It's not deeds that gets you into heaven, it's a personal relationship with God!

The Qur'an deals with this point in the following verse:

On no soul doth God Place a burden greater than it can bear. It gets every good that it earns, and it suffers every ill that it earns. (Pray:) "Our Lord! Condemn us not if we forget or fall into error; our Lord! Lay not on us a burden like that which Thou didst lay on those before us; Our Lord! Lay not on us a burden greater than we have strength to bear. Blot out our sins, and grant us forgiveness. Have mercy on us. Thou art our Protector; Help us against those who stand against faith."

Qur'an Surah 2 verse 286

In particular we understand from this that there are two necessary conditions for getting into Paradise:

1. Your deeds

2. The mercy and forgiveness of God.

Part of the Grace of God is that He may multiply the good deeds, though he won't increase the bad ones. In a Hadith (saying of the Prophet Muhammad):

Allah's Apostle (peace_be_upon_him) said, "If a person embraces Islam sincerely, then Allah shall forgive all his past sins, and after that starts the settlement of accounts: the reward of his good deeds will be ten times to seven hundred times for each good deed and an evil deed will be recorded as it is unless Allah forgives it."

Sahih al-Bukhari

Personal relationship?

If we consider for a moment what constitutes a 'personal relationship', we conclude that we only have our human-human relationships as a guide. The relationship with God cannot be the same. In some senses it is like a personal human to human relationship; in other senses quite different.

A human-human relationship

A human-God relationship

The starting point of the relationship is that we begin to know each other well

God knows absolutely everything: He knows our every thought. We can know God through appreciating His creation and studying His revelations

What is the concept of God in Islam?

Through this knowledge we place value on each other to the point of love

We know God because we see the beauty and value in His creation and know that true value can only come from the truly good, i.e. God. We see, through this, that God values and loves us because of what He has bestowed on us. From this we can learn to value and love God.

When people love each other more and more, their wills become more directed to pleasing each other and trying to help each other.

God's love for a particular human being is shown primarily through guidance - guidance on how to live a good life, what to believe and how to act; man's love for God makes him seek to please God through following the guidance he has given. He voluntarily submits his will to God, and his desire becomes to seek out all that is good. As the believer follows the true guidance he / she will become more and more successful. This does not necessarily mean in outward appearance, but rather includes primarily inner peace: peace of mind, contentment of the heart and joy of the soul.

Part of seeking to please one another will involve an element of self-sacrifice in which one person gives up something in order to give to the other.

God, being omnipotent and omniscient (all-powerful and all-knowing) can never lose or give up anything. Nothing He gives diminishes Him at all, and nothing we can give increases Him at all. He is not dependent on us; we are dependent on Him. On the other hand, we may well give up something in order to please God. Indeed, it is equivalent to having difficulties now in order to prosper ultimately, in the next life.

This is at the core of the benefits of free will . Through it, we become able to make plans, subjecting our instincts to our will power in order to achieve future success. Belief in a potentially good future is a belief fundamentally similar to belief in God. See also

OK then, convince me. Why accept Islam?

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