Here's how to be the best at everything you do in life... and also how to get to Heaven

If you want to be a better person....

If you want to be the best person you can be.... Id you want to be seen by others in a positive light... If you want to give yourself the best chance of being observed by the bosses, and the best chance of moving up the latter... if you want to get to Heaven, there are basically 2 things you need to do:

1. Love God with all your mind, heart and soul
2. Love your neighbor with all your mind heart and soul.

Basically, you can take every self help book ever made and you can sum it down to these two things. You can even consider the 10 commandments, and they are all basically these two things. Don't kill, don't lie, don't covet thy neighbor's wife, don't covet thy neighbor's property, and the rest all tie into love thy neighbor.

So now we must define love. What is love?

Love is not an emotion or a feeling. Love is a choice. You have to choose to make sacrifices to put other people before yourself.

Examples of this include:

1. A doctor writes a stupid order.  Instead of complaining, you treat the doctor with love and respect.

2. So you and your wife go to a baseball game and it's 90 degrees. It's the best game you've ever watched, and you want to stay. Yet your wife wants to leave in the 5th inning. So you sacrifice the game to make your wife happy. You choose your wife over your game.

3. It's 90 degrees out and you want to sit inside in the air conditioning, yet in order to put food on the table you decide not to purchase air conditioning. You are frugal for love of your family. You choose your family over your own comfort.

4. It's 90 degrees out and you want to blog or gossip online, yet your son wants to play catch with you. Even though you're sweating your butt off, you play catch with a smile on your face.

Bottom line: It's important you keep your priorities in the right order, and God and other people are right up there at the top.

If you love God and other people before all else, you should have to make no further effort at improving your image, the way people view you historically (note to politicians), and your ability to view your own life as a success.

Not all believers will get to Heaven

As a man of Faith, it saddens me when I learn someone I know does not believe in God.  Yet what is even sadder is when someone I know believes but does not act in good Faith.  So unlike some of my peers who believe they will meet up with these folks in Heaven, I'm not so sure this will happen.

That's not to say that those individuals did not ask for His forgiveness near the end, nor that God did not forgive that person.  Still, there are a heck of a lot of people who say they believe who do not live as Jesus would.

If it were true that the only qualification to get into Heaven was to believe in Jesus, then 75 percent of the 300 million population in the U.S. at this moment, or 250 million people, will go to Heaven when they die.  I have a hard time believing this is how it will work.

You do not have to be as perfect as Jesus to get to Heaven. Jesus died for us so that we could all be prophets of the Lord, and we could all ask for forgiveness of our sins at any time.  But in order to do this we have to make a conscious effort not just to learn the wisdom of our Faith, but to share that wisdom by our actions.

I'm sorry to say, there are a heck of a lot of people who believe who do not do this.  When these people die, I believe, there is a chance that God will not open the door to Heaven to them.  I mean, I don't know what God will do, but I don't think he will let a person into Heaven just because they believed.

It's kind of like Freedom.  There are many people in this country who take their freedom for Granted. They do not appreciate the millions of people who fought for and died so that we could appreciate our natural rights the way we do.  There are those who do not even think of how great they have it.

These people do nothing to advance the cause.  They make no effort, show no appreciation, for American Exceptionalism.  They surely enjoy the benefits it, but they just assume it always has been and always will be there. Like Heaven, they just assume if they believe they will get to go.

So, it's sorry to say, but I don't think I will meet up with all of my friends in Heaven.  I do not think all of my brothers will get to Heaven.  Surely they could have an epiphany at some point in their lives, but absent that they will not be walking up the steps to the great euphoria.