After Life Ends, What Comes Next?

“What comes next?” stopped being someone else’s question the morning my mother sat me down on the couch and told me that my older brother had been killed in a car accident. I was twelve. As the words left her mouth, a pain I had never felt before came over me.

That pain gave way to a deep sense of loss. For the first time in my life, I prayed for meaning and answers:

• Why am I here?
• Is this all there is?
• What happens when I die?

It took twelve years of reckless living and surviving a few car and motorcycle accidents before God brought me to a place where His answers to those questions made sense. In the end, He used two things to get my attention: the memory of nearly drowning at nineteen and my girlfriend, who had a real, personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Through them, I finally saw that I couldn’t keep ignoring God’s answers.

I didn’t like the answers at first, but I’d been close to death too many times to keep ignoring what would happen if I didn’t respond. John 3:18 puts it plainly:

“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:18)

I didn’t have the kind of belief mentioned in the first part of John 3:18. The last part of that verse described me: condemned.

Why? Because my belief that there is a God only put me in the same category as the demons:

“You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” (James 2:19)

The book of Romans made it absolutely clear I didn’t have the right kind of faith:

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)

I had never confessed Jesus to anyone. I knew very little about His resurrection or that He is God.

What I had was a small amount of knowledge about God, mostly hearsay, with nothing solid from the Bible to back it up. From that hearsay, I figured all you had to be was a good enough person to get into Heaven. Truth be told, I wasn’t. Nobody is.

For me, the honest answer to “What comes next?” was Hell. Not because God wanted that, but because I’d never actually said yes to Him while the Holy Spirit was convicting me of my sinfulness. Not making a decision or procrastinating on what God had revealed to me was a clear “No” to God.

One night in the spring of 1982, I said yes. I accepted Christ’s gift of salvation, as Ephesians describes it:

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Here’s what I didn’t expect: it wasn’t just about where I’d end up after I die. It was the start of a lifetime of walking with God. There have been ups and downs, but I’ve found guidance and peace I never would have had without Him.

It took God twelve years to get hold of my heart; I am so glad He never gave up on me. The essence of God’s love is this: if I had been the only person on earth to accept Christ’s gift of salvation, He would still have gone to the Cross just for me. The same is true for you.

Now, “What comes next?” isn’t someone else’s question; it’s yours. Where will you find the answers?

A good place to start is A Mechanic’s Handbook To The God Of The Bible: Why God Just Makes Sense. And if you’re ready to settle it today, go to ALL PAGES (top right) and click HOW TO FIND PEACE WITH GOD.