“Your heart must not be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if not, I would have told you. I am going away to prepare a place for you. If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come back and receive you to Myself, so that where I am you may be also. You know the way to where I am going.” “Lord,” Thomas said, “we don’t know where You’re going. How can we know the way?” Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:1-6, HCSB)

Evangelist Dr. A.J. Fristoe used to tell the story of something that happened to him when he accepted an invitation to preach a revival in London, England. Upon his arrival in London, he was met by those who had invited him. They told him he would be staying in one of the finest palaces in all of England due to the fact that the couple who owned the home had requested that he be allowed to stay with them.

As Fristoe made his way to the home, the question of why the wealthy couple were being so gracious to him weighed upon his mind. Unfortunately for him, the mystery only deepened when he arrived at the home and realized the couple were strangers to him. It wasn’t until they were all comfortably seated in the home’s exquisite living room that he got his explanation.

The couple’s son, who was an officer in the Royal navy, was stationed on the other side of the world, but he had heard that Dr. Fristoe was to be in London. It was the young man who had sent instructions for his parents to be so hospitable to Dr. Fristoe. Once the couple described their son, Dr. Fristoe did remember him. Years earlier, the officer had been on a ship that had put into Norfolk, Virginia, for repairs when Fristoe had been serving as the pastor of a church there. The officer had attended Fristoe’s church and gotten to know the preacher quite well. Fristoe had even invited the young man into his home for dinner on multiple occasions. There, the two had enjoyed long discussions on the subject of religion, and those discussions had led the young man to believe in Christ as Savior and be baptized by Dr. Fristoe.

After the officer’s ship had pulled out of Norfolk, he had kept in touch with Fristoe. Upon hearing that Fristoe was going to be preaching a revival in London, the officer had cabled his parents and instructed them to extend the invitation to the evangelist. That was why the couple had specifically requested that Fristoe be allowed to stay with them. Once they had explained it all to him, they summed up the situation by saying, “Dr. Fristoe, you are here because of our son.”

The spiritual parallel isn’t hard to spot. Christian, when you journey to heaven and arrive at that indescribably beautiful place, God the Father could rightly say to you, “You are here because of My Son.” So, with this spiritual application in mind, let me encourage you to take a moment right now and thank Jesus that heaven awaits you when you leave this world. You will be welcomed there because of Him because He is, after all, the only way that you or anybody else can ever get there.