John 12:3  Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume

I’ve read a number of really good books including Jack Deere’s book entitled, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit.  It’s a wonderful book that concludes with focusing on passion for the Lord and then its relationship to power.  It is so important that we recognize that passion for God is absolutely essential to our life with God; it along with obedience.

This passion cannot be just a sense of longing or affection for the Lord.  It must be a life and habit forming condition of our heart that brings those actions that characterize individuals that truly are passionately in love with Him.  We must want to be such men and women!

There are Psalms and numerous songs that we sing in worship that describe attributes and actions that reflect passion for Him.  Do these describe us?  Our prayer should be for the Lord to transform us so that those words reflect our true condition more and more.  We want to be genuine Godly men and women.  The issue is not to be able to rejoice in our Godliness but to rejoice that He enables us to passionately love Him.  Let each of us wholeheartedly desire:

1. to thirst for the Lord as a deer thirsts for streams of water
2. a heart that yearns within me for Him;
3. to earnestly seek Him;
4. my soul to thirst for Him;
5. to think of Him through the watches of the night;
6. for Him to be my joy and my delight;
7. for my soul to yearn and even faint for His courts;
8. for my heart and soul to cry out for Him;
9. to be a doorkeeper in His courts;
10. to sing for joy on my bed because of Him;
11. my heart to yearn to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in his temple.

This passionate love for Jesus becomes our heart’s motivation.  I believe that is what motivated Mary to anoint Jesus.  She was consumed with passionate love for Him and her heart responded to the inspiration of His Spirit and she just gave herself to anointing Him.  The focus was Him.  Her actions were genuine and selfless.

Later she probably experienced real joy that she had been able to do this for Jesus, but at the time she was motivated purely by the Holy Spirit and her heart of love for Him.  May we be continually transformed so that more and more of the things we do are motivated by such love for our Lord.