“Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn’t offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

 You didn’t greet me with a kiss, but from the time I first came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume. “I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.” Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Luke 7:44-48

In Jesus’s day, it was customary to offer guests entering your home some water to wash their dusty feet. But this Pharisee didn’t offer Jesus that courtesy. This woman, however, with a heart of love and humility, wept on Jesus’s feet and wiped them with her hair. In ancient Jewish culture, a woman’s hair was her glory (1 Corinthians 11:15). So when this woman took down her hair, it was an act of intimacy. When she wiped Jesus’s feet with it, it was sacrificial. When she made Jesus her priority, expressed her deep love for Him, and chose to lay her sin and shame at the feet of her Lord, that was WORSHIP! 

Worship isn’t just singing songs, raising hands, giving, and serving. You can do all those things with the wrong intentions. Worship is a state of the heart. True worship is honoring God with extravagant love and eagerly submitting to Him because of that love. It is a lifestyle of holiness that requires intimacy with Jesus. It means laying your sins at Jesus’s feet, because He is the only One who forgives and cleanses and loves like that. Even though Jesus carried your sins to the cross and has forgiven them all, confession takes your relationship from distant to intimate, your love from selfish to sacrificial, and your heart from weary to worship. Make Jesus your priority. Kneel at His feet with your heart open and your sin and shame exposed. That’s how to worship Him BIG! You are loved!