Can you be sure?

You know, it has been proven that you learn things better when you teach and I'm pretty sold on this idea. Last year I heard many many times 'you remember 95% of what you teach someone else'.

In either case, whether it is true or not, there is one thing that has been coming up over and over yesterday and today. Aside from all the semi-stressful school work I have been able to go out on campus and talk to some students about spiritual topics. Yesterday me and MW went out and talked to two guys, C(?) and B(?). Both of them were from Christian backgrounds and would say they are Christians, yet there was one thing, one question which they both answered the same way. "If you were to die tonight, how sure (on a scale of 1-10, 1 being not at all and 10 being 100% sure) are you that you would be going to heaven?" or something. And they both answered between 1 and 6. Neither was sure.

Today too, me and AL got to meet this Muslim girl, L(?). We had a very long conversation about Islam and what she believes. We asked questions about the nature of God, if we can have a relationship with God, if people are perfect, about Islamic belief concerning sins, punishment, judgement day, and what she prays about among other things. Although in some places we disagreed, I think we mainly agreed.

We agreed:
God is perfect (Matt 5:48).
God is loving (1 John 4:19).
God is just (Deut 32:4).
People all have sin (Rom 3:23).
There is no one who doesn't do some sort of sin (Ecc 7:20).
You can't 'out weigh' your bad deeds with good deeds and earn your way to heaven(Eph 2:8-9).
People who 'do what is right' their entire lives won't necessarily go to heaven and people who didn't know of God or lived a terrible life of sin can still be saved before the end (Eze 33:12).
God forgives. Amen. However, how can God forgive people in Islam?

This was a question that I don't think she fully understood what I meant. I mean, if God is perfect, he can't be around us, who have sin. On top of this, we can't even deal with our sin ourselves, once we have it, we can't just erase it, we can't over power it with good deeds, we can't. We can however ask God for forgiveness and through Jesus' death and resurrection we can have faith and trust that God forgives us and that there is hope that we can live again (1 John 1:9). Our sins have been paid for and dealt with. Our sin's punishment has been placed on Christ and we have been given the gift of eternal life (Rom 6:23).

We don't need to guess at whether we have salvation. We don't need to wonder.

John 3:16 "for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life."

If we place our trust in Jesus, we

shall not perish.

This is a promise from God.

I really pray for L(?). I could have sworn that I saw her eyes watering. I really wanted to see God break down the lies that cover the gospel in Islamic belief. She kept saying adamantly 'Oh, there is hope. There is always a chance that after a life of doing good things and truly repenting of your sins to God that you may go to heaven, but you never know. Only God knows.' or something. Basically, there is no way to know, but you should live a good life anyways. I wanted to see her break down in unending tears of joy at knowing that God's love is stronger than sin, that God's justice is not fickle, but He still has authority to forgive us through Jesus' death on the cross and that by His resurrection we can have hope.

Psalm 62:5 Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.