An illustration which I frequently use on this point is this: One Sunday afternoon I was talking to two young ladies who were backsliders. I asked them if they loved the Lord. They said, “Why, Brother Dark, of course we love the Lord.” Then I said, “Do you want to go to heaven when you die?” As you might expect they answered, “Why, sure, everybody wants to go to heaven!” My next question was, “Will you be at worship this evening?” They grinned a little bit and looked at each other. I said, “You have some dates, don’t you?” They grinned a little more, and said, “Yes.” I said, “Your boy friends don’t want to go to church with you, do they?” They grinned a little bit more and said, “No.” Well, they didn’t come to worship that night. I asked which they loved more, those boy friends or the Lord. They didn’t make any answer.
Now, which do you think they loved the more? They said they loved the Lord more than they loved anything else in the world, but they went out with some boy friends that night instead of coming to worship. They thought they wanted to go to heaven, and they did want to a little bit; but they wanted to go out with those boys more than they wanted to go to heaven. And that’s the case with a great many people. You ask them if they want to go to heaven and they will say “Yes”; but there is something they want to do more. They want to have a good time, make money, or do something else, more than they want to go to heaven. That’s the trouble with most people. That’s the reason most people are going somewhere else. God allows people to go anywhere they want to and if they prefer to go somewhere else rather than to go to heaven, then they go somewhere else and He permits them to do it.
Just remember this: you cannot possibly go to heaven without traveling the road which leads there. A lot of people would like to go to heaven but they don’t want to travel the road which leads there. They want to travel some other road and then get to heaven. Well, you can’t travel the road that leads to Memphis and get to Chattanooga, can you? You can’t travel the road that leads to hell and wind up in heaven. It just can’t be done. So if you want to go to heaven more than you want to do anything else in this world and are willing to put forth the effort required to do it, you can certainly go there.