Go Thru Hell to Get to Heaven

There is a Christian movie called The Broken Road where a family's faith is tested when her soldier husband is killed in Afghanistan. The wife used to love to sing in church, but now she works in a diner on Sundays instead. God has been placed in the background of her life as she eventually ends up losing it all.

Her spouse, her home, and even her little daughter runs away. Finally, she comes to the end of herself and she comes back to God. In the last scene in the movie, she is back in church singing the song Broken Road by Rascal Flatts, but she rewrites it as a song of praise to God and how she returned to him.

That all her broken roads have led her back to the Lord. It's a good movie with a good message. We need more Christian movies and instead of the other garbage that's out there.

But it's heartbreaking to watch her go through all her adversity and trials. Only someone who's been there can relate to it. Sometimes God has to use a broken road in our life to get us on the right one.

Sometimes God has to disrupt our plans to get us on his plan for a life. Sometimes God has to give us enough rope to hang ourselves, so to speak, as we strive against God and our rebellion. Sometimes God has to bring us to the end of ourselves by crushing our dreams and smashing our pride and breaking our will.

Sometimes we need to go through hell to get to heaven. And that's the title of my message today, friends. Sometimes you have to go through hell to get to heaven.

And I bet there are some of my listeners out there who can relate to my message today. Life is hard. Life can be full of disappointments.

Friends can fail us. Unforeseen circumstances can surprise us. Life at times can bring us down, bring us low.

A family tragedy can smash us. A bad medical report can unnerve us. At times it may seem that God has completely forgotten all about us.

The devil will tell you that God has forsaken you. But don't believe him, friend. He is a liar, and he has been a liar from the beginning.

God's hidden hand lies behind all of our circumstances. His providence is overseeing and permitting all that happens to us. He has our best interests at heart, like a loving father has his child's best interests at heart.

But sometimes, because of our rebellion, we have to go through hell to get to heaven. But were you perhaps a rebellious teenager? Did you reject all authority? Maybe you grew up in church, and you grew up in a strict Christian home. And as soon as you were old enough to move out, you rebelled against all that.

God let you go out on the run from him. He let you make your mistakes. He protected you from greater evil.

But he let you have your way, and he watched you crash. The shortest definition of sin is found in Isaiah 53 6. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way.

And that's what sin is, friends. It's going our way when we know it isn't God's way. Maybe your life hasn't worked out like you planned.

Maybe you're a pastor who envisioned having a big successful church, but it didn't turn out that way. Maybe the person you thought you were going to marry ended up marrying somebody else. Maybe your spouse cheated on you and broke your heart and home.

Perhaps bad health has taken a toll on you, and you are sick and tired of always being sick. Maybe your Christianity is miserable because sin still dominates your life. Maybe your life feels like Joseph in prison, and you're still stuck there, and you don't know why.

But behind it all is the hidden hand of a loving father who has continually been drawing you back to him. The word for God's love in the Greek is agape. It means a benevolent love, but it's the kind of love, friends, the kind of benevolence that is not shown by doing what the person loved desires, but what the one who loves deems is needed by the one loved.

God loves you enough to keep you from what would ultimately destroy you. But in his providence, at times, he will allow you to almost destroy yourself through the choices you make, but he won't ever let you go. Because sometimes you have to go through hell to get to heaven.