We don’t know her name only her love. When Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to Him with an alabaster flask of costly fragrant oil and poured it on His head.  Set free from torment and now living with new hope, she came to pay her debt the best she could. But some disciples including Judas asked why the fragrant oil was “wasted?” GK Apoleia” Literally “ruined to perdition.” 

300 denarii was close to a year’s wage. That is extravagant worship. You can’t accurately ladle out worship, so she poured it out.  Worship is wasteful; it is always excessive, even over the top. You can only pour it out unmeasured. Extravagant worship always exposes the hard, pragmatic, selfish or merely natural mindset

Judas also asked why her passion and devotion were not used to help the poor. But worship is not about being helpful or alleviating need. Meeting a need is a good thing to do at any time but it is not worship.  Worship is given to the One who has no need - we worship because it is we who have the need to worship.

Tellingly, when Jesus was describing Judas later, as the “son of perdition”, he used the exact same word "wasted", meaning “ruined to perdition.”  When a man calls wasted a thing that God esteems, God who wishes to esteem every man's life, may call it wasted.

Friends, the extravagance of our worship and how we rejoice in extravagant worship by others, is a good indicator of our heart and our future.

 Worship is the gyroscope of the soul. Worship is a sign of right order in the universe. When men and women worship God they begin to find out what they are born for and the benefits that God plans for them. Worship is all about God, but it benefits us. 

Worship lifts a man out of obscurity. Of course, God knows every person and loves them, but people don’t really appear on His “radar” until they begin to worship Him. Worship will lift a man to his place in history.  Gideon worshipped God and discovered he was a mighty man of valor. Moses was unknown till he bowed at the flaming shrub and Isaiah was just the son of a rich man until he saw the Lord high and lifted up. When people worship, they become what they were intended to be.

Worshipping Jesus is the only way to get the best from our life and our day. When Jesus was visiting His friends in Bethany, Martha was busy in the kitchen but Mary sat at His feet.  When Martha later complained to Jesus that Mary wasn’t helping her, Jesus said that Mary had chosen the best part. On an average day, there are tasks to complete and people to relate to, but they can never become the best they could be, till we have done the best part of the whole day, which is to worship Him.  Without the best part of the day in place, all other parts are ill-placed and unaligned. We may have a wrong perspective, or life’s priorities may become distorted like Martha’s. She believed that love was best shown by industry, not intimacy even in inactivity.

Being “unproductive” is not a virtue in the world or even in the kingdom of God but imperative in the very presence of Jesus. Our importance and what we can do for Him, is zero compared with what He can do for us as we worship.

Friend, to become the person, the father or friend, we were intended to be, and even to have the day God intended, choose to be a worshipper.

Peter and John saw the lame man begging at the Beautiful Gate. Interestingly, the word “beautiful” is related to the idea of a beautiful or perfect moment. They came at the perfect time and although they never had money, they had the perfect gift to give, in Jesus’ name and left a lame man leaping in the temple. Beautiful moments are created by believing our steps are ordered and believing we have something to give to others. Gifts are not our decisions but our discoveries, but if we know what we have to give and sense the time to release it, we will create a beautiful moment. When Jesus found us broken outside the House of God, He gave us all that He had, and our beautiful moment began.

Friend, today God will have someone with a problem waiting at “the gate” outside the Temple. Such as you have, whatever Jesus has given you. hope, prophecy, encouragement, mercy or healing, release Him into their life today.  Sometimes it may be even cash but there is a beautiful moment planned for you and someone else today. It will be like giving a lame man back his legs!

No one ever benefited much from arriving at their destination. Nobody learns anything on graduation day but in the 4 years it took to get there.  The Bible declares “Blessed is the man whose… heart is set on pilgrimage.  As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a spring…  They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God." Psalm 84:5-7 

Whatever your destination is in life, it’s the journey that God uses to grow you.  Like you, I have had difficult days.  Friends have left town, and staff have quit. Parents have passed on, and children have been in car accidents. I have been through burn-out and had children away from God.  It wasn’t a desperate search for sermons that have helped me know Him and grow stronger but the weeks I walked the streets, with a desperate cry for answers to heart-breaking challenges.

It is not going through valleys that grow us, but it is making our “Valley of Baca” into a spring, as we dig deep into the Holy Spirit’s life and power. Strength doesn’t come in a manual but in the midst of mystery (sometimes misery) as we draw from His grace and the assurance of His love.  The Psalm says as we do this, we appear before God. You may not see Him yet. You might still feel lost in a crowd of troubles; at a loss to understand how things have worked out the way they have.  But when a child is lost in a crowd, it doesn't matter if the child can’t see the father, for they are safe the moment the father sees the child.

Friends, our Father sees you, and He will strengthen and comfort you. Set your heart on a pilgrimage toward Him and keep digging for springs. Who we look for/at determines who we look like. Our journey is the blessing that enables us to arrive at our most important destination: Being like Him when we see Him.

As we remember the time of our Saviour’s arrival, we wish to feel greater gratitude and love for Him. But trying to find greater love for God, by looking inside us is misdirected. We only love Him more when we see how much He loves us. We love Him because He first loved us.  The Father's love is revealed:

In the Depth of His love toward us when “God so loved the world that He gave his only Son ”

In the Length of His love towards us “For God demonstrates his love in while we were sinners Christ died for us”

In the Width of God’s love toward us for “whoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved.”

And in the Height of the love of God toward us, for “Behold how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God.”

The Son became “sin” for us so sinners could become sons! Oh the depth, the length, the width and the height of the love of God!

Friend, it is enough to make you and your family very Merry this Christmas. God bless you all.

John the beloved disciple describes our relationship journey with Christ, in his gospel. All of them are important but the last one is critical. We begin as sheep.  Lost sheep is how He finds and calls us. It is comforting but there is not much in common and they don’t speak the same language. After that, we are called His servants. A servant belongs to their Master and they lose their life to follow Jesus. Being a servant of God is honorable but it is not our identity. Then we are called disciples.  One who is seeking to learn a lifestyle from their Teacher? Jesus said, “When you are mature you will be like Me.  Disciples follow Jesus with their cross!   This is a necessary relationship but doesn’t define our identity.

Later Jesus said,  “You are no longer servants but You are my friends if you do whatever I command you.”  God tells his friends, those who live in harmony with His will, secrets that He tells no one else.  Knowing things about God that others don’t, is a great privilege but still not where our identity lies.

Friend, while the relationship of sheep, servants, disciples or friends is valuable, the problem with all of them, is that they are all about what we can become or should do, instead of what Jesus has done for us.  They are all good but if our identity is based upon them, we will always be vulnerable to condemnation. Our life as a servant, disciple and friend is not always perfect. Our identity is to be based upon His performance not ours. After the resurrection, and the gift of the powerful Holy Spirit, both the Father and Jesus got what they always wanted. Jesus said, "Tell my brothers to meet me in Galilee."  Father has made us sons - that is our identity!

 Elijah arose quickly and left town, heading south for Beersheba. He hoped that his early exit had discouraged Jezebel from pursuing him, but he was worried. He had already faced forty knife-wielding false prophets, yet on this day, he was afraid of a woman and ran a marathon.

Elijah was burnt out, overextended and depleted from ministry. He was coping with apparent failure, withdrawal and tendencies toward self-destruction. He was finished.

Jezebel may never have sent an assassin after Elijah, but her intimidation had worked. If the enemy cannot kill us physically, he seeks to kill our future, tormenting us with tomorrow’s fears or yesterday’s failures.   In the desert, Elijah fell back against his tree and said in despair to God “It is enough!” But God is never finished with you until you finish. Whenever we think it is too hard to go on, God sees and understands our struggles and He provides the strength and the food we need for our next journey.

Friend, when you’re in the desert thinking “It is enough!” think about Him, who stayed on the cross, until he could say “It is finished.” Because He finished, we can lean on the cross and receive strength from God and know that “It is enough.”

Jesus took His disciples on an educational tour of pagan Caesarea Philippi, where He asked His disciples, "Who do men say that I am?"  They told him that the people thought He was a prophet but Jesus asked, "But who do you say that I am?"  Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."    Jesus replied "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.  And I also tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” (Mat 16:13 -18 )  Both Peter and Jesus declared who the other person was.  Peter said Jesus was the Christ and Jesus said Peter, was a rock. Both revelations are necessary before the Church can be built. Jesus was saying “You perceive me rightly, and you must perceive yourself rightly too!” The church can be built when we see ourselves rightly. 

Have you seen yourself lately?  You’re a world changer! God doesn’t see your limitations for He knows what He can do through you. At Jacobs well, in Samaria Jesus did not see the women as dirty but thirsty. Not as a powerless immoral woman but an evangelist; a divine witness and a well springing up into a river of life into her community. She came for a bucket full and left as a river full.

Friend, Jesus always sees you more correctly than you see yourself. When we see Him correctly, He will help us see ourselves correctly. When we leave Him who sits on His “throne well,” we will see ourselves as a river of life ready to flow out to the lost, as He builds his church.

We love the story of the prodigal son because we too were welcomed back with a robe and a ring. But sometimes we don’t feel like He is celebrating us each day" We know Jesus said He would be with us and that God’s unmerited favour is upon all His children, but we don’t feel it.

Once when I felt like this, I discovered the problem was in my imagination and not with God. Our imagination creates our feelings and affects our behaviour. The Bible says, "As a man thinks in his heart so is he."  The imagination creates its own reality, and even if something is not true it can still affect you. If you think you are a grasshopper in the face of giants and therefore can’t enter the Promised Land, you will be right.  Or even if God is favouring you but you don’t think He is, you will live in fear and insecurity- a crippled and stilted life. Our wrong thinking doesn’t change the fact that God is with us, but it changes our ability to feel it and enjoy our Father. But if we imagine the truth; that He is in us and walks with us and has His loving arms about us all day, we are confident and enjoy beautiful fellowship with Him.

God gave us our imagination to be a meeting place with Him, so the enemy of our soul tries to fill it with memories of inadequate fathers, wrong images, or seeing our lives as small and inconsequential.  In the end, the One who gave us the imagination as a sanctuary in which to meet God and walk together with Him, is squeezed out of His meeting place.

Friend, reclaim your imagination and fill it with true thoughts of our Father’s presence and favour toward you. Close your eyes and imagine Father favouring you, loving you, coming to you, embracing you and helping you.  For that is all true; anything else is a lie - imagine the truth and let faith arise.