Lent 41 Sold out

How much do you earn in a year?   Or perhaps a better question, what is your annual income?
Got a number in mind?    Good.

Now.......

Another question.    What is your most expensive possession?  The highest value item that you own?   For most of us, even with a mortgage, this is probably going to be our house I suppose.   If you don't own a house then it might be your car or your home furnishings.   Possibly it's something else.  Whatever it is hold it in your mind's eye for a minute.    OK?

Right.   Now God says  ' If you love me then you will give me your house ( item of highest value)   I would like you to sell it and give all of the money to Me   ( My church/ the poor/ a charity/ the lady down the road)
Or God says   ' I love you, but I need you to give me a whole year's worth of your income.   Right now.  '

How do you react?   Not ' in theory'  how do you react, but really.   If God were to ask you to give up your home or to give £15,000  / £25,000 / £50,000  right now, today - how would you react?

The reason I ask is because yesterdays sermon was about the woman with the alabaster jar.   Well, it wasnt about her it was about being passionately in love with Jesus.  And she was the example used to demonstrate an extravagant, wholehearted, passionate love.   We all know the story and we have thought about it before but something struck me anew about it yesterday.     Firstly I wondered how
the woman had come to have such a ridiculously expensive jar of perfume in the first place.    Was she one of the preposterously rich elite of her day - probably famous in the area for being the wife of some fabulously wealthy merchant or aristocrat?  Was the alabaster jar a family heirloom?  Or maybe it was her pension plan - her guarantee of an income in her old age?   I have no idea how someone could possibly afford a bottle of perfume which in todays money would be worth £20k or £30k.    But she had it.   And she wasted the lot on Jesus.

The preacher yesterday said something interesting.   He pointed out that the spiritual temperature in the room that day was measured by the horror of the onlookers as they watched her pour thousands of pounds worth of perfume over Jesus.   Their justifications as to why it was a terrible thing to do.   Jesus appears to be the only person in the room  NOT to have been horrified.   He saw the immense love behind the gesture.  Nobody else there saw it because nobody else in the room felt it.

If we say that we give our lives to Jesus, that we invite Him in to every part of us, that he is Lord and in control and that we love Him then it should cause us no pain, no offence, no difficulty to give Him everything we have.   Not just in theory but literally.   For love of our wonderful Saviour can we loosen our hold on the ' stuff' and give as freely as we have received?   Will we be the woman with the jar or the rich young ruler?

I was challenged yesterday.   When we have very little it is easy to give it away.  When we have a lot it seems to be much harder.  How much do I really love the Jesus who stretched out His arms for me and died?   Enough to give Him everything?   Or only enough for a tithe and an offering and a standing order to a charity?