Holy of Holies

Isaiah 6:1-7 "It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. Attending him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. They were calling out to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies! The whole earth is filled with his glory!”
 Their voices shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke. Then I said, “It’s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. He touched my lips with it and said, “See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.”"

Our God is a holy God. Set apart; a step above and beyond anything else in the created universe. He is so holy and pure in fact that He cannot even be in the presence of sin. That’s bad news for us since we have all sinned and fallen short of His glory (Romans 3:23).

Before Jesus came, the presence of God dwelt in the Jewish temple in a placed called the Holy of Holies. Only one person could enter that room one day out of the year. He had to be ceremonially clean, and without sin to enter into the Holy of Holies. If he was not, he would drop dead the instance he came into God’s presence. It was an honor of the highest sort to be the person to enter into the glorious Holy Presence of the God of this universe. Only a handful of men for thousands of years had ever gotten that privilege.

And it is in this time that Isaiah saw the Lord. He saw God sitting on His throne with angels around Him, and immediately he knew he was in trouble; for no sinner can be in the presence of God and survive. He realized that his destruction was sealed, for he knew too well that he was a sinner.

But God’s response was not to kill Isaiah, nor did he allow Isaiah to stay in His presence with the stain of sin. Instead God ordered His angel to burn off the sin and guilt from Isaiah with a hot coal. Now his trespasses were gone and he could remain in the presence of God.

Today, we don’t make animal sacrifices and we don’t perform ceremonial cleansing before entering church, but we do worship the same God as Isaiah. Each of us has the privilege to walk into the Holy of Holies and be in the Holy Presence of the God of this universe. This great honor that was so limited before has now been granted to all of us by the blood of Jesus, which works in us in a similar fashion to the burning coal that purged Isaiah, that allowed Him to be in the presence of God. The blood of Jesus sears our sins like a fire burning up the dross of silver (Proverbs 25:4) and makes us qualified candidates to enter into the Holy of Holies.

Cold Love

"...and because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold."  --Matthew 24:12

A lifestyle of lawlessness produces a cold, dead love.

What is lawlessness?

"Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness." --1 John 3:4

Pretty straight forward. But what is sin, exactly? Disobedience to God. Any act that is contrary to God's will is sin. So, in essence, disobedience will quench the fire of your love for God.

Think of Cain and Able. The offering required of God was that of blood. That was pretty easy for Able, being a shepherd. But Cain (being a farmer), decided to bring a portion of his crops as an offering. It was a small act of disobedience; one that is often overlooked by us. Because after all, he did at least bring an offering to God. But it was the wrong type of offering, and God refused it. What started as a seemingly innocent act of compromise, such a small dash of disobedience toward God, completely destroyed Cain's love toward God.

He became angry with God; he murdered his brother; he spoke to God with complete disrespect and arrogance, and lied to God as well. All from one small act of disobedience.

Disobedience is putting a crack in the door to your spirit, and Satan will take full advantage, barging in and ruining your love, respect, and fear of God.

The opposite of lawlessness (sin, disobedience) is righteousness (obedience). --Hebrews 1:9 
It seems to me to follow that if disobedience destroys your love toward God, then practicing righteousness (obedience) will rekindle that love again.

Run the Race

If you've ever been to the city of New Orleans, surely you've noticed (or even taken a spin) on the horse drawn carriages that roam the streets. It's pretty amazing to me that these horses are so well trained to obey their masters and ignore the crazy traffic and crazy people. Part of this seemingly soldier like focus is due to "blinders". The horses are equipped with two shields, one for each eye, on the outside of the eye, to block their peripheral vision. This way the horse is not distracted by cars and crazy people that run around on the side of him waving their arms and so forth. Check it out next time your in New Orleans, if you don't believe me.

They use these same blinders for the horses in horse races. It keeps their focus on the goal in front of them (running the race, one hoof in front of the other) rather than being worried about the other horse that's sneaking up on the side of him. It's an amazingly useful tool. In fact, We should make human blinders.

Have you ever considered life to be a race? The apostle Paul did.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 "All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should."

In Hebrews chapter 12, he hints to the blinders I spoke of earlier.

Hebrews 12:1-2 "...let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus..."

The race we run should be with ever more endurance and enthusiasm, as it is for an eternal everlasting prize that we run for. Every step we take, each decision and every pursuit should be advanced only with much purpose behind it. Every worldly distraction, immoral or not, that slows us down or trips us up, should be trashed, erased from our minds by the blinders of Gods motivating love to see His will come to completion. In every pursuit, let His face be your goal, and His love be your fuel.

Think on These Things

Philippians 4:8 "Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things."

Our culture is saturated with lies, disrespect, immorality, impurity, hatred, violence, bad news, laziness, and depression. It's in every single sit-com, on every nickelodeon cartoon, on every news media, on every magazine rack, on every movie, in every book. It seems like you can't get away from it. It's almost as if you cannot function without being infiltrated with a culture mind bomb.

The sad part is though, most of us don't really care. We've grown immune to the culture bombs. They've already done their work in our minds, and hardened our hearts, and we suck it in willingly every day we turn the tv on.

As people of God, we need to learn how to filter out the culture mind bombs from our life, and to "dwell" on the proper things. Unfortunately, this means a large sacrifice for most people; their favorite television shows, magazine articles, news outlets, movie genres.

We don't understand as much as Paul did the effect of what you place your mind on. And media has the magical ability of placing your mind on what it wants. Luckily, you have the ability to choose your media outlet: so choose it wisely, knowing that it forms the way you view the world, the way you think and feel, and the way you make decisions.

The Source

Maybe your wondering why this group is called the Source. The Source of what? Is the group a source of something, or are they looking for a source? What in the world's going on? Well, let me shine some light.

The Source is a youth ministry in a small "village" in southwest Louisiana; Maurice. We are determined to be more than a social club, we want to be involved in more than just having meetings. You know, the meetings where one guy talks, and everybody else sits around and stares until he's done, then they all go home as if nothing ever happened. That's the definition of a lot of youth groups...but not this one.

God is our source. He's the source of a lot of things. He's the source of hope (Psalm 119:114), the source of joy (Psalm 43:4), the source of comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3), the source of our righteousness (Isaiah 45:24), the source of our spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:4), and the source of our salvation (Hebrews 5:9).

In fact, the best representation of God being The Source, is to consider yourself as a branch. As long as a branch is connected to the trunk of the tree, it gets the nutrients it needs to produce fruit, and to stay alive; but the moment the branch is removed from the trunk, it loses it's "source" of life, and will eventually be good only as a nice addition to your scolding fireplace.

Jesus says in John 15:5 "I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing."

That pretty much sums it up.