Heaven or Hell?

The Lord put it on my heart to talk about the topic of heaven and hell today. I've had people ask me this interesting question, "If God is a loving God, then how can He send someone to Hell?"
In fact, I have asked this question myself. I have sought God for the answer and here is what He told me.

God does not send anyone to Hell, they send themselves. When a person is born, they are born into the family of sin, therefore they are sinners by nature. Sin deserves punishment and the punishment for sin is hell or separation from God, eternal death. Yikes! What if someone killed one of your loved ones and a judge let him go free? That would not be right, would it? The same for God, He would not be righteous if He let sinners go free. Yes, He is a God of love, but in that love there is judgement. However hard this is for us to understand, it is the way it is. But here is the amazing thing; because He loved you so much He did not want you to go to Hell so He took all of your sin (all the sins you have ever committed or ever will commit) upon himself. He literally took them. It was as if He sinned. Then He took your punishment. He died a horrible death and suffered immensely but He didn't stop there. He went to Hell for you so you wouldn't have to. Now that is a loving God!
All we have to do is accept what He did for us. We have to recognize that we are a sinner in need of forgiveness and then accept that Christ already paid the price for us!
Amazing!

I want to tell you a testimony. One day I was praying and I said to God. "God I am sure glad you are God, because if I was God I don't think I could have gone to the cross and went through what you went through."
Then God brought the beautiful faces of my children to my mind. Each one of them. And I felt so much love and desire to protect each one of them. Then God asked me this question, "What if it was up to you and if you did not go to the cross it would mean eternal torment and separation from your children?" I shudder just thinking about it. Then I said, "Yes, Lord, I see now. I would try to go. I would do everything I could to endure it so that I could be with my children."
And in this, the Lord showed me that this is comparable to how He felt and why He did it. Only the amount of love I feel for my children, is only a tiny drop compared to how much He loves each one of us!
If you want to read more about salvation go to one of my earlier posts entitled, "Salvation is a Parachute".