The Way

1“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. 2“In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. 4“And where I go you know, and the way you know.” 5Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” 6Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. 7“If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.”
John 14: 1 - 7  NKJV

From what I've heard, heaven is a wonderful place to be.  Our Lords kingdon is indeed one that is reserved for His children and those He chooses to allow into eternity with Him.  Of course, there is no way for us to know if there are those among our Lords elect who are now in His presence who never claimed to be christians.  That, we're told, we will find out by and by.  There have even been countless pulpit pounder sermons on the subject of gaining admittance to our Lords kingdom.  It seems that one week the pastor will praise his flock as being ready for our Lords paradise, but the next we've fallen far too short and we need to be "Closer" to Jesus in order to gain entrance into heaven.  Do the requirements of getting into heaven change every so often?  Are they flexible?  How is it that we can "Punch our ticket" to eternity with our heavenly Father?  Well, it seems that Jesus definately knew the way into heaven.  In His sermon on the Mount of Olives, Jesus laid out perfectly what must be done in order to enter into His Fathers kongdom.  As Christ claimed, "Nobody comes to the Father except through Me."  That's it in a nutshell, if you want to experience the beauty of our heavenly Fathers glory, then you must follow Jesus as He leads you in.  There is no other way.  For Jesus Himself is "The way, the Truth and the Life," and we will not come to the Father but through the Son.  Yet there are those who still try to crash the party and somehow buy or perform their way into our Lords paradise.  I would call such claims utterly ridiculous, but that's just me.

21“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22“Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 23“And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!"
Matthew 7: 21 - 23 NKJV

Far too many times in the modern institutional church I have heard of our need to perform better in order to gain entrance into our Lords kingdom.  For if we tithe more, perform our service to others and pray more we can expect to punch our salvation ticket.  And so we try in vain to work our way into our Lords favor.  The issue with this approach lies the message and not in reality.  The apostle Paul himself warned us against such thinking.  For it is by our Lords very grace by which we have been saved, and not of our own efforts {Ephesians 2:8}.  Can you imagine the arrogance of one who worked or bought his own way into heaven?  Talk about favoritism!  Fortunately we will never need to suffer the indignity of seeing those with more than influence than ourselves gain our Lords favor while we suffer.  For salvation is a GIFT of our heavenly Father.  Man has been taken out of that equation...thankfully.  That path to heaven leads through the Way, the Truth and the Life of Christ Jesus.  Jesus Himself became sin on our behalf in order to make this possible {2 Corinthians 5:21}.  Jesus has gone before us to prepare a place for us in our Lords kingdom.  For those who follow Him, He will return once again to receive His own unto Him.

 8For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9not of works, lest anyone should boast.
Ephesians 2:8 NKJV

~Scott~