Unpacked, freshly showered and my belongings scattered across my bed, I frantically searched for my bottle of perfume. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to spritz on something floral and powdery to make me feel like a woman. I’d been on a train all day absorbing the odor of cigarettes, rotting fruit, fishy smelling treats and my own perspiration under my layers of clothes. Sure, I had just showered, but I could use an extra measure of fragrance to make me feel beautiful again.
Jesus, please help me find my bottle of perfume, please please please tell me I didn’t forget it at the last ministry site while I was packing. Please God, I lost my first big bottle of perfume at the beginning of the month…Lord I just want to smell good…
My prayers drifted as I recalled the sight of my brand new bottle of perfume fall to the floor and shatter the first week in China. My whole bottle gone in the blink of an eye. I was sad that day when I mopped it up. It was a luxury I had treated myself to for Christmas.
Fortunately, my Secret Santa had found a new fragrance similarly intoxicating to my senses that elated me on Christmas day as I opened my gift! I was now floundering and stupefied like a child on the verge of a tantrum as I looked through my stuff in vain.
I stopped again to take a deep breath and pray, when suddenly I felt the Lord whisper this to my heart:
You look clean, but you stink.
My mouth shut itself tight and I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I dropped to my knees, and let God’s word wash over me.
[2 Corinthians 2:15]
I felt the conviction of being preoccupied with the smell of my body and clothes, but having lost perspective on the state of my soul. My panic in having no perfume was reflecting a mindset I had let creep in or maybe have always had – as long as I looked clean and could cover up anything stinky, I felt fine.
Jesus loves me way too much to allow me to continue covering anything up. The stench of sin cannot be masked before a perfectly righteous and holy God. My good works were trying to mask the stink of my sin!
In that precise moment, I envisioned myself filthy, unshowered, bad breath, downright dirty looking preaching the Gospel to the perishing, and realizing that this in fact would be beautiful and fragrant unto God.
The message would not be any less powerful coming from a smelly person to someone who was on the brink of eternal death.
However, deep down there was sin that Jesus wanted to deal with in me, namely the sin of wanting to appear clean.
How could this be a sin? Well, I realized I had started walking somewhat pompously by faith in light of the faith I saw in others around me at times. My problem is that I need to walk by faith in light of the work that was finished on the cross and remember that I am a sinner saved by grace and that I need my Savior daily.
Jesus is the standard, not the body of Christ. Compared to Jesus, I am humbled to say that I am wretched and very stinky.
I desperately needed to be washed in the Word of God. I don’t feel clean when I fail to shower daily, why should I treat my soul any differently? In this case, I was going to require a deep cleaning, but God is so good and gracious in that He is a fountain for me that will never run dry.
There was dust on my soul, the filth of the world in which I walk in all over my spiritual feet and the stink of my sin oozing from wounds in my heart that I’d let get infected.
He is also so faithful to remind me of the blood that was shed for me that makes me as white as snow, time and time again I can rejoice in that atoning sacrifice made by Jesus for me.
Jesus also understands that while we are blood-bathed and water washed, we also desire to be fragrant – and He has the perfect solution for this desire, because God also desires us to be fragrant.
I was kneeling once more, breaking my alabaster filled with perfume at the feet of Jesus. I was saying in my soul: Jesus, here is my perfume. I am done covering up the stink of sin in my life. I am breaking this at your feet and declaring that you are all I need to be fragrant. Jesus, you are all that I need. I want the aroma of Christ.
God is teaching me that the aroma of Christ is linked to myrrh. As the martyred prophet, Jesus was presented with myrrh as one of the gifts the wise men brought to Him as a baby. Gold for the King of Kings, frankincense for the Most High Priest and myrrh to anoint the Savior who would be martyred for us.
Why myrrh?
Because myrrh is a burial spice made from a red berry that when crushed releases its powerful fragrance. To be perfumed in that myrrh will require my death. The fragrance of Christ comes with the cost of dying to self.
Moreover, Jesus wants to drench me in myrrh. I want what Jesus wants.
That which I desire, I will become – and I desire the Word, O God.
{Song of Solomon 1:13}
