I'm the author of "The Purpose Driven Life"

and pastor of Saddleback Church in California.

I'd like for you to listen to the next couple minutes

as if your life depends on it,

because it does.

I want to share with you the most important thing

you need to know in life: how to get to know God,

how to begin a relationship with his Son, Jesus Christ,

so you can have your past forgiven,

learn your purpose for living, and gain a home in heaven.

Do you know why you exist?

The Bible tells us that God is love

and God created you to love you.

In fact, God wants to have

a personal relationship with you.

Did you know that?

God knows everything about you, and he wants you to know him,

and he loves you in spite of everything that's happened

in your life: your failures, your weaknesses,

your mistakes, your sins.

Nobody's ever gonna love you more than God does.

Unfortunately, most people never get to know God

in a personal way.

For most people, God seems a million miles away.

You know, we feel disconnected from God.

You know?

Do you know why we feel that way?

It's because we have lost our connection to God.

It happened because we all have a natural desire

to run our own lives without God.

We don't want God to tell us what to do.

We want to be in charge, we want to be God,

and that attitude of denying God the right to tell us

what's right and what's wrong in our lives, it's called sin.

And you know what?

We've all done it. We've all sinned.

The Bible says, "Everyone has sinned;

we've all fallen short of God's glorious standard."

We've all said no to God in our own different ways.

None of us is perfect,

and the bad news is that that attitude,

our sinful attitudes and our actions,

they have separated us and disconnected us from God.

That's why you feel so far away.

The Bible says in the Book of Isaiah,

"Your sins have cut you off from God."

Now, obviously, that's a big problem for us,

but since God loves us, he came up with a plan to solve our sins

and our separation problem,

and that plan of reconnecting you to God

is called salvation.

Now, God not only wants you to know him

and love him here on earth,

he wants you to be able to spend eternity with him

forever in heaven.

Now, before I tell you about God's plan to save you,

it's good news,

let me first identify some of the man-made ways

of salvation that don't work.

You know, some people try what I call "salvation by heritage."

Here's their reasoning:

"You know, my mother and my father knew God,

"so I assume I'm gonna be automatically included

"in God's family.

I'm gonna be saved too."

You know, if you think about that for just a minute,

you quickly realize the idea is illogical.

For instance, if I said to you, "You know,

"my father was married, and my grandfather was married,

"and my great grandfather was married,

then I'm automatically married."

You see how illogical that is.

And like marriage, salvation is a personal choice.

It's a decision to love and trust the Savior

that God sent, Jesus,

and nobody else can make that decision for you.

Now, there's another false way that people

try to get to heaven: spiritual salvation.

It's what I call "salvation by sincerity."

It goes like this-- you ever heard this?

"You know, it doesn't really matter at all

what you believe about God as long as you're sincere."

Well, that's illogical too,

'cause you can be sincerely wrong.

I mean, I can pick up this glass and think it's filled with tea,

but actually it's filled with poison.

If I drink it, I'll still die.

I'll be sincerely dead because I was sincerely wrong.

It takes more than sincerity to know God

and be accepted into heaven.

Heaven is God's home,

so you and I have to abide by his rules for getting there.

That makes sense.

There's another misconception about heaven, and it's this.

Some people imagine that God has this scale,

and at the end of your life, he's gonna weigh all your

bad actions and all your bad attitudes,

and he's gonna weigh all your good actions and all your

good attitudes, and if in the end, you know,

the scale tips this way...

you got a little bit more good than the bad

that you did in this planet, then God's gonna let me in

because I've earned my way into heaven.

You know, that's a very popular idea,

but there's one problem with it.

God tells us the exact opposite in the Bible.

The Bible says this,

here's the bad news: "The wages of sin is death."

You see, God's not just the God of love,

he's the God of justice, so he makes sure that evil

gets punished, that we don't just get away with it,

that people like Hitler don't just get away with it,

that all evil gets punished.

The problem is I've got some evil in my life and so do you.

But here's the best news you're ever going to hear.

Are you listening?

The penalty for everything you've ever done wrong in life,

every mistake, every fault, every sin,

every selfishness has already been paid for by Jesus Christ

when he died on the cross for your sins.

That's why he's called the Savior of the world.

You see, being saved, quote "saved,"

salvation is not something that you do

for yourself or earn.

It's something that is done for you by God.

That's the good news.

Jesus came to earth, he lived a perfect, sinless life,

so he never sinned, then he died on the cross for you

so you don't have to pay for your sins.

Wow.

Trusting in him and in his perfection,

not your imperfection, that's your only ticket to heaven.

The only way any of us get into heaven is by

God's mercy and grace.

It's all been done for you.

That's why it's called the gospel.

Do you know what the word "gospel" means?

It's just the Old English word for "good news."

It's the best news in the world.

Now here's what Jesus said.

He said, "I am, I am the way,

"I am the truth, and I am the life.

No one comes to the Father," that's God the Father,

"except through me."

That's a pretty strong statement.

Notice Jesus doesn't say, "I might be the way."

He doesn't say, "I point the way."

He doesn't say, "I teach the way."

He doesn't say, "I'm looking for the way."

He says, "I'm it. I am."

And he doesn't say, "I'm one way."

He says, "I am the way. I'm the only way.

No one comes to the Father."

Nobody gets into heaven except through God's plan,

which was to send Jesus to be the bridge

between heaven and earth.

The way to heaven is through faith

in God's Son, Jesus Christ.

You know, as a young man, I studied all the major religions

of the world.

I actually lived in Asia for awhile.

One of the things that I discovered is that

every religion deals with this idea of truth.

Truth.

In Japanese, it's shinjitsu.

For instance, the Hindu Scriptures, the Vedas, says,

"Truth is very illusive.

It's very hard to find and very few people find it."

It's not very encouraging.

Buddhism-- at the end of his life,

Buddha made a very famous statement.

He said, "I'm still searching for the truth."

He said, "I haven't found it."

Muhammad claimed to be a prophet of God's truth.

But none of these religious leaders claim to be the truth,

claim to be God, claim to be the source of truth.

That's what makes Jesus unique.

Jesus says, "I'm it. I am the truth.

Not that I point to it or teach it, but I am the truth."

And he also said this: "When you know the truth,

the truth will set you free."

So, the big question is really this: if Jesus is the truth,

how do I get to know him in a way that sets me free?

Well, I'm no authority on this,

but let me tell you what Jesus said.

He said, "You do four things.

First," he says, "you admit."

I admit.

I admit that I'm disconnected from God.

I admit that I have sinned against God

and I've sinned against other people.

I've hurt other people in my life with my attitudes

and my actions.

Now, admitting my sin is called confession.

That's the Bible word.

And the Bible says this: "If we confess our sins--"

This is a great promise.

"If we confess our sins, God is faithful and he can be

depended on to forgive us of all our sins."

All we've got to do is confess it and he will

"purify us from all our sinfulness."

Now, not only does this first step,

the step of confession or admitting,

prepare me for the perfect place in heaven,

it also sets me free from all the guilt, and shame,

and regrets I've been carrying here on earth.

And let me tell you something, that's a burden

I don't want to carry the rest of my life.

You don't need to carry all that junk from year to year.

You can be forgiven completely of anything and everything

you've ever done wrong, not because you deserve it,

'cause you don't, but because of God's mercy and grace.

So, the first thing I do to get God's salvation is I admit it,

I need it.

Second, the Bible says, "I repent."

Now, what does that mean?

What does repent mean?

Well, repent comes from the Greek word metanoia,

which literally means "meta" is your mind,

"meta" means a change

and "noia" is your mind, which means to change my mind.

When I repent, it just means I make a mental U-turn,

I think in a new way,

and I turn from thinking my way to God's way.

The third thing I do, Jesus said, is I believe.

I believe that God came to earth

about 2,000 years ago in the form of Jesus Christ,

that he died to pay for all my sins even though he didn't

deserve to die, and that he came back to life,

rising from the dead 3 days later

after he died on the cross.

He came back to life on Easter to prove that he really was

who he said he was.

He's our Savior, he's the Son of God.

Now, the Bible says this about believing: "If we confess

"with our mouth that Jesus is Lord

"and we believe in our hearts that God raised him

from the dead, we will be saved."

That's promise. Okay?

Now, it doesn't say you might be saved.

It says you will be saved.

That's an absolute certainty, and I can tell you one thing,