The Destination

Every journey has a destination. But for the believer walking the path to glory, the destination is not simply a place on a map — it is a becoming. A conformation, as Paul described it in Romans 8:29, to the image of the Son. And it is also a place — a prepared, specific, glorious home promised by the Lord Jesus Himself in John 14. This week on Paths to Glory, we ask the question the last several episodes have been building toward: where does the path actually lead? And we discover that knowing the answer changes everything about how you walk.

If you’re enjoying Paths to Glory, be sure to check out our two other podcasts!

Paths to Glory Kenya shares powerful stories of faith and transformation from the heart of Africa — voices of hope, revival, and purpose.

And for the young — and the young at heart — don’t miss The Jones Family Chronicles, a fun, faith-filled adventure series for the whole family.

You can find Paths to Glory Kenya and The Jones Family Chronicles

The song "Paths to Glory" created with Udio and written by Roy Allison IV.

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Transcript

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Everyone has a story. That story is your path. A path filled with trials, triumphs, transformations, and miracles. Welcome to Paths to Glory, where we dive deep into the extraordinary narratives of those who have had their darkest moments, turned into beacons of hope. Each episode unveils the wrong part of the stories of redemption and renewal, showcasing the awesome power of God. Prepare to be moved, inspired and reminded. But no path is beyond redemption. Now join us and let these powerful stories illuminate your own glory. The way some of us walk through this life, anxious, distracted, uncertain, drifting from one season to the next without a clear sense of direction, you wouldn't know, watching from the outside, that we are people who know exactly where we are going. And yet we are. Every person who has repented, been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and received the gift of the Holy Ghost is a person on a path that leads somewhere specific. Something glorious, something that the human mind cannot fully contain, but the human spirit can feel pulling at it from a long way off. We have spent the last several weeks on this podcast walking through what the journey requires. We have talked about the soul winner who blazes the trail, the pathfinder who goes first so that others can follow. We've talked about the wilderness, that season of difficulty and preparation that every serious traveler on this road will pass through. We've talked about the provision God sends for the journey, the manna that comes one day at a time, the Holy Ghost that sustains from the inside, the holiness that protects the path. But we've not yet asked the question that underlies all of it. Where does the path actually lead? I want to give you two answers to that question today. Because I believe the destination of the believer is both something eternal and something immediate. Both a place where you are going and a person you are becoming. And understanding both of those things will change the way you walk. Let me begin with the becoming. Read that slowly. The destination God has in mind for every person who belongs to him is not primarily a location, it is a conformation. To be conformed to the image of his son. That is what the journey is producing. That is what the wilderness was doing in you. That is what the provision was sustaining you for. Not merely merely to survive, not merely to endure, but to be transformed. From what you were when you started into something that increasingly reflects the character, the nature, the holiness of the one who called you. This is not a passive process. It doesn't happen to you while you sit still. Every step of the journey participates in it. Every act of obedience, every altar you kneel at, every time you submit your will to the will of God in a moment when it costs you something real. All of it is the work of confirmation. The Holy Ghost, living in you since the day you received the promise, is the agent of that transformation. He does not simply give you power for service, though he does that. He doesn't simply give you comfort and difficulty, though he does that as well. He is conforming you patiently and persistently into the image of the one who sent him, is making you into someone fit for where you are going. And holiness is not incidental to this process. It's central to it. The standard of holiness that God requires of his people, inwardly and outwardly, in the secret place and in the visible life, is not an arbitrary set of requirements imposed on you from outside. It is the nature of the destination working backward into the journey. Let me say that again. It is the nature of the destination working backward into the journey. Heaven is a holy place. The God you are being conformed to is a holy God. The people he is preparing for what he has prepared are a holy people. And every standard he requires of you is simply the destination making its demands felt on the road. You can't arrive in one condition and spend the journey in another. The path and the destination have to match. Paul said it again in Philippians, the first chapter, the sixth verse. A verse I want you to carry with you past this episode, past this week, past whatever season you are currently in. Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. He will perform it. Not you, not your effort alone, not your discipline alone, not your best intentions alone. He who began it will perform it. The work of confirmation that God started in you on the day He saved you is a work he intends to complete. He's not going to bring you halfway and leave you there. He's not going to begin a thing and abandon it. The destination is certain because the one who is taking you there is faithful, and he doesn't start journeys he does not intend to finish. Okay, that's the first answer. The destination is a becoming, a confirmation to the image of Jesus Christ, worked in you by the Holy Ghost, sustained by holiness, guaranteed by the faithfulness of God. Now, let me give you the second answer, because the destination is also a place. In the fourteenth chapter of John, the Lord Jesus spoke to his disciples on the night before his crucifixion, and he said, Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also. I go to prepare a place for you. There is a place specific, real, prepared, not improvised, not approximate, not a general direction, but an actual destination being made ready by the one who promised it. And the promise attached to it is among the most personal in all of Scripture. That where he is, there you may be also. Not near where he is, not in the vicinity, but there with him. The destination of the believer is the presence of God, not glimpsed at an altar or felt in a service, as real and precious as those moments are, but experienced in fullness and without interruption, face to face forever. The writer of first Corinthians put it this way I hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. The destination is beyond the reach of imagination. It can't be fully pictured from here. The best your mind can do with it is gesture towards something vast and bright and permanent and say, It's something like that, only better. The glimpses of his presence you have known in your deepest moments of worship. The times when the Holy Ghost fell so heavy and so sweet that you forgot everything else, those aren't the destination. Those are previews, foretasts. The destination itself is something the previews were always pointing toward yet can never fully represent. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews tells us about the great men and women of faith who walked before us Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah. People who received the promise but did not see its fulfillment their lifetimes. And the writer says of them, these all died in the faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Strangers and pilgrims. People who understood at the core of their identity that this world was not their home, that they were passing through it towards something. That the present condition of their lives was not the point, it was the path. And it was leading somewhere. That's what knowing the destination does for a traveler. It changes how they relate to everything they encounter on the road. You see, the wilderness is bearable when you know it is not the last stop. The provision is received with gratitude when you understand it's for a journey that is going somewhere worth going. The standards of holiness are kept not as a burden but as a preparation when you understand that the place you are headed has a nature and that nature is requiring something of you now on the road before you arrive. Strangers and pilgrims. That's still what we are. In a world that is increasingly hostile to holiness, increasingly impatient with the things of God, increasingly insistent that you conform to its image rather than to the image of Jesus. The believer who knows the destination walks differently, not arrogantly, not in isolation from the people around them, who need to find the same path, but with a settled quality, a groundedness, a sense of direction that doesn't require the approval of the current moment because it's oriented towards something the current moment cannot see. Now I want to speak directly to someone who has lost sight of where they're going because it happens. The journey's a long one, the seasons change, the wilderness can stretch on until you forget not that God is good, but that the road leads somewhere. You begin to manage the present rather than press toward the future. You begin to organize your life around surviving the current difficulty rather than walking with intention toward the destination that was always the point. Remember where you were going. You're not wondering. You're not simply enduring a sequence of difficult seasons with no coherent direction. You're on a path. Every episode on this podcast, every testimony that has been told in over 60 episodes now is evidence of that. Person after person who came through something hard, received provision they could not have arranged, was conformed into something they could not have produced on their own, and arrived at a place they could not have reached without the wilderness. They're all walking the same direction toward glory. Paths to glory. That's not just the name of this podcast. It is a theological statement. The paths are real and they lead somewhere. And the somewhere they lead is the glory of God. Philippians 4 verse 7 says, The peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Peace that surpasses understanding is the peace of a person who knows where they are going and trusts the one taking them there. It doesn't depend on the circumstances of the current leg of the road. It doesn't require that everything be comfortable or explained or resolved. It is the piece of a pilgrim who has read the end of the story and knows that the destination is sure. The path you are on was blazed by someone who went before you. It has run through wilderness that was doing something in you that nothing else could. It has been provisioned by a God who does not send his people somewhere without supplying what the journey requires. And it's leading somewhere. Somewhere your eye has not seen and your ear has not heard, and your heart has not been able to fully imagine. Somewhere prepared for you by the one who promised to come back and take you there himself. So keep walking. The destination is worth every step it has taken to get there. And the one who began this good work in you will perform it all the way to the end. To contact us, send your emails to paths to glory podcast at gmail.com. We all travel different paths, so it's important that we remember Proverbs 3, 5 through 6. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto your own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Our paths to glory. Thank you for joining us.