Pathway to Victory

Guest (Male): Hey podcast listeners. Thanks for streaming today’s podcast from Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God’s word through the most effective media available, like this podcast. To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes. Now, here’s today’s podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Dr. Robert Jeffress: Hi, this is Robert Jeffress, and I’m glad to study God’s word with you every day on this Bible teaching program. On today’s edition of Pathway to Victory, when I think of somebody who prepared for his journey to heaven without any regrets, I think about Abraham. In Genesis 25:8, we have this word about Abraham’s death. Moses writes, "And Abraham breathed his last and died at a ripe old age, an old man and satisfied with life."

David: Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. None of us can know for certain how much time we have on earth. Some of us, like Abraham, will live to a ripe old age, while others might be called away a bit sooner. So how should we live each day knowing that it might just be our last? Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress explains what we can be doing right now to prepare for our journey to heaven. But first, let’s take a moment to hear some important ministry updates.

Dr. Robert Jeffress: Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. I’m glad you’re with us because today I’m presenting the final message in our series about a place called heaven. If you were packing your bags for an exotic vacation, you’d spend a lot of time doing research, packing, and preparing. So why is it that so few Christians spend time preparing for their trip to heaven? That’s our topic again today.

And it’s also the very reason I wrote a book for you. The deadline for requesting a copy of my book is today. So please be ready to take down our contact information at the end of the program. My book is called *Encouragement from a Place Called Heaven*. It’s true that we step into eternity the day we die. However, we can live in the joy of heaven every single day. My book was written to help you center your heart and mind on things above and the promise of your heavenly home.

And this is the perfect gift for anyone struggling with chronic illness or grieving the loss of a loved one. So, while there’s still time, be sure to request a copy of *Encouragement from a Place Called Heaven*. It’s yours when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. Okay, it’s time to turn our attention to the word of God as we answer this important question: how can I prepare for my journey to heaven?

David: Now today, let’s look at the fourth way to prepare for heaven, and that is make the most of your time on earth.

Dr. Robert Jeffress: Make the most of your time on earth. God has allotted a different number of years and days for every one of us in this life. And yet we talk about people’s average lifespan. In Psalm 90, Moses said there’s an average lifespan for most people. Now Moses beat it. He lived to be 120 years of age. And yet in Psalm 90 verses 10 and 12, he said seventy years are given us and some may even live to eighty.

But even the best of these years are often empty and filled with pain. Soon they disappear and we are gone. Verse 12: teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are. Help us to spend them as we should. Paul said it this way in Ephesians 5:15 and 16. He said be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time because the days are evil. In the Bible, the word "walk" was an analogy for how you live your life. He said be very careful how you live your life in light of how short time is. Make the most of your time.

Number five: to prepare for your journey to heaven, minimize your pre-departure regrets. Have you ever had this experience? You’re at the departure gate getting ready to get on a plane and you remember something you should have done. I should have stopped the newspaper. I should have stopped the mail. I should have packed a warmer coat or an extra pair of socks. You wish you had done something, but it’s too late. Those kind of regrets are minimal. They have no lasting consequence.

But to come to the end of your life ready to enter into heaven with regrets, that’s a whole different story. As a pastor, I’ve had the experience many times of sitting with Christians who were about to die and listening to them to lament their regrets in life. Relationships they wish they had maximized, relationships they wish they hadn't broken, opportunities they should have taken advantage of. Regrets are like a cancer. They eat at the very soul of our being. And there’s certainly no way to spend your final days here on earth.

How can you make sure that you don’t end your life with a long list of regrets? One of the best resolves you can make is right now to focus on those things you believe God would have you to do regardless of how long he has left for you here on earth. I’ve encouraged you to engage in an exercise that I think really would honor God. That is think through five major areas of your life: your relationship with God, your relationship to your family, your relationship with friends, your career, and your finances.

And then draw a column like this and ask God to help you identify what three things would you like to accomplish in each of these areas of your life before you go to heaven? Take an hour sometime this week and take time to fill out what are the three things God would like me to concentrate on the remaining years that I have. That’s what Paul had in mind in Ephesians 5 when he said live your life with a sense of purpose. Don’t be vague. Don't say, "I want to be a better person, I want to be happier." Don’t be vague but firmly grasp what you know to be the will of God for your life.

Regarding your mate and your family, resolve: I will appreciate, enjoy, and value the mate God gave me. Some of you here know the pain of losing a mate. Don’t have any regrets about the way you’ve treated your mate and appreciated your mate. Regarding your children, resolve: I will endeavor to point my children to Christ, to earn their respect, and to celebrate their uniqueness. Or with your friends, resolve: I will treasure my friendships by praying for and spending time with those people who enrich my life.

When it comes to your career, resolve: I will choose a life work that utilizes my giftedness and my passions. When it comes to your finances, resolve: I will make sure that my finances are in order and my family is provided for when I die. Or here’s one general resolve that really crosses a number of areas: I will ask forgiveness from anyone I have wronged so that when I’m gone, they will always remember I tried to make things right.

One way to minimize your regrets in life is to focus right now on what God would have you spend the rest of your life doing. But part of dealing with regrets is going back to past mistakes and dealing with those as well. Mistakes can’t be erased from our life, can they? Have you discovered life has no rewind button on it? The fact is you can’t erase your past mistakes. You can ask for God’s forgiveness for them, but you can’t erase your mistakes.

But you can allow whatever mistakes you’ve made in the past to be a stepping stone to make significant changes right now in your life that will affect your tomorrow and your eternity. That’s the way to deal with past mistakes so that you don’t have any regrets. You can’t erase them, but use those mistakes as a stepping stone to allow you to change your tomorrow and your forever. Whenever I think about that truth, I think of the remarkable story of a Swedish chemist named Alfred Nobel.

Alfred Nobel made a fortune by discovering that you can stabilize liquid nitroglycerin with a compound. And so he created this substance. It was really a paste that came from very volatile liquid nitroglycerin and this compound. And he had a new name for this paste he created. He called it dynamite. Alfred Nobel planned for this explosive to be used in construction, the building of canals and roads, or in mining operations. Little did he know what would be the first use of dynamite, and that would be to kill millions of people in warfare.

In 1888, Alfred Nobel’s brother Ludwig suddenly died. But French newspapers made a mistake, and instead of printing Ludwig Nobel’s obituary, they accidentally printed the obituary for Alfred Nobel. And so Alfred Nobel had the unique experience of reading his own obituary in the newspaper. As he read it, he realized what he would be remembered for. In fact, in the obituary, it used the term "merchant of death."

Not wanting to be remembered for that, Alfred Nobel made a decision to change his life at that point. He took his fortune and spent the rest of his time devoted to improving life on earth through the humanities and through science. And he created the awards that we still know today as the Nobel Peace Prize. Alfred Nobel couldn’t erase his past, but he decided to use whatever regrets he had to make changes in his life today that would affect his tomorrow and his eternity.

Whatever regrets or mistakes you’ve made in the past, you can’t eliminate them, but you can use them to change your tomorrow and your forever. When Paul came to the end of his life, he didn’t come to the end of his life without any mistakes. He’d made terrible mistakes. He had blasphemed the name of God and persecuted Christians. He didn’t come to the end of his life without mistakes, but he came to the end of his life without any regrets. In 2 Timothy 4:7, as he prepared for his execution, he said to Timothy, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, and I have kept the faith."

Finally, to prepare for your journey to heaven, take care of the practical matters before you depart. One last item to check off on your to-do list before you depart this world is to make sure that those you care about most are adequately provided for. Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah with a sobering message. He said in 2 Kings 20:1, "Set your house in order, Hezekiah, for you shall die and not live." That’s pretty good advice for all of us. Set your house in order, for you are going to die.

The fact is, just like Isaiah said to Hezekiah, you are going to die. Do you understand that? You are going to die. Why don’t you say that with me? "I’m going to die. I am going to die." Let’s say it again. "I am going to die." Tony Campolo says it well. He said, "One day you’re going to die, they’re going to take you to the cemetery, drop you in a ditch, throw dirt in your face, and then go back to the church and eat potato salad." It's true.

Now here’s the question: after your family has finished the potato salad, what are they going to do? Do they know exactly what to do? Audrey Hendel wrote about her husband Jim, who was a CPA and a certified financial planner. A few years before he died, her husband Jim wrote an article on how to leave your financial house in order for your family. 1 Timothy 5:8 was the basis for his article. Paul said if anyone does not provide for his own, especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Providing for your household means more than earning a living and making sure they have their needs while you’re alive. It means making sure they’re cared for after you’re dead so that they know exactly what to do. In that article, Jim Hendel advised that husbands or families put together a notebook that contains the vital information your loved ones are going to need when you go. List bank accounts, investments, passwords to computers, information about your obituary, and what you would like them to remember.

List any ideas you have about your memorial service so that when your family is overcome with grief, they won’t be in a panic trying to find things and make important decisions. Jim Hendel died, and he left such a notebook for his wife Audrey. She said she took that notebook into their attorney. He looked through this and said, "I have never seen anything like this before." Audrey wrote, "My husband Jim demonstrated love, godly character, and integrity by leaving a part of himself in this book. I have never felt abandoned or insecure. My husband Jim took good care of us in his life and is still taking care of us in his death."

Do that for your family. You won’t regret it. By the way, do you know the most foundational thing you can do to set your house in order for your departure? Make sure you have a will. Did you know 64% of Americans have no will? 64%. Guess what? If you die without a will, you don’t get to say what happens to your money. The government tells you what’s going to happen to your money when you die, either by state regulation and law or by the federal income tax code.

Does anybody here want the government telling your family what to do with your money? That’s why you need a will. And by the way, make sure that will reflects your values. When my dad was preparing to die, he wrote out his will. My dad said, "This will is my last will and testament." And in the preamble of that will, he talked about his salvation experience and how he came to faith in Christ. He wanted to make sure that we read it, that the attorney read it, and that the judge had to read that final testimony of his faith in Christ.

But in that will, he not only used words to express what really mattered to him. He did it in what he left behind. And a part of his estate was left to this church that had been so instrumental in his life, his family’s life, and in which all three of his kids had come to faith in Christ as well. Make out a will, and when you make that will out, don’t forget the church. It’s your last way of making sure some of what you’ve accumulated goes on and on for eternity.

Set your house in order. When I think of somebody who prepared for his journey to heaven without any regrets, I think about Abraham. In Genesis 25:8, we have this word about Abraham’s death. Moses writes, "And Abraham breathed his last and died at a ripe old age, an old man and satisfied with life." And he was gathered to his people. I want you to think about that as an epitaph for my headstone because that’s really a great one, isn't it? Died at a ripe old age, satisfied with life.

Abraham was satisfied. He was content. He had no regrets about his past. Not that he didn’t make any mistakes; he made some humongous mistakes, but he knew they had been forgiven by God. He died satisfied, without regrets when it came to his children. He had successfully passed on his faith to his children and to his grandchildren. And he died satisfied about his future. He knew he was headed to be gathered with his people and with his God because of his faith in God’s provision for his sin. He died satisfied with life.

Are you ready for your journey to that place called heaven? Some of you may say, "Well, pastor, honestly, I get fearful when I think about not the end result, but the process of getting there. I’m fearful of the trip to that place called heaven. I’m fearful of death." Whenever I think of the fear of death, I think of the true story of John Todd. John Todd was born in 1800 in Vermont. He spent the first six years of his life living in a little hamlet called Killingsworth.

When he was six years old, John Todd’s parents both died suddenly. He and his siblings had to be parceled out among any relative that would take them. He had a very kind-hearted aunt who agreed to take him and to raise him. So he went to live with her for the next 15 years. She cared for him just like a mom. When he was 21 years of age, he left home, went to school, prepared for the ministry, and became a successful pastor. In his middle-aged years, he received word that his aunt who had cared for him was about to die.

She wrote him a letter and said that even though she was a Christian, she greatly feared death. Moved with compassion, John wrote her back, recounting that night when he, a frightened little boy, was welcomed into the loving and warm home of his aunt. And this is what he wrote to his aunt: "It is now 35 years since I, a little boy of six, was left quite alone in the world. You sent me word you would give me a home and be a kind mother to me. I have never forgotten the day when I made that long journey of 10 miles to your home."

"I can still recall my disappointment when, instead of coming for me yourself, you sent your servant Caesar to fetch me. I well remember my tears and my anxiety as perched high on the horse and clinging tight to Caesar, I rode off to my new home. Night fell before we finished the journey. And as it grew dark, I became lonely and afraid. 'Do you think she’ll go to bed before I get there?' I asked Caesar anxiously. 'Oh no,' he said reassuringly, 'she’ll sure stay up for you. When we get out of these woods, you’ll see her candle shining in the window.'"

"Presently, we did ride out in the clearing. And there, sure enough, was your candle. I remember you were waiting at the door, that you put your arms close about me, and that you lifted me, a tired and bewildered little boy, down from that horse. You had a big fire burning on the hearth and a hot supper waiting for me on the stove. After supper, you took me to my new room. You heard me say my prayers, and then you sat beside me until I fell asleep."

"You probably realize why I’m recalling all of this to your memory. Someday soon, God will send for you to take you to a new home. Don’t fear the summons, the strange journey, or the dark messenger of death. God can be trusted to do as much for you as you were kind enough to do for me so many years ago. At the end of the road, you will find love and a welcome waiting, and you will be safe in God’s care."

That’s the future God has planned for you. "I go," Jesus said, "to prepare a place for you." It’s a place more magnificent than you could possibly imagine. It’s a place where every heartache will be erased and every dream will be fulfilled. It’s a place reserved for those who have trusted in Christ as their savior. It’s a place called heaven.

Dr. Robert Jeffress: And with this final message in the teaching series about heaven, it’s time for you to contact Pathway to Victory to request a copy of the book I’ve written for you. My book is titled *Encouragement from a Place Called Heaven*. Get this book for yourself, and then share it with someone who’s going through an especially stressful time. There’s another resource I’d like to send to you. It’s a brochure called *What Seven World Religions Teach About Heaven*.

If you want to expose the fallacy of major religious beliefs, it’s important to study their convictions about eternity. When you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, I’ll send you a copy of this brochure along with my book. Whatever amount you choose to give, you can be certain that your generosity is bearing fruit. Recently, I received a note that said, "Pastor Jeffress, I haven’t been to church in a long time, but I’ve been listening to you on the radio. Today, I felt God speaking to me. I’m ready to commit myself to God and trust him through all my trials. Thank you so much."

Well, this thank you note belongs to everyone who supports the ministry of Pathway to Victory. My voice wouldn’t extend beyond the city limits of Dallas without you. Thank you so much. Here’s David with all the details.

David: When you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, you’re invited to request your very own copy of *Encouragement from a Place Called Heaven*. Simply call us toll-free at 866-999-2965 or visit online at ptv.org. And when your gift is $75 or more, we’ll also send you *The Place Called Heaven* teaching series on CD and DVD along with a copy of the original bestselling book by Dr. Jeffress titled *A Place Called Heaven*.

To request this very special package of resources on heaven, call 866-999-2965 or visit ptv.org. And for a quick and easy way to support Pathway to Victory, text PTV to 78800. If you’d prefer to write, here’s that mailing address: PO Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222. Again, that’s PO Box 223609, Dallas, Texas 75222. I’m David J. Mullins, wishing you a great weekend. Then join us again next week for the start of a study on spiritual warfare. It’s called *The Divine Defense*, right here on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.

Alaska’s pristine wilderness showcases God’s glory like nowhere else on earth, and you’re invited to experience it firsthand on the Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska. Enjoy daily Bible teaching, worship led by Michael O’Brien, and laughter with Dennis Swanberg, all aboard Holland America’s five-star Koningsdam. So reserve your cabin today. Call 888-280-6747 or visit ptv.org.

Guest (Male): You made it to the end of today’s podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we’re so glad you’re here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway Partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in his word. To become a Pathway Partner, go to ptv.org/donate or you can follow the link in our show notes.

We hope you’ve been blessed by today’s podcast from Pathway to Victory. One last thing before we go: have you reserved your spot yet for the 2026 Pathway to Victory cruise to Alaska? You’ve been hearing me and Dr. Jeffress mention it, so what are you waiting for? Just picture yourself on the deck of Holland America’s elegant Koningsdam and stepping out on deck to witness nature’s grandeur. These moments in God’s creation will deepen your faith in powerful ways. Experience five-star dining, luxurious staterooms, and visiting iconic ports like Juneau, Ketchikan, and Skagway. We’re also bringing along our own Christian entertainment. Seats are filling up, so book your spot today at ptv.org.