Good Directions

Dear Kids,

John 14:6. “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

I did it again! I got lost. I have never been good at directions and, much to my chagrin, get turned around every time I go somewhere out of the ordinary.  Even just the suggestion of driving to a new place by myself causes my nerves to tingle. For this reason I have been very grateful for the GPS app on my phone. I have come to rely on it heavily and use it even for places that I have been to before to assure myself that I will get there without getting on any unintended rabbit trails.

Jesus would soon be going back to His Father in heaven. He told His disciples that He was preparing a place for them to come and be with Him. How many times in the years He spent with these men had He prepared places for them to stay? This was different. The disciples had been told He was going back to His Father’s house, but were confused about how to get there. They were troubled about this, so Thomas posed the question, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”  Jesus answered with the following directions, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” There were no other directions or alternate routes to get to the home Jesus was preparing for them in heaven. Only perfection was allowed in His Father’s house and there was no way to obtain this except by putting their full trust in Jesus’ ability to pay the price for their sins and take them there.The directions to get to heaven are the same today. It is not by doing good things, paying money for forgiveness of sins, going to church every week, or going to the “right” church.  It is only by putting your faith in what Christ did on the cross of Calvary. He died and rose from the dead to provide us the cleansing needed to wash our sins away and make us fit for heaven and a relationship with Him. All we need to do is to “confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in our heart that God has raised Him from the dead” (Romans 10:9). All who do this will find their way to a heavenly home.

Don’t try to get to heaven by an alternate route. Take it from me – when you don’t follow good directions, you always end up in the wrong place.

Love,

Mama