Love, Kennedy

Tonight I watched a movie called Love, Kennedy about a young girl named Kennedy Hansen.  It was about a girl who was dying from a disease.  The disease she was dying from was 

juvenile batten disease.  By watching her life she appeared to be a good Christian girl.  She appeared to have faith that she would be home with God.  But if you watched carefully there were a couple of phrases, or at least one thing that she would say that would make you doubt.  The first thing I noticed though was when she was singing the song “army of Helamen/we’ll bring the world His truth”. One of the lines to the song says “let each who is worthy go forth and share.”  None of us are worthy, yet we all can share.  Yet at the same time we should all strive to live a life of integrity and a life worthy of the gospel we represent.  But we don’t have to wait until we are perfect or have reached a certain level of worthiness before we share the gospel with others.  There are some good parts to the song though.  “ we have been taught and we understand that we must do as the Lord commands.  We are as the army of Helaman.  We have been taught in our youth and we will be the Lord’s missionaries to bring the world His truth.”  Those are all good things but without a relationship with Christ, they are meaningless.  If we are trying to earn our way to Heaven it will never work. I will discuss more on this later.

Also, she kept talking about returning to Heavenly Father and how we needed to be good to return to Him.  One of the last things they said she said audibly before she died (she lost the ability to speak before she died) was that if the whole family would choose the right they would all be able to go back to Heavenly Father and live with Him forever.  When you first hear or think about this it could seem good and true but it’s not.  If all you needed to do to get to Heaven was to chose the right or be good a lot more people would be going there.  Romans 3:10 says “as it is written, ‘there is none righteous, no not one.’”  The Bible tells us how we can get to Heaven and it is not by being good though. 

James 2:10 says “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” The only way we can get to heaven is through faith and trust in Christ.  “That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9.  Salvation can only come through Christ alone.  “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” Ephesians 2:8-9.  Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  No matter how good we think we are, we will never be good enough to get to Heaven.  Without Christ our good works would never get us into Heaven.  2 Corinthians 5:21, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”  Because of Jesus’ death on the cross we can spend eternity with God and that is more than enough reason for us to have peace and hope and joy in this life.  Praise the Lord for that!!