Something is smelling sweet

So I have a very sensitive nose.  It's both a blessing and a curse.  Smells trigger a lot of memories for me, and I'm a tad "scent driven" you could say.  Smells are important to me, hence why I put lemon extract in ice cubes for the kids to draw with in the bath...  and eat!

And scent should be important to us as Christians too, but in a spiritual way.

The Bible says: "For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing."  2 Corinthians 2:15

Did you ever stop and think that as Christians we have an aroma?!?   The Bible says we have a pleasing aroma, and it's surely not by ourselves that we got there (remember those corrupt hearts of ours?) but by the grace of God, we were given the sweet smell of Christ!  

In the Old Testament, the priests under the law would get anointed with oil, which was poured upon their heads, ran down upon their beards, and descended to the skirts of their garments, so that they were all over a perfume, a sweet smell!!!  A pleasing aroma.  (John Gill's exposition of the Bible).

As we do life with people, they ought to be smelling something different, something sweet.  And that's exactly what we hope to do at Hope Africa.  We hope that through our Life Skills program, where we give them tools to help them go through life and hopefully get a job, we hope they will smell something sweet.  We hope that their curiosity will be peeked in our Bible overview class, and that they will smell something sweet on all our staff, ultimately bringing them to a place where they want to know more about the origin of that smell.

And guess what???  The students ARE smelling it and wanting more.  Praise the Lord. So Mike started a Jesus discovery class that happens over the lunch hour for those students with particularly sensitive spiritual noses who wanted to know more about Jesus Christ.  Those meetings have been incredible and powerful.  The students get to wrestle with some really difficult things in a safe place, with Christians who care and love them.  And it all started with a sweet smelling from our precious Jesus.

Continue to pray for the students who are still seeking, the ones who have made the decision to commit to our sweet Jesus, and the ones who have a major case of blocked nostrils!!!

Thanks for reading.