Practical and powerful devotional breakout series #4

GYC West 2017 - REFLECT: The Daily Experience

<p>Practical and powerful devotional breakout series #4</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

GYC West

Breakouts

Zachary Page

1. Desiring God

2. Thick With the Almighty

3. The Statesman

4. Loving Jesus

Father, here we are, we're asking that you would speak to us, that you would minister to our hearts, and that you would instill in us a love for Jesus like we've never experienced before.

Lord, we claim Romans 5.5, that hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in your hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Lord, pour out your Spirit in our hearts and give us a radical love for Jesus.

All right, So if you have your Bibles, open it up to Luke chapter 7.

Luke chapter 7 and we're gonna go to verse 36.

So Luke in his gospel, when he arranges things, all of them do this to a certain extent, but it's not necessarily chronological order, but he puts a lot of things together in a way that tells and paints a picture, it's different snippets from Jesus' life.

So this story actually took place within a week before the cross.

But verse 36 says, Then 1 of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went to the Pharisees' house and sat down to eat.

And behold, a woman in the city, who was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisees' house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil, and stood at his feet behind him, weeping.

And she began to wash his feet with her tears and wipe them with a hair of her head.

And she kissed his feet and anointed them with fragrant oil.

Now when the Pharisees who had invited him saw this, he spoke to himself saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would know what manner of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner." This is a story that's told in, I believe, all of the Gospels.

In another place, we get a little picture of the value of what she brought to him.

So she brings this alabaster box and it's worth 300 denarii which is 300 days wages.

I don't know how much you make in a year but let's say the average in the United States is somewhere around $30, 000 a year.

A lot of people make more than that, and some people make a lot less than that.

So, but let's say $30, 000, it's close to a year's wage, so let's say $25, 000 that she has there, maybe a little more than that.

So what a person would do is they would invest their money rather than going to the bank and putting it in the bank, they would invest it in something like this, something precious, something of real value, and this alabaster box, this perfume was likely from the Himalayan mountains.

It was something that she had poured probably her life savings into.

Here's Jesus and He's there with His disciples and they're there eating when all of a sudden in walks Mary.

And as Mary comes in, all that she can think about, she's not worried about what anybody's thinking, she's not worried about what's going on in there, but all she can think about is Jesus.

And as she comes, I've never held something that valuable in my hands.

Maybe I have, but imagine holding something that took you an entire year's wage to get it.

And as you come up to Jesus, you just love and adore Jesus so much that you just pour it out on Him just to delight Jesus.

Just so that Jesus can take in that beautiful fragrance, so that He can take a deep breath and just smell that fragrance, and for the next few days he's going to continue to smell that fragrance.

In fact, when he was on the cross, in all likelihood, in this time period, the amount of showering that took place, Jesus, in all likelihood, as he was on the cross, When he took in those breaths, he was still smelling the fragrance of that perfume as he was there on the cross, recognizing this incredible love that Mary had for him.

I want to have that kind of love for Jesus.

I want to have that kind of love for God.

Jesus basically summed up the law, didn't he, in saying that we should love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, with all of our soul, with all of our strength, and our neighbor as ourselves.

So looking at the story of Mary, what was it that led her to such radical love for Jesus?

Because I want to have that same kind of love.

So there's little snippets in her story that lead us to pictures as to why she had this kind of love.

So we continue reading in verse 40 it says, And Jesus answered and said to him, Simon I have something to say to you.

There was a certain creditor who had 2 debtors.

And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both.

Tell me, therefore, which of them will love him more?

Simon answered and said, I suppose the 1 whom he forgave more.

And he said to him, you have judged rightly.

Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, do you see this woman?

I entered your house, You gave me no water for my feet, but she's washed my feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head.

You gave me no kiss, but this woman has not ceased to kiss my feet since the time I came in.

You did not anoint my head with oil, but this woman has anointed my feet with fragrant oil.

Therefore, I say to you, because of the actions in her life, these things that she's doing, therefore I say to you, her sins which are many, " she was known as a sinner in the city, she was known as that woman, that woman that shouldn't be touching a man, therefore her sins which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.

But to whom little is given, the same loves little.

Then he said to her, your sins are forgiven." So what is the first key that we see in the life of Mary that leads her to love extravagantly?

What does Jesus pinpoint as saying she loved much because she was forgiven much.

She acknowledged her sins and she allowed Jesus to forgive her, to radically forgive her.

And the backstory, Simon, is that Simon had actually led her into sin, and Simon really was the 1 who should have recognized his sin, but he was so proud and so blind to his own sin that he didn't recognize his need of forgiveness like Mary did.

And so because of that, he didn't love much.

So in my life, Jesus exactly pinpoints that this woman was willing to do a lot of stuff for him because of her love.

My life, when I'm finding it hard to, let's say, go to church or to tell others about Jesus or to give Bible studies or to pray, could it be that it's because there's a lack of love in my heart for Jesus?

And step 1 for Mary was to experience a deeper forgiveness.

When you are forgiven much, you love much.

So on a daily basis for me it's important that I take that time just allowing God to search my heart to reveal any of the little things in my heart that might be harmful because if He's my loving Savior then He's only going to point out things that are harmful to me.

I go to the dermatologist quite often, probably every 6 months because I'm so white, and when I go to the dermatologist, they usually cut something off of me.

So why do I keep going back to the dermatologist when they keep cutting things off of me?

Thankfully it never turns out to be cancer so far, but they keep cutting stuff off of me when I go to them and yet I keep going back.

Why go back to a person that's cutting me?

Because I know that they have my good in mind.

They're only cutting out stuff that could potentially kill me.

I knew another man who went to an oral surgeon actually and had this sore in his mouth and the oral surgeon said, I need to take care of that for you and he said, no you're not touching me.

And the oral surgeon said, if he had just let me I would have cut all of that out completely because I knew what it was but he wouldn't let me.

That man, it wasn't months later that he died from that sore that he refused to let the oral surgeon cut out.

In my life, when I come to Jesus and Jesus points out the stuff in my life, when I realize that He is my loving Savior and that He only has my good in mind, when I see His compassionate nature, then I'm ready to surrender absolutely everything to Him, because I don't want anything that He doesn't want me to have because He only wants what's good for me.

Just like my wife, if she asked me something, I'm probably gonna do it because I know how much she loves me and I know that she's a wise woman and I know that I can trust what she's going to ask me to do.

We're going to find a little more of a picture there.

Now remember that when she, just because it happens in Luke chapter 7 there, doesn't mean that chronologically this 1 happens later.

Verse 38 says, Now it happened as they went that he entered a certain village, and a certain woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.

And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word.

But Martha was distracted with much serving and she approached Him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?

This picture of Jesus coming to that house that he loved to go to in Bethany.

And really what could be more important than fixing lunch or dinner for the Son of God on earth?

Doesn't that seem like a pretty important task to get done?

Doesn't seem like Martha, she had super good intentions.

And here's Mary, seemingly distracted by just sitting at the feet of Jesus.

But it says in verse 40 that Martha was the 1 distracted.

It says she was distracted by much serving.

Is it possible to get distracted from Jesus by good things in our life?

Series

Breakouts

4. Loving Jesus

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

The Way of Love

The Way of Love- Part 5

37m

Devotional Life

Devotional Life - Part 2

1h 4m

Praying with Praise

34m

Reprioritizing in the Last Days

Fervent Love for One Another

1h 5m

Restoration 2025: Revelation Speaks Life

Give Him the Glory

51m

Revelation of Jesus Christ

1h 17m

Christ in Crisis

1h 7m

The Hardest Commandment

53m

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

1h 3m

Preparing For the End of Time

2. How to Revive Your Devotional Life

1h

GYC SE 2012 Seminar: Lessons in Warfare

Special Forces

51m

Encounters With Jesus

Jesus’ Encounters at the Cross

41m

Sound Doctrine