the things you say, your demeanor, will tell me who is living inside you, whether it is the devil or whether it is God. You cannot be lying, for example, and tell me you have the Holy Spirit. The Bible says all liars will go to hell. All means all; that includes Christians. You can’t be telling lies and tell me it’s a business lie. I’ve heard people saying, “It’s a business lie, it’s not a real lie.” The Bible says all liars will go to hell. So even if it’s a joke, I should say it with fear, if I have to, not accept that it’s a business lie or a joke. The Bible says don’t let nonsense jokes come from your mouth. It uses the word “foolish jesting” in the King James Version, but rather let seasoned words, words that bless people, psalms, hymns, the word of God, scriptures, those are the things that should come out of your mouth (Rom.5:1-11,18 and 19). And the Bible can never be wrong. So the attributes of the Lord, they are the ones that should come forth from your life because you are supposed to be vessels for the Holy Spirit to operate from.

So, check yourself, because it is not common knowledge that it is not everybody that professes to be a child of God that has the Holy Spirit dwelling in him or her. Or for that matter, it’s not everybody that displays the so-called gifts of the Spirit, that is a child of God. God knows all those that will desire to accept and serve him.

That’s John Chapter 10, Verse 27. And 2 Timothy Chapter 2, Verse 19a.

Is that your life? Are you departing from iniquity? Because when you get  to heaven eventually, the scripture in Matthew Chapter 7, 22 and 23 may come alive for you. That scripture says, “You call me Lord, Lord, and don’t do what I said you should do. Depart from me, you that walk iniquity. “This was a set of people that came to God and said, “We want to enter heaven.” And he says, “No, you can’t enter heaven.” And he said, “Excuse me, sir. While I was on earth, I prophesied in your name. I did miracles in your name.” “I did wonderful things in your name.”

“And here you are telling me I can’t enter heaven, what do you mean?” And Jesus said, “Depart from me, I never knew you. You that walk iniquity.” Look at the word, “I never knew you.” It’s not, “I knew you and you departed.” From day one, I never knew you. Yet they spoke in tongues, yet they prophesied, yet they did miracles in his name. And he told them, “Get away from me, you that work iniquity.” That walk iniquity will probably explain to you what transpired there and the word “Lord” as well. Iniquity as used in that place is anomia, and that word,  as you look at the four listings under Thayer’s Dictionary, you will see under iniquity four meanings; put them in one word, rebellion, disobedience. That’s what you will see. You rebelled, you lived a life of, “This is what I want to do.” And you are saying you have the Holy Spirit. You don’t. You that work iniquity. That iniquity is not sin. It is simply rebellion. “This is what I want, this is what I will do. I’m not going to listen to you, I’m doing whatever I like.”

David saw it again in the Old Testament, in Psalm number 10, verse 4. David said, “The wicked, in all his pride, does not consult God 100%.” King James Version says, “God is not in all his thoughts.” In other words, God can be there 99%, 80%, 85%, 91%. God is not in all his thoughts. I’m trying to show you the Holy Spirit, being the keeper of the child of God, being the one that keeps him on that road that leads to heaven, and why you cannot afford to grieve the Holy Spirit or quench the Holy Spirit with sin, with wrong doctrines or headiness.

The meaning of Lord in Greek is kurios. That word means someone that has oversight over you, someone that owns you. He owns you, and then you push him aside and do whatever you like. And you call him Lord. He’s not your Lord,  He’s just your saviour. But,that’s not real Christianity; He must be your Lord and Saviour before the relationship between us clicks.

The major difference between the Holy Spirit and the spirit from Satan is that the Holy Spirit glorifies God in all things, while the spirit from Satan gives glory to Satan, even when hiding under the cloak of righteousness or good deeds. This is because demons can imitate tongues and other gifts of the spirit, but they cannot imitate love and the attending obedience to the word of God, which are the clearest and most distinct evidence of the presence of God in a person. Let the life of Jesus be seen in you. That is the only way not to grieve the spirit of God, just do things as Jesus would do things.