Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path.

Psalm 119:105

I remember the day when, as we were planning a trip from Pennsylvania down to Georgia, I’d pull out my big Rand McNally Road Atlas of the United States. I would flip from page to page (state to state), studying them as I began marking out the best route to travel. Today, I check out Google maps online or the GPS on my phone. Now we can tell where there may be trouble spots on the road, where there have been accidents, where construction is going on and where detours are suggested. We’ve come a long way.

We often know where we want to go, but knowing how to get there and getting there safely are crucial. On our way to Heaven, the Bible is our road map as the above verse indicates. As we spent time in India, the reality of this was stark. The vast majority of the people there believe that all ways lead to heaven. Even when one chooses “a way,” they can take bits and pieces of other “ways” and add them to their way and still believe, in the end, they will reach heaven.

Even for us, however, when we know the way and know how to get there, there are so many possibilities of getting sidetracked on our journey. We have a tendency to want to take the shortcuts… only to find they lead to dead ends or to disastrous results. Some people try to tell us the Bible is old and out of date, it’s become dangerous to follow because it’s extreme, or it can no longer be trusted because it doesn’t seem to match science. We must block out those thoughts because it is Satan who doesn’t want us to follow the truth that is God’s Word. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father, except through me” (John 14:6).

Pilgrim’s Progress is the well-known allegory about a Christian’s journey to Heaven. In that story, two men named Formalist and Hypocrisy came clambering over the wall and started walking with Christian. They felt that they were alright because they were on the way as well as he was. They, however, failed to reach the Celestial City because they had taken a shortcut instead of coming by the way of the cross. Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mt. 16:24). This is the way of the cross, the only way by which we can reach Heaven. Let us make sure, by consistently studying God’s Word, that we are traveling on that way.