Extravagant – When Worship Becomes LifestyleSample

A New Normal: When Our Expectations Are Not Framed by the Experience of Others

I love travelling and have had the privilege of visiting many countries of the world. Being someone who loves to plan, if I’m going anywhere new, I like to find out if any of my friends have already been there and ask their advice on what to look for or avoid. Failing that, of course, there are always the websites that allow customers to rate hotels, restaurants and experiences they’ve had in a particular city or country.

Before one such trip, I asked a friend who’d traveled there previously for advice. I soon wished I hadn’t! He spoke of terrifying border control agents, covert cameras in hotel rooms and a level of vigilance that might get me deported. On top of that, he insisted that the food wasn’t very good and the climate was intolerable.

I still remember that trip … it was brilliant! Sure, the security was tight and the staff on the hotel reception desk may well have been government agents, but the food was great, the people were amazing, the beds were soft and the water was warm … although I did get changed in the dark, just in case my hotel room did have hidden cameras!

If we are not careful, we allow the experiences of others to set the boundaries of our expectations. Had the woman behaved in a pharisaic way, the perfume would have stayed in the bottle … forever. Simon’s experience, and that of his friends, dictated that worship and religion should be done a certain way. This woman’s way was definitely not in the rulebook.

This is not to deny or criticize someone else’s experience, for as I’ve already said, worship follows wonder and adoration follows appreciation – we can only truly be extravagant out of the revelation we have received. But, we must not allow someone else’s experience to set the boundaries for our own expectations. If we do, we’ll never travel and if we do travel, we’ll only go to the places that they liked and enjoyed.

This lady’s extravagance in worship was an uncharted experience for Simon and his guests, but just because they had never been there, didn’t mean that she couldn’t! Loving God lavishly, without restraint, will open our eyes to a new horizon of expectation and create a new world of experience. If we follow our conviction and decide not live in comparison, then extravagance will become our new normal!