Imagine you're out for a hike on a beautiful spring day and you come to a creek. But there's something wrong with this picture. You notice that someone has dumped trash into the stream—an ugly sight. Judging by some of the empty soda cans, the trash has been there awhile. And there is an ugly film on top of the water. You can't just leave the scene as you found it, because it would bother your conscience. So you stoop down and begin gathering the trash.

It actually takes several hours before you can begin to see a difference; it's amazing how much junk is there. You sit back, rest for a moment, and realize you'll have to keep returning each day until the site is truly clean. But when you come back the next day, it's as if your work has been undone.

In fact there's more trash than before. Somehow the garbage bred overnight. You think about the unlikelihood of someone coming to this very spot to dump their garbage in the few hours while you were away, and you realize that something smells fishy—so to speak. So you begin to follow the creek upstream.

Sure enough, you come to a garbage dump that has been there for years. It's emptying into the passing creek. Your cleaning job only opened up a gap for more stuff to settle. You could go and clean every day …. If you want your creek to be clean, that means going directly to the source and dealing with what's there.

Possible Preaching Angles: According to the Bible, your heart is the source from which your life flows. Unfortunately, we spend great amounts of time, money, and energy—even in the church—doing trash removal "downstream." But real transformation begins when we travel upstream to the source of our heart. Our real battles take place in our heart.