Extravagant – When Worship Becomes LifestyleSample

A New Normal: When What He Wants is More Important Than How We Look

When she knelt down to serve Jesus that night, the woman knew it was always going to look a certain way. She was well known in the area as a “sinful woman,” maybe even a prostitute, and here she was, kneeling at the feet of Jesus acting in a less than appropriate manner toward a local Rabbi in the house of a Pharisee. What a risk she took!

Her actions, of course, would not only have drawn attention to herself, but said something about the man she was ministering to. In the culture of her day, in the context of the setting, and in the emotion of the moment, it didn’t look good. But of course, you and I know that looks can be and often are deceiving.

Sometimes, what something looks like, is what it is. But if we only ever go by how things look, we’ll frequently miss the point by a country mile! Remember Eli, the priest, who thought Hannah was drunk, when in fact she was praying a prayer that would change her nation? Ask Michal, whose husband was apparently shaming himself in a vulgar and unbecoming way … when in actual fact David was dancing before the Lord as His presence returned to Jerusalem. Ask Joseph: he was sure Mary had been unfaithful to Him, but then discovered she was highly favored by God.

Equally, had Hannah, David, Mary and this woman worried about how they looked, then an extravagant prayer would not have been prayed, the Ark would have stayed in the house of Obed-Edom, the Angel of the Lord would have had to find another womb for the Savior, and the perfume that filled the room that night may have been used for ignoble purposes.

In each case, extravagance broke out because the focus was on what the Lord wanted, not on how each person felt about how they looked.

We’ll never create a new normal if we’re worried about how we look to others. Those who sit outside of our passion will probably misunderstand anyway. A new normal is only forged when we stop worrying about how things look to others and become more concerned with pleasing Jesus. Now, if we’re doing stuff that is unnecessarily weird, then we need to address that – but if what we’re doing is the expression of our passion for Him, then we’ll just have to live with the weird label for a while.

If we let go of our ego, then extravagance will become our new normal!