SEE FINISH

Hey there! 

How are you doing? I hope you're fine and I pray that God continues to guide you. 

Welcome to today's gist. 

I recently read a very fascinating story in the Bible. 

The time had come for the Pharisees to kill Jesus and they had begun to look for the most convenient and least confrontational way to kill Him. 

While they were planning, Jesus was invited to dine in the house of Simon the Leper in Bethany. And as He reclined at the table, a woman walks in. Maybe she was passing and heard Jesus was in Simon's house or maybe she was a member of the dinner party. She's however not empty handed, she's holding an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, maybe the Bulgari brand of their time. 

Ever had an expensive perfume? I'm sure you used it sparingly and treated like gold. Now let me ask, your perfume don break before? How did you feel?

But our lady goes straight to Jesus and takes this expensive perfume and begins to anoint Him with it. In case you didn't read it well, she didn't dab the perfume a little under His arms or on His neck and pulse points. No, she poured it like anointing oil over Him! She took her Bulgari perfume that she could have managed and used for months and at one go, poured it all on Jesus. 

While she was performing this act of worship, Uncle Judas began to rake! Somehow he knew what the price range of the perfume was.

Hol' up!

How did a man who was following Jesus in His itinerant ministry have the time to visit stalls to the extent that he could approximate the value of the perfume our lady brought in. And he began to quarrel. The thing cost a labourer's pay for a year! 

In Nigeria, a typical labourer is paid about 2,000 Naira a day for work. If they work 7 days it's 14,000 Naira and if they earn 14,000 Naira for 52 weeks in a year, that's 728,000 Naira. 

Judas' argument was that why was the perfume not sold and the 728,000 Naira used to do charity work and given to the poor? What kind of waste was that?

Listening to Judas would almost have you convinced he was passionate about the needs of the poor people but at all! The Bible tells us that he was the one holding the Ministry's purse and usually 'helped' himself to the funds in his possession. 

Of course Jesus rebuked him! He knew Judas' problem wasn't about helping the poor. 

He told them that there would always be poor people to help and give to, but her act of sacrifice could only ever happen once! He told them that this woman's anointing would take the place of the 'embalment' that would ordinarily have been done on His body upon His death, she prepared His body before the death! And He goes further to say that everywhere the Gospel is preached, this woman's act of worship will be mentioned also. 

And that has been happening, I'm sure as you were reading, you already knew where the story was going. This woman, through her act of sacrifice, had her name recorded in History, entering the class of persons such as Rahab, Ruth and others like them. We may not know her name (though the account in John 12 suggests that it was Mary, Lazarus's sister) but we know that there was such a woman who lived and she performed an expensive act of worship.  

The actually fascinating part of this story is what the recorders tell me happened immediately after. You might not know it, I didn't until a few days ago, but Judas then left this dinner place and went to offer his services as a 'betrayer for hire' to the Pharisees (Mark 14:10). Of course they agreed to patronize his services and he began to look for the appropriate time to betray Jesus (Mark 14:11) E shock me!

The thing that blew my mind was the fact that he left a place where such a wonderful act of worship had occured and all he could think of doing was betraying Jesus! 

Because we don't know this woman's name we cannot ascertain how long she had been a follower of Jesus, but even if she had been following Him for long, she definitely wasn't as consistent in following Him from place to place like Judas. She probably had to wait until He came to her city to be able to see Him and experience Him. Yet here was Judas who had been following Jesus from city to city, witnessing the many wonderful things He did, yet this woman understood Jesus more than Judas ever did!

I asked myself "how could someone be in the presence of Jesus for 3 years and 6 months yet have absolutely no understanding of Him?" "How could someone see all that Jesus did yet have no qualms about betraying Him?" "What was Judas even doing leaving everything to follow Jesus if he didn't believe in His ministry?" 

And as I asked these questions and more like them, I understood that it has never, is not, and will never be a question of how much time one has spent in a 'Jesus-filled' environment, it will always be a question of whether one has understood who Jesus truly is and found out what Jesus means to them. It's why we have so many people who have been in the church their entire lives yet flagrantly betray Jesus.

We all complain about 'see finish' entering our relationships with people yet we treat Jesus most times like we have seen Him finish!

We have begun to place so much stock on how many years a person can boast of being a Christian, which most times merely translates to how long they've been attending church, that we sometimes forget to ascertain whether they have truly submitted to Jesus. 

The lesson I learned from this story was a reinforcement of a lesson God had taught me a while back, and it is that I must be careful not to allow see finish enter my relationship with Him. The moment you begin to think that you have seen God finish, you begin to disrespect and spite Him, intentionally or otherwise, and that's a dangerous place to be at! It will cost you terribly, here and in eternity so no play that kind play abeg. Submission to God and a hunger for Him must be a continuous and consistent act.

You cannot know all of God, the devil will try to deceive you into thinking that you've known all there is to know about God to get you to distance yourself from Him because the devil can only begin to play you when you remove yourself from God's playing field. 

So I'm encouraging you today, please be careful not to allow see finish enter your relationship with God. Examine yourself to find out if see finish has already begun to manifest in your relationship with Him and if it has, please come to God in repentance and submission, He'll take you in and help you restore your relationship. 

See you next week!

Love,

Achenyo. 

PS. How have you been advertising Jesus?