| Director | Randall Wallace |
|---|---|
| Budget | $12 million |
| Box office | $101.9 million |
Living in rural Imperial, Nebraska, Todd Burpo is the pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan Church, who works on garage doors on the side as well as coaching wrestling at the local high school. He goes home to find his 4-year-old son, Colton, on the steps, trying to avoid his mom Sonja's weekly church choir group practice inside. They go together for pizza, first passing by a hospital to visit a dying man.
Todd has a few health setbacks, which keep him from his congregation for weeks. The first is a bad broken leg during a baseball match; the second is kidney stones. His family does a road trip to Denver, and on the way back Colton and his sister Cassie start vomiting and he has a fever, but the doctor assumes it is the flu as it has been going around.
As both parents suffered appendicitis, Sonja accurately guesses Colton is suffering from it. They rush to the hospital, where he undergoes emergency surgery for acute appendicitis. As the rupture happened days previously, Colton is not given a good prognosis. His mother asks everyone they know to pray. Finally, he pulls through, then immediately asks to return to touch an animal he had feared before.
Back in Denver to touch the tarantula, Colton tells his incredulous father about having seen the surgeon operating on his ruptured appendix, Sonja calling people in the waiting room to pray, and him in the hospital's chapel yelling at God to not let him die. Then at home, Cassie tells their father that Colton has been speaking oddly, then the boy elaborately describes things he saw in heaven.
The boy also speaks of incidents with people he never met or knew about: meeting a younger version of his great-grandfather who had died long before Colton was born (as Colton says dead people are young again when they're in heaven), an unborn sister he never knew about who had died in a miscarriage, and having met Jesus.
Colton speaks about his experiences in Heaven, and Todd is faced with the dilemma of determining the legitimacy of his son's experience. Todd's wariness about discussing the situation erodes the confidence of the board members of his church, and he is contacted by several members of the media.
When Todd is called by a radio station for an impromptu on-air interview, he invites them to attend his sermon the following Sunday. At church, he preaches about his son's experiences and reveals his support for him.
Following the events at the church, as Todd is doing research on the Internet, he finds a story about a Lithuanian girl who had a similar experience. Her recall of Jesus was similar to that of Colton. Todd tries to speak to Colton further about the experience, but he is interrupted by his wife revealing that she is pregnant with their third child.
Photos of Colton and his family are shown in the present day.