We Are Going To A Place

I go to prepare a place for you.

John 14:2

The Lord Jesus could have used any word, any symbol to tell us where we would spend eternity. But He always chose words very carefully, and so in this instance He used the word place.

I live in a place, high on a mountain in a log cabin in North Carolina. This place has an address. If you send a letter to me, the postman knows where to deliver it.

In saying that He was going to prepare a place for us, Jesus was telling us that when we die, we are going to a precise location. We do not evaporate or disappear. In fact, He said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” We are going to have a place in heaven if we have trusted Christ as our Savior—and not only a place, but a mansion!

When we as Christians die, we go straight into the presence of Christ, straight to that place, straight to that mansion in heaven to spend eternity with God. We are simply changing our address, much as we would if we moved to another place here on earth. If the post office was capable of delivering the mail in heaven, we could fill out a change of address form, because the place we are going has an address just as the place in which we are now living has an address. It is a real place.

Our Father and our God, I am excited to come and be with You in that special place that Jesus has prepared for me. I look forward to that day with anticipation and joy. When the time comes, I will gladly change my address to Yours. In the meantime, teach me to wait with patience and anticipation for my returning Lord Jesus. Amen.

Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).