Urgent!

Colton pointed to the casket. “What’s that, Daddy?”

I tried to keep it simple. “That’s the casket. The man who died is inside it.”

Suddenly, Colton’s face gathered into that same knot of intense concern. He slammed his fists on his thighs, then pointed one finger at the casket and said in a near shout, “Did that man have Jesus?!”

Sonja’s eyes popped wide, and we both glanced at the sanctuary doorway, terrified the family inside could hear our son.

“He had to! He had to!” Colton went on. “He can’t get into heaven if he didn’t have Jesus in his heart!”

—HEAVEN IS FOR REAL, 58–59

Todd

Soon after Colton visited heaven, he turned four, an age where, if something popped into his head, he’d just blurt it out. Like the time I took him to a restaurant and a guy with really long hair walked in, and Colton asked loudly whether that was a boy or a girl.

The thing is, four-year-olds are notoriously honest. What they blurt out is probably what everyone else is thinking but has the maturity not to say out loud.

I was preaching the funeral of a man I didn’t know when Colton became obsessed with knowing whether or not the man knew Jesus. The fact was, I didn’t know. And I don’t think the man’s family knew either. But they had asked me to do a funeral service for him, and as a courtesy I obliged.

The thing that’s hard to write is not only what Colton said that day but how he said it. He seemed desperate, almost frantic. We tried to talk to him about having good manners, and he wouldn’t get quieter. We tried to talk to him about respect, and he would not be silenced. It was like he was screaming at the top of his lungs: DAD! THIS MATTERS MORE THAN THE OTHER THINGS THAT YOU SAY MATTER!

Where did my little boy get such conviction that he was actually standing up to me when I was asking him to tone it down? Somehow Colton felt that being quiet was the wrong thing to do, and I had to wonder where he got such determination—to stand up to his daddy in church?

At the time I didn’t know. But I found out later that Colton’s strong conviction came from Jesus himself. Not from a Sunday school teacher, not from me. His conviction came from Jesus, who explained to him that he is the doorway to heaven.

It’s one of the things that Jesus says about himself in the Bible (John 10:9). He says he’s the door to heaven. It’s really a bold statement, if you think about it. It’s either right or it’s wrong. There’s no in between. He calls heaven his Dad’s house (well, in John 14:2 KJV he says, “my Father’s house”). Isn’t that a great way to think of heaven? As God’s house.

Jesus was giving us an image we all can understand. Just like any house down here on earth has a door, so does God’s house—heaven. Jesus is that door.

Now let me ask you a question: Who do you welcome into your house? Does just anyone come through your front door and make himself or herself at home, cooking your food, sitting on your sofa, sleeping in your bed, using your remote? I’m guessing the answer is no. Houses don’t work that way on earth.

When people want to come to my house, they knock on my door. I meet them there. Some I talk to and invite in. Most of the people I invite in are folks I already know. Or Sonja or our kids know them. My children are always bringing their friends into our house, and that’s okay. I know they’re my kids’ friends.

God’s house, heaven, works pretty much the same as your house. He says if you know his Son and have a relationship with him on earth, then he is more than welcome to bring you into his house.

I’ve been to many cities and towns, small and large, and never in a million years would I just walk up to someone’s house I didn’t know, open the door, and make myself at home. If I do know the person, I knock on the door and expect him or her to meet me, verify that we’re friends, and then invite me in. But if I just walked up to the home of someone I didn’t know and went right on in, I expect dire consequences would result. Alarms would probably go off; police would be called.

Unfortunately, some people have no better plan than that for going to heaven. They have no prior relationship with God, and they don’t understand why they can’t expect to just come on in.

Interviewers ask me if I believe what Colton said—if I believe you can’t get into heaven if you don’t have Jesus in your heart.

I just tell them it makes pretty good sense to me, because that’s what Jesus said (John 14:6), and because that’s how life works down here on this side of heaven.

But I’m quick to point out that the door to heaven swings open wide. Anyone who will invite Jesus into their house, their heart, is in turn welcome to Jesus’ Dad’s house in heaven. If you bring Jesus into your life and follow him, you can follow him right on into heaven.

I can tell you this: Colton is just as passionate today as he was nine years ago that you have to have Jesus in your heart in order to go to heaven. He found the door to heaven, and now he points the way to others. It’s constantly on his heart and in his thoughts and prayers. He wants people to know Jesus because he knows that when they find him, they also find so much more.

At the end of a national TV interview in 2011, Colton was asked to close the segment by praying for those listening. That prayer wasn’t rehearsed. It wasn’t something he wrote down earlier and read in front of the cameras. It was spontaneous. Read the prayer now and again when you finish the book. If you don’t know Jesus, Colton was, and is, praying that prayer for you.

Dear Father God,

I just hope all those people out there who haven’t found you yet, or need to be reinforced by your Word, Lord, just please help them so that they may be able to come closer to you, so that one day they may receive the gift that you have given them. And Lord, I wish that, even though we have a lot of people out there who might not believe this, I just hope you bless them so then they will figure out that you are real, you are God. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. . . . 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. . . . Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

—John 10:9, 14:2, 6