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I love the way my horses smell. In fact, when I'm away from them, I literally crave the sometimes pungent, leathery smell that emanates from their skin and hair. It is a smell like no other. Those of you who are horse-folks know the kind of smell I'm talking about. It's the kind of smell that permeates your clothes after a long ride. It's the kind of familiar smell that greets you when you walk into the barn. It's the kind of smell that stays with you like a fresh oil that never grows rancid or old. It's the smell of your best horse. It's the smell of a close relationship. Why a close relationship? When you have a close relationship with someone - you begin to smell like that someone! And it's a smell you never forget. Take for example, the day I got saved as a little girl. Long after I forgot the experience, I remembered the smell...
I can still remember the day I gave my heart to Christ as a little girl. It was a hot, muggy day. The small window air-conditioner was pumping out all the cool air it could muster, and mama was in the kitchen dropping flour-battered pieces of chicken into a deep-fryer. Daddy was sitting in his favorite vinyl-covered recliner sipping a cup of black coffee, reading the newspaper, and smoking a Camel cigarette. Suddenly, there was a knock at the front door. As it turned out, mama had invited a local, country Baptist preacher to dinner, and failed to tell anyone. I watched the expression on daddy's face instantly turn sour. As for me, I was curious. After all, it wasn't every day that a preacher came to our house. I surmised, he must be on a mission. Turns out, I was right.
As I gulped down the last bite of chicken and pushed my chair away from the kitchen table, mama turned to me and said, "I've invited this nice preacher here to talk to you about something very important." I immediately looked for daddy, but he had already headed for the front porch swing, a second cup of coffee in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. So much for my partner in crime. And then, just like two wrestlers on the same team, mama nodded and tagged the preacher in. He kept it simple and direct. "Do you want to go to heaven or to hell?" he asked. Even as a kid, I knew that was a no-brainer. "Heaven, Sir." I answered shyly without looking at him. "Good girl," he replied. "Then, do you confess Jesus as your Savior?" I stared down at my brown and white lace-up oxfords to keep from looking him in the eye. "Yes, Sir. I figure I do." Again, it seemed like a no-brainer.
A few years later, I would completely forget the confession I had made, simple as it was. But I could never forgot the smell that seemed to fill our house that day. It was hard to compete with the delectable smell of mom's fried chicken wafting through every corner, but on that particular day, a sweet, fragrant smell filled the entire house. For several years, the strange scent seemed to linger, even permeating my hair and clothes. And then, slowly but surely, the smell seemed to fade away and a new smell took its place. It was the beginning of my rebellious years, and I soon forgot about the preacher and my childhood confession. And before long, I began to smell just like the world.
A NEW YOU
Calls For A
A FRESH, NEW FRAGRANCE
"You shall make of these a holy anointing oil, a perfume mixture, the work of a perfumer; it shall be a holy anointing oil."
(Exodus 30: 25)
You need a new fragrance and a fresh, new anointing (fresh oil) in order to walk through new doors and into the destiny that God has planned for you.
Alright, it's confession time. During the late 60's and early 70's, I was one of those wild, crazy hippie girls that we now see in old, archived film footage, like the ones from Woodstock. I wore tie-dyed T-shirts, frayed bell-bottoms, and yep, an occasional flower in my long, straight hair. At 19, I felt I was way too cool for my country upbringing, and certainly too "far-out and groovy" for the hills of Tennessee. So, I headed for California. It didn't take me long to find a crowd even crazier than I was. I soon lost myself in the poetic musings of Joni Mitchell's Blue Album while strolling the beaches of Santa Cruz. I learned to dip boiled artichoke leaves in mayonnaise and scrape them clean with my teeth, and I drank cheap beer mixed with organic tomato juice in chilled glass mugs. Why organic tomato juice? Someone told me it was healthy, not to mention cool, and well, I figured those California folks knew a thing or two about being cool!
Seemingly insignificant at the time, I also made the choice to throw away my old, traditional perfume, "Cache". All the women in my family seemed to wear Cache. I never questioned it until one day, my bohemian neighbor, a decidedly hip girl from Hawaii who had just moved to Santa Cruz, took it upon herself to enlighten me about "what be hip, and what be not". One day she looked at me with a puzzled stare as if she wanted to tell me something but didn't quite know how to say it. "What - what is it?" I asked impatiently, all the while staring at the huge rings that pierced her nostrils and silently thinking to myself, "Hmmm, maybe I should pierce my nose, too."
Sage herb leaves and an aromatherapy essential oil bottle.
Finally, she blurted out the words, "Sorry, but that old-fashioned perfume you're wearing stinks! You've got a groovy new life, and now you need a groovy new smell." I had never thought of it like that, and for the first time I realized that she smelled like some sort of sage. I didn't care much for the musky smell of sage. It just wasn't me, not even the hip, far-out, and groovy me. Nope, if I was going to smell, I wanted to smell like something far more intense, more earthy. That day, I went to one of the local hippie shops and sniffed a dozen small bottles of fragranced oils. And then I found it. It was a small brown bottle of pungent smelling Patchouli oil. It was love at first smell. Day after day, I rubbed the oil up and down my wrists and arms, and strange as it sounds, I began to notice that my scent was often the way people identified me when I walked into a room.
Without even looking up, someone would shout, "Wow, dude, like, Susan's here." I'd always ask, "How'd you know that, dude?" To which the presumptive dude would always reply, "Like, wow, - you always smell like patchouli oil!" Little did I know that just a few short years into the future, God would exchange my old pungent, earthy smelling patchouli for a brand new smell. It would be the sweet, permeating fragrance that I had once smelled as a child, only fresher, newer, stronger. It would be the smell of grace, salvation, redemption, and eternal life in Christ Jesus. And this time, the smell would never go away.
IF PEOPLE CAN'T RECOGNIZE
WHO (and whose) YOU ARE BY YOUR SMELL,
THEN YOU NEED A NEW FRAGRANCE!
"Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing."
(2 Corinthians 2: 15, NLT)
I'm with my horse a lot. If I'm not riding him, then I'm grooming him. If I'm not grooming him, I'm feeding him or taking care of him in some way. The point is, I have a close relationship with my horse, and because I do - I often smell like him at the end of the day. To some folks, that can be good, bad, or ugly - depending on whether or not they like the smell of horse flesh!
Have you ever had someone come up to you and tell you that you smell good? Maybe they even asked what "scent" you were wearing. If they're particularly nosy, they might even have dared to guess the name of the scent. When I'm working around the farm, I admit, most times I usually smell like my horses. I realize it's not everybody's favorite fragrance, but hey, it works for me. When I come in from riding, or grooming horses, I grab a quick shower and put on some nice, smelling perfume. After all, I wouldn't want to offend someone. The point is, you can usually tell who I've been hanging out with all day by the way I smell at the end of the day! If you like horses, you're not offended by the smell. But of course, if you don't, that's another story.
In 2 Corinthians 2: 15, the Bible says that the believer's life is like a Christ-like fragrance that rises up to God. Crazy as it sounds, that means that when God "smells" the fragrance of Christ that emanates from you and me, He knows who we've been hanging out with simply by the way we smell! Likewise, if we don't smell like Christ, He knows that, too. Having said that, God's not the only one who recognizes us by the way we smell. We might be slow to admit it, but most people do, too. Don't believe me? Next time someone asks what "scent" you're wearing, just smile and say "Love"! If it's the truth, chances are good they recognized you and your sweet, fragrant smell the minute you first walked into the room!
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