This blog is part 2 of our series, No Lost Causes.

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I heard a story once about a young preacher who wanted to grab his congregation's attention right out of the gate. So he went to an older preacher and asked for advice, and the older preacher gave him this opener: "Some of the greatest nights of my life were spent in the arms of another man's wife." The idea was that after a stunned silence, you deliver the punchline: "My mother's arms."

Well, the young preacher thought this was brilliant. He sat down on Sunday morning, his wife on the front row, completely unaware. He leaned into the mic and said it. He looked over and saw her face, and his mind went completely blank. He forgot the punchline. So he just said, "I just can't think of who that is right now."

We laugh at that, but there's something painfully real buried in the setup. Sometimes we forget the things we actually need to remember, and we keep remembering the things we really need to forget.

That's what week two of our series, No Lost Causes, is about. It's about a woman who had every reason to stay buried in her past and chose to let it go instead.

The Transition That Changes Everything

I've had the privilege of seeing a few Cirque du Soleil shows, and there is something about watching trapeze artists work that stops you cold. Multiple people launching through the air, timing everything to perfection. What I didn't fully appreciate until I read about it later is what those artists call the transition. It's the moment between letting go of one bar and catching the next.

The great ones don't hesitate. When the time comes to let go, they let go. They commit to the free fall because they know momentum is carrying them toward the next bar.

Here's the thing about that transition: it is not a season. It's a moment. A passage from one place to another. And yet I believe there are many people who have tried to turn their transition into a permanent address. They've checked into a hotel and started hauling in furniture.

God has called you out of something. He's calling you toward something better. But you can't reach what's ahead when you're still gripping what's behind. It is impossible to reach for the future when you refuse to let go of the past.

A Woman Who Walked Into the Wrong Room

The passage in Luke 7 opens with Jesus at a dinner party hosted by a Pharisee named Simon. It's worth noting that this man's motivation for the invitation was not hospitality. Many theologians believe Simon brought Jesus to his table hoping to trap Him, to catch Him in something that would expose Him as a fraud.

But something unexpected happened. A woman showed up.

This woman was known in the community for a specific kind of reputation. When people described her, it wasn't just a general acknowledgment that she had faults like everyone else. She was known as a woman who had lived a sinful life. She was almost certainly a prostitute. She walked into a room full of religious leaders, uninvited, carrying an alabaster jar of perfume worth a year's wages.

Let me put that in perspective. This wasn't a nice candle from a gift shop. This was one pound of imported Egyptian nard. Some historians place the value of that kind of perfume in today's terms at tens of thousands of dollars. And she carried it into a room where she absolutely did not belong, past all the people who had opinions about her, and she made her way to Jesus.

She stood behind Him, weeping. She wet His feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. She kissed them. And then she broke the jar and poured every last drop of that perfume over His feet.

I want you to see what it took for her to walk through that door. She didn't care who was watching. She didn't care what they called her, what rumors they spread, or what they said when she walked out. She had one thing on her mind: "I have to get to the One who gave me grace. I have to find the One who set me free. The One I've been thinking about every single night when I close my eyes and think about who I was and who I'm going to become."

That's what drove her through that door.

What Jesus Did Next

Simon watched the whole thing unfold and thought to himself, quietly, "If this man were really a prophet, He would know what kind of woman this is." He figured he had Jesus right where he wanted Him.

Then Jesus looked at him and basically said, "I know exactly what you're thinking."

He told a story about two men who owed money to a lender. One owed the equivalent of $67,000. The other owed $6,700. Neither could pay. The lender forgave both debts entirely. Jesus asked Simon which one would love the lender more. Simon shrugged and said, "I suppose the one who owed the most." Jesus said, "You've judged correctly."

And then He did something remarkable. He turned toward the woman. He was speaking to Simon, but His eyes were on her. He pointed out every hospitality that Simon had withheld. No water for His feet. No kiss of greeting. No oil for His head. And then He pointed to her. She had done all of those things and more.

He said to Simon, "Her many sins have been forgiven, as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little."

There is something about that moment I cannot shake. Jesus turned toward the one who was giving Him attention. He turned His gaze toward the one everyone else was looking away from. And He said to her, directly, "Your sins are forgiven."

He was not intimidated by the crowd's opinion of her. He is not intimidated by what people say about you either. The voices that say you'll never change, that you'll never be who God says you are, that you're too far gone. Jesus turns toward you in the middle of all of that and says, "This person right here? Their sins are forgiven."

The Significance of the Breaking

Here's the detail I want to make sure we don't miss. She didn't just pour a little perfume. She didn't bring the jar, use some, and keep the rest in case things didn't work out. She broke it.

That jar was almost certainly central to her old life. The kind of expense that perfume represented would have been a professional investment. It was tied to everything she used to be.

And she smashed it.

The Greek word used for what she did to that jar is sintrebo. That same word appears in Romans 16:20, where Paul writes that "the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." The same word used for crushing the enemy is the same word used for what she did to the jar.

When she broke that thing, her old life was crushed.

You will play with sin until you hate it. And once you finally hate it, you will break it. And when you break it, God will break its power over your life.

In Acts 19, there was a revival so powerful that people started bringing sorcery scrolls to be burned. Not just a few novelty books. The value of the scrolls they burned publicly came to 50,000 drachmas. That's about $6.7 million worth of their past. They didn't lock the books in a safe somewhere just in case. They burned them in front of everybody. They were done.

There are some people who need to stop ending chapters of their life with a question mark and start ending them with a period. Not a comma. Not ellipses. A period. That chapter is over.

Press Forward

Paul wrote in Philippians 3:12-14, "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

That is a man who understands what transition actually means. You don't look backward during the free fall. You look toward the next bar. You press toward the mark.

There is no such thing as holding onto both. Either Jesus is Lord of all in your life, or He's not Lord at all. You cannot live with one hand on the old life and one hand reaching for the new one. You have to let go completely.

If you didn't drop everything, you won't get anything.

In John chapter 4, the woman at the well left her water jar behind when she ran back to tell her town about Jesus. She forgot the whole reason she came. She walked away transformed and left everything that represented the old life right there on the ground.

That is what grace does to you.

Whatever it is in your life that has felt too valuable to let go of, whatever you've held onto out of fear, I want to ask you something. Would you be inspired by this woman? She took the only thing she had of real worth, the thing that represented everything she used to be, and she broke it over the feet of Jesus.

There are no lost causes when it comes to Him. He is making streams in your desert. He is doing a new thing. Isaiah 43:19 says, "Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up. Do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland."

Let go. Reach forward. He is already turned toward you.