What's in your jar?

Being an adult can suck. A lot. If I had known 20 years ago what I know now, I would have changed a whole lot. For one, I would have stopped myself from buying such unnecessary things, in order to pay for the necessary with greater ease. Managing expenses is hard. Weighing up between wants and needs is hard. Keeping yourself out of debt, is even harder still. Let me just say it, being an adult is expensive. I wish there was an alternative. But, alas, there isn’t. Everything we need costs us – a lot of the time, way more than what we like.

What makes our absolute need of God any different?

Last Sunday, during our time of worship at Church, I felt the Holy Spirit speak to me through two accounts in Scripture. Firstly, the account in 2 Samuel 24 where a plague had fallen upon Israel due to David’s sin. Gad, the prophet, instructed David to present an offering to the Lord at Araunah’s threshing floor. Araunah offered to give David the threshing floor and everything he needed at no cost, but David replied, ”I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God with that which cost me nothing”. David bought the entire property and everything he needed for 600 shekels of gold (1 Chronicles 21:25), which in today’s value is $290 000 (R3.9mil). That is ridiculously expensive. The second account, was the account of the sinful woman in Luke 7 who washed Jesus’ feet with the contents of an alabaster jar and her tears, and finally dried His feet with her hair. Scholars are unsure if this fragrant oil was identical to the one Mary Magdalene used in John 12, but in this case let’s assume that it is. (It’s easy to assume this, as spikenard, the expensive oil Mary used, was transported from India in alabaster jars, the same kind of jar that this lady brought her oil in.) If that’s the case, a jar of spikenard cost 300 denarii – or 300 days worth of work. That’s 10 months of your full salary, before tax. This cost is relative to your own salary but, according to the US Federal Reserve, the average salary in the USA is $54462 (or R736 326) per year, which equates to $45385 (or R613605) for 10 months of that annual salary. That, too, is insanely expensive. When considering the cost of David and the woman’s worship, the Lord asked me this:

"What’s in your jar?"

It hit me, as I mulled over that question, that I don’t love God as He deserves with the things I treasure most in this life. How I lead and love Jess, as my wife, is an act of worship and if I don’t do that in such a way that it costs me my pride, my wants, my everything, then I don’t honour God through it.

My talents – I definitely don’t love God as He deserves with my talents. I can give Him so much more, but my self-confidence says I can’t.

My time – the one thing I defend whole-heartedly. I’m going to be real, I love spending time with Jess, my family and my friends. My primary love language is “Quality Time”. So, you’d think I use my time well. ***insert game shower sound for incorrect answer here*** I am terrible at it. I am lazy and have spent more time on social media than in the Word and in prayer. I said to Jess this morning at breakfast that we have got to manage the time we spend on social media and be cut-throat with it, because not only is it infringing on our own time as a family, it’s infringing on the time we should be spending in the presence of God.

At the moment, there is not much of tremendous value in my jar. My worship and my affections toward God is not as costly as it should be. Sure, I serve on Friday nights at youth and in various other capacities in the life of the Church, which costs Jess and I the ability to hang out with our friends and family on those nights. It also costs us weekends away and being able to go camping. However, I have other very valuable things in my life that I still need to be put in that jar.

It’s going to cost me.

It’s going to be expensive.

Am I ready to do it?

Probably not.

But, man, Jesus is so worth it.

He deserves every ounce of affection I can give Him and more. He requires that I love Him with all my heart, all my soul and all my mind.

No matter what the cost.

I bet if you had to ask David and the sinful woman if they regretted spending the amount they did on the Lord, you would more than likely get a response like this:

“Nope. It was totally worth it. He is totally worth it.”

So, what’s in your jar?