Take a Chance or Have Confidence In a Promise?

If I were to ask you the question - would you like to take a chance?  Most likely, you would say no thank you.  Taking a chance indicates a gamble, an accident or a slim possibility of something happening.  So many times I have heard people thank God for the "chance of eternal life".  It's one of those things that just makes me cringe and wish that I could take the person aside, like Priscilla & Aquilla did with Apollo in Acts 18:26 to more accurately explain the way of God.  We do not have a chance of eternal life.  The joys of heaven are not to be experienced by only the few chosen ones from a lottery, but are there for the taking of anyone who is willing to submit to the will of God and obey His commandments.  Heaven is not an accident, it is being prepared for us.  John 14:1-4.  There is not a possibility of it happening, it is a sure thing - Jesus said "if it were not so, I would have told you."  There is no "chance" at all.

A better word to use would be hope, or promise.  Hope is an expectation, trust or promise, to have confidence of a strong & confident expectation.  We can be confident in so many things regarding our salvation - God promised it before time began (Titus 1:2)  Hope is a confident expression.  The knowing that something great is real and obtainable. 

We can know that there is a heaven, and we can know that we have eternal life (I John 5:13) We have the hope of heaven.  A promise made by God.  Not a chance, not an opportunity, not a random destiny or the luck of the draw.  Hope.