Worship like the Prostitute.
About a year ago I was preparing to staff on my Second discipleship training school in Brisbane. One of my specific roles for the school was organizing the prayer and worship during the 6 months we were together. I was excited and nervous to take something like this on, but God knew.
So as I started seeking Him for vision. I was reminded of a passage of scripture and a teaching I heard a few months before while at a week long Worship School in New Zealand. Luke 7:36-50 Shares a story from Jesus' life when He was invited to hang out at the house of a man called Simon. "Dinner at my place?". So Jesus went. While there, a woman showed up who had not the best of reputations (Some translations say she was a prostitute). She had learned Jesus would be there and so she entered the house with a jar of expensive perfume. She came to Jesus and she began to weep, her tears falling on his feet. She took her hair and wiped his feet. After, she kissed His feet and poured the expensive perfume on them.
Can you imagine this happening at one of your dinner parties?
So Simon, man of the house, looked at what was going on and said this,
“If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”
Not only did He judge this woman for what she had done and what she was doing, but He judged Jesus.
Whenever we judge someones worship, we are assuming we know all there is to know about God and then we judge God.
Now, I wasn't reminded of this passage because God was telling me to rebuke my new students. God was saying that he wanted us to be like this women. She was experiencing intimacy with God, and to tell you the truth, that intimacy probably made the other people at the dinner party feel a bit uncomfortable. Her worship was genuine, it was raw, it cost her something. Her worship was un-religious, un-respectable, disgraceful even. But she was the only one there who had welcomed Jesus properly. She honored Him and Gave all she had. Jesus was calling us into the same beautiful intimacy.
Jesus is calling you into the same Beautiful intimacy. Not to embarrass you, but to free you.
So as I started seeking Him for vision. I was reminded of a passage of scripture and a teaching I heard a few months before while at a week long Worship School in New Zealand. Luke 7:36-50 Shares a story from Jesus' life when He was invited to hang out at the house of a man called Simon. "Dinner at my place?". So Jesus went. While there, a woman showed up who had not the best of reputations (Some translations say she was a prostitute). She had learned Jesus would be there and so she entered the house with a jar of expensive perfume. She came to Jesus and she began to weep, her tears falling on his feet. She took her hair and wiped his feet. After, she kissed His feet and poured the expensive perfume on them.
Can you imagine this happening at one of your dinner parties?
So Simon, man of the house, looked at what was going on and said this,
“If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”
Not only did He judge this woman for what she had done and what she was doing, but He judged Jesus.
Whenever we judge someones worship, we are assuming we know all there is to know about God and then we judge God.
Now, I wasn't reminded of this passage because God was telling me to rebuke my new students. God was saying that he wanted us to be like this women. She was experiencing intimacy with God, and to tell you the truth, that intimacy probably made the other people at the dinner party feel a bit uncomfortable. Her worship was genuine, it was raw, it cost her something. Her worship was un-religious, un-respectable, disgraceful even. But she was the only one there who had welcomed Jesus properly. She honored Him and Gave all she had. Jesus was calling us into the same beautiful intimacy.
Jesus is calling you into the same Beautiful intimacy. Not to embarrass you, but to free you.
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