The Holy Spirit

This past January, I had the privilege of going to Israel. This was my second time and I went with the intention of learning how to lead my own trip in the near future. There is so much history everywhere you go that you could never see it all in one trip. This was the case for me as there were things I got to see this trip that we didn’t make it to the first time.

One of the new places for me this trip were the rabbinic tunnels that they have excavated in and around the Temple Mount. Because Jerusalem was built and destroyed and rebuilt and destroyed and rebuilt over and over again, the streets that Jesus would have walked and parts of the Temple walls that are still standing are currently very far below ground. As you are walking these tunnels, there is a spot where they believe you get as close as you can to where the Holy of Holies used to be.

Quick history lesson, the Holy of Holies was the inner most room of the Temple and the place where God sent His Spirit to live with the His chosen people. There were different court yards around the Temple and the closer you walked to the middle, the more Holy you had to be. At one point, only Priests were allowed to enter, in order to perform their duties to the Lord, and then past that, there was the most Holy place, or the Holy of Holies. In this room was the Ark of the Covenant, where the tablets that God gave to Moses were kept and where the Holy Spirit of God rested. Once a year, the head priest, or high priest, would make a sacrifice to atone for the sin of the people and then would enter the Holy of Holies. He went in with a bell on and a rope tied to his ankle. If he hadn’t repented of his own sin and was considered unclean, he would die in the presence of the Lord. If this happened, the only way to get him out was to pull him out with a rope, because if you went in to get him out, you would die also.

So as we are walking along the tunnels, these are the same walls that make up the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall where many people travel to today in order to pray and place little slips of paper with prayers, into the cracks in the wall. If you google Western Wall you will see a wide open space that is divided into a men’s and women’s section and is very wide and very tall. As you can see in the picture below, this is a much smaller and covered place. They believe, based on measurements, that the Holy of Holies would have been parallel to this place, deeper inside the Temple. Many people will walk the tunnels to get to this place and stop to pray or, if you can see them, also slip little pieces of paper into the cracks here.

There are so many overwhelming experiences in Israel where you are so close to things that you have only read about in the Bible. This is one of those moments, where you think back to so many Old Testament stories of the Temple and God’s presence and think, it all happened right here! Because of this, many in our group stopped to pray in this spot as you can see above. It’s a reverent moment as you ponder the Holiness of God.

It is amazing to see and experience so many things that you read about in the Bible and see these stories come to life, but there is another group of people walking around Israel. They are there to try and get as close to God as possible. They think that something that Jesus touched or somewhere that He went or the places where God’s Spirit used to dwell, holds some power that they need in their lives. They have traded in worshipping God for worshipping some place that He walked or was said to have been born or buried. This observation struck me in a huge way as I stood in the middle of this tunnel looking at these rocks.

Yes, the Spirit of God used to dwell somewhere close by, but today, He dwells on the other side of those rocks, because He lives in me.

The veil that kept people “safe” from the presence of a Holy God, was ripped in two when Jesus died on the cross and the Spirit of God was sent to live in the hearts of His children after Jesus rose and went back to Heaven. The SAME Holy Spirit. We do not die from being in His presence anymore because we have been washed and made Holy by the blood of the lamb. Once and for all.

But as I watched the people around me hunger and chase God’s presence, I thought about how we take Him for granted being with us 24/7. We don’t live like we know we are filled with power. We don’t live like we know He is close. We don’t live like we are never alone but act like we have to work to get close to Him. Why are so many people standing and touching and praying and crying at some stones when the very presence of God wishes to indwell them and be closer than He ever could before?

In John 16:7, Jesus tells His disciples that He must leave them in order to give them something better. He knows that God in the form of man, must return to heaven so that God in the Spirit can come and be so close to His beloved, and this was better. Before Messiah came, His Spirit rested in the temple and everyone had to travel to Jerusalem to worship. But when you left Jerusalem, you left God there. When Jesus came, He walked around and brought the power and presence of God out to the people, the outcast, the leper, the captive. He taught the people the heart of the law instead of leaving it only in the priests’ hands. But when Jesus left a town or even went to bed, His followers did not have Him with them all the time. Think about the times when Jesus would go sonewhere alone to pray or send them out onto the sea without Him. There were still times when they were alone. When He returned to heaven and the Holy Spirit was set in the hearts of His people, we never had to be parted from God. Now that we could be made Holy through Jesus’ sacrifice and payment for our sins, we could live in the presence of God all the days of our lives. He would be with us when we eat, sleep, teach and serve, and every step as we walk along through our days. It is so much better!

If we want to experience true joy or lasting freedom, we must live in the truth of who is living in us! We must depend on the power that we have direct access to and trust the quiet voice that whispers in the depths of our souls, even when or especially when we don’t understand!

The world around us is desperately seeking what we have. We cannot powerfully give it away though, until we depend on it and trust it fully. Spend some time over these next days asking the Holy Spirit to show you places and ways that you can trust deeper in the power that you have living inside you.

Your Fellow Traveler

Lacey