Is Your Passport Authentic?

I’m sure by now you heard about my passport being locked up in the bank’s safety-deposit box when I was trying to leave for the Middle East. It halted everything I had planned. I couldn’t make the trip without it even though I had lots of other paperwork proving who I was! That really made me think about another trip – the trip we will all take the day we die. I believe everybody spends forever somewhere. So this is the question: “IS YOUR PASSPORT AUTHENTIC?”

When I was in the Middle East, I constantly went through checkpoints where I had to show my passport. Only after it was verified as being authentic would they let me pass through. “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you – unless, of course, you fail the test?” (2 Corinthians 13:5).

Your first checkpoint is to believe that Jesus is the Messiah and to received Him (1 John 5:1, Acts 4:12, Romans 10:13, 1 John 5:11-12). The second checkpoint is to repent of your sins. God saves through repentance; Acts 11:18 declares "repentance unto life." There is no eternal life without repentance; Acts 5:31 says Christ is exalted as a Savior “to give repentance and the forgiveness of sins.”

To repent means that you are willing to turn from the sins you have been living in. It means to have a change of heart and a change of mind. Have you really done that? Not just said a prayer, but repented? Here is the fruit of knowing that you have:

1. You desire to obey God’s Word (1 John 2:2-6)
2. You desire to know and do God’s will (1 John 2:15-17)
3. You have the desire to love people (1 John 4:7–8)

“These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God” (1 John 5:13, NKJV).