My first day here in India has provided me the opportunity to be refreshed and to enjoy the love of friends. PC Alexander and his wife Alice of PTL-India and their son Ashish and his wife Sonia and son Ayaan are hosting me. It has been three years since I have been here. I will be traveling with Alex throughout India ministering to leaders and churches.
The joy of our fellowship together was overshadowed with reflections on the intense persecution which Christians are facing here.
I had felt before leaving the States that God was calling me to be a messenger of joy on this trip to India. But my soul was in anguish as to how to be joyful in such circumstances. I retired early, wondering what God would have me say.
I awoke from a dream in the middle of the night. In the dream Jesus was singing over me “JESUS PROTECTS OUR LOVE and LOVE PROTECTS OUR VIEW.”
Upon awakening I immediately wrote down the words of the dream fearing that they would slip away or be altered in my recall of them.
As I pondered the meaning of these words I recalled that Mary in Luke 10: 38-42, had sat at Jesus feet and in John 12: 1-8, she washed his feet with perfume. She was criticized in both cases.
The first time she was criticized by her own sister, a good person, for being impractical. The second time she was criticized by Judas, a major hypocrite who said the perfume should’ve been sold and the money given to the poor. But Scripture adds that he didn’t care a bit about the poor but was actually a thief.
In both cases Jesus defended Mary. He said that loving him and hearing from Him is the one thing that’s important and in the second case he said that when you love Jesus you learn that there is a cosmic meaning in your actions which impacts heaven and earth. And you see things from a totally different perspective.
Mary was simply expressing her love by lavishing perfume on Jesus feet but she and everyone else there were given the new perspective that her act of love was anointing Jesus for his death and burial.
So Jesus protected Mary’s love and he brought new vision out of it to bless the world.
I thought of the major polarization even in the Christian community between those who speak in favor of the poor and the immigrant and those who speak in favor of the unborn infant. Both sides make their points strongly.
But Jesus is saying in the midst of this turmoil and conflict: “Remember that the most important thing is your love for me. I will protect your investment of love and from it you will receive a vision of how to proceed and a vision of how your love is blessing the world.
If Jesus can do this in the States for his disciples, he can do it for his disciples in India.
So as impractical or wasteful as it may seem to even good people, much less the unbeliever, the most important thing in the world is to spend time daily listening to Jesus speak and loving him and lavishing praise and worship upon Him.
And He did promise that he will protect our investment of love and from it we will gain a new perspective on how our love is impacting and can impact the world.
Thank you, Lord, for your words; they give me strength and joy.
Enos Daniel Martin
theexpandingshrink 