Warning: This article is purely opinion. It is based on biblical ideas, but I hve provided no scripture references. Use this, if you will, as an inspirational tool, but do not take these words as divinely inspired, because they're not.

I'll bet most of the people who read this believe in God. Or so they say. Do you believe in God? No, you don't. Belief is composed of more than just the idea that there is a higher Being somewhere out there. Belief is a lot more.

Most people who claim they believe in God really don't. They in actuality believe that there is something that created the earth and time and all—but they don't dare show it. If you worship God with musical instruments or think faith alone saves you, you believe there is a God, but you don't believe in God. If you believed in God, you would believe and do what He says.

If you believed in God, you would believe in the awesome power He carries. For goodness' sake, He created the entirety of our universe from . . . nothing. He formed it out of the blackness and the void of prehistoric existence. He began time. He set the cosmos in order so that we petty humans (who, by the way, were created from the very dust of our Earth) could live peacefully and carry out our lives to benefit God. Also, in the beginning, God created Hell, that place of eternal torment and torture. Yeah, that place is real. Many people claim to believe in Heaven, but not Hell. There is no Heaven without Hell.

How can there be light without darkness? There has to be either both Heaven and Hell or neither, and of course, we know that the former is real. If you believe that there is only a Heaven, you don't believe in Heaven. You believe that a better place exists, and you think you are guaranteed to go there after leaving this world. That guarantee doesn't exist.

My point is that belief requires action. One must takes steps to please God if he believes in Him; one must take steps to get to Heaven if he believes in such a place. So, do you believe in God? If you're sitting on your lazy butt, or if your doing something, but doing it wrong and sinfully, then you don't. That's simply all there is to it. You either believe and obey, or you live a carefree, haphazard life that winds you up where you most definitely don't want to be. Believe, obey, and go to Heaven . . . or else.

And don't think God will show mercy for someone who has deliberately disobeyed. And don't think that God will say, "Oh, I'm sorry, Bob, it wasn't your time to die yet. Here, I'll send you back." That's the way it works in the movies, but this isn't the movies. God shows mercy for those who do His will. We cannot possibly earn the eternal reward of Heaven, so He must show some mercy to allow us to enter—but without the works, we don't stand a chance of getting to Heaven.

You may find it funny that I find belief and works to be essentially the same. My reason? Because you simply can't have one without the other. It doesn't work that way. You don't believe if you don't work, and you wouldn't be working if you didn't believe. Belief and works are inseparable.

Now, get out into the world and spread the Word. That is belief. That—along with faith and God's grace—gets you to Heaven.

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