Alabaster jar
Yesterday at Hillsong Women Lucinda Dooley was talking about giving. To me it was like creating a firework show at the New year's eve. Every time we release the money in our hands it is like pulling the trigers, they look small and they're unseen, but when they're released then somewhere in the sky there goes a big beautiful firework for many to enjoy.
I got to Hillsong women quite early, but I didn't see any of my friends. So I wandered into the bookshop and bought a Joyce Meyer's book "Knowing God Intimately", which I tried to buy at Hillsong Conference but was out of stock. I sat down and read a couple pages, but somehow this vision of an alabaster jar being broken kept coming up my mind. I was trying to figure out what it meant, but couldn't get a clear answer, so I thought to myself, "well, the speaker must be explaining it later then."
Sure enough, Donna Crouch, the speaker of the service, brought forth a message all around the alabaster jar.
The topic of her message was on how to live an extraordinary life.
To me what defines an ordinary life is the restriction of the jar. Everyone has an alabaster jar. The jar means lifestyle,thinking pattern, habits, daily routine, value system, things you think you can do and cannot do, limits that you set... etc. And the perfume inside the jar means the things you value, the priorities, things that are costly and important to you... like house, family,work, commitments...etc. The jar holds the perfume together. And together that explains an ordinary life.
To have an extraordinary life, we need to break that jar, allow our lifestyle to be disturbed and old pattern to be broken. And when all these are dedicated to Jesus, then He will turn the perfume into annointing oils.
A jar that's not broken is like a pregnant women going into labour, but decides to quit: "This is too painful, I'm out of here." Every calling of our lives comes with pain and sacrifice, and they're costly. But in order to fulfil the callings, in order to step into extraordinary from ordinary, life has to be stirred, the jar has to be broken.
Friday, August 06, 2004
