Consecration

Pastor Don Green

Recorded by Michael Tao

Mark 14:3-9, "And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her. And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me. For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always. She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her."

Spikenard is a plant that grows in East India, the ointment of it is aromatic and very precious, and it can be collected in a container. Alabaster is come kind of lime and you can carve it and make it into different forms. It can be made into a box and the only way to open an alabaster box is to break it or to break the seal. When Mary broke the alabaster box of ointment to anoint Jesus, some had indignation and asked, "Why was this waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her."

The alabaster box symbolizes Mary’s life and she made up her mind that at the first possible moment, she would break the box and pour out the ointment onto Jesus. Just like in her real life that she wanted to break her life and poured it onto our Lord Jesus Christ with devotion and love.

Consecration is people get right with God and commit their life to Jesus. When you come to the place of consecration, it takes some intelligence. It does not take education but it does take calculation and determination to do it. Most of us get saved at one age and we consecrate our life at a different point of time. Lots of people saved, but few come to consecration. When you make consecration, you take your hand off your life and yield totally and unconditionally to God. Let God use your life; anoints and fills it with power of Holy Spirit.

I am now 76 years old. I was saved at 9 years old and was brought up in a Christian home. My parents were strict Baptists. I was called to preach wen I was 16. I went through Bible college, seminar and got my degree. I went on with my life until I was 26; I was married and had three children, I was an associate pastor of a church that had 2500 members. I could see the end of my life coming up. All I ever wanted to do since I was a little boy was to preach and pastor a church. I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. And I could see I did not have the power of God that my pastor had. He was anointed and preached with power. The evangelists, preachers that visited my church had great power of God too. I did not want to go on unless I could have this power in my life. I prayed to God for this power and asked people about it.

Then I read a book "The Three Fold Secret of Holy Spirit" written by James McConkey, it absolutely changed my life. It says that the first secret of Holy Spirit is everybody that gets saved has the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The second secret is the infilling of the Holy Spirit for power and anointing on your life. And the third secret is the abiding of the Holy Spirit when the power of God continuously abides in your life as you are walking and living a pure, holy, godly, separated and consecrated life. After I read this book, I felt on my knees to get down to business with God. Before this point of time, I never, never really made the commitment to God to the extent that I confessed every wicked and ungodly sin and purged all corruption out from the inside. God saw the sincerity in me; he reached down and jerked out every wicked and rotten thing going on in my heart.

I was not a dirty young man. I never used the Lord’s name in vain. I never stepped out of my marriage. I never read a pornography magazine in all my life. I never drank whisky. I never tasted beer. I never knew how to dance or to play poker, but I did not have the power of God in my life. My mind was just like every man and has dirty thoughts coming in. All men in this house have dirty thoughts. Men are dirty-minded people; their thoughts are filthy. If the ladies know how dirty men’s thoughts are, they would probably be afraid of them and have nothing to do with them. Ladies’ mind could be dirty too, but I do not know. My father used to tell me that you cannot stop birds flying over your head, but you do not have to let them build a nest in your hair. You need to push the dirty thoughts out and say, "I do not need this junk in my head, I want to live holy and godly." You cannot watch the bed scene in TV and call yourself a Christian. When I broke the box, God saw the sincerity in me and he filled it with Holy Spirit. There was not a charismatic experience and I did not speak in tongue. I could sense God’s power in my life and it was like getting saved all over again. All the prejudice and meanness came out of me. His presence, power and anointing has been in my life from that day on until this day.

Many times, preachers go through life and they know they are indwelled by the Spirit of God, but they have never been infilled by His power. They tried to operate without the power God. I have tried this for six years and I was getting pretty disgusted and discouraged. Everybody can preach - you can read the Sword of the Lord, or give a book review. But when the Spirit anoints your life, it is something else. Proverbs 18:1 says, "Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom." You want God’s power, God’s wisdom, God’s righteousness, God’s holiness, and God’s godliness upon your life so much that you have to have desire to have that. Your desire needs to be more than the desire of television, Hollywood, all the sports, the entire world, and all the corruption. You need to have the desire and the devotion for the cause of Christ and to develop your spirituality. I am convinced that you are just as spiritual as you want to be, just as close to God as you want to be, just as clean, pure and holy as you want to be, just as conscientious, just as compassionate, just as courteous, and just as Christ-centered as you want to be.

John Wesley said that God has given us the principle of freewill. You choose whatever you want. You can draw neigh to God and God will draw neigh to you. Or you can turn away from God and he will turn away from you. You are just close to God as you want to be. Mary broke the box, there was dedication and delight in the Lord; and there was departing of iniquity of her life.

I can tell you if you do not get good sense you probably will never come to consecration.

I have never seen God consecrated a double-minded Christian because they are unstable. I have never seen a spiritually filled wavering Christian. I have never seen an inconsistent Christian that has God in his life. I have never seen a wishy-washy Christian that would live purely, holy and godly. It takes determination and concentration to come to consecration. You make up your mind that you will live for God no matter what price is. It certainly will cost you; it costs you to follow the devil too. It does not take education to yield but it does take wisdom. The wisest thing to do is to break the box. It takes calculation, careful consideration, common sense, conviction, and consecration to break the box of your life; so that the spikenard, the precious ointment, can comes out from your life. It would perfume the life of all that are around you and sweeten them as well as yourself.

It was also a sacrifice for Mary to break the box and she went to the limit. She was a smart woman and she could have kept the perfume for herself. She could have sold it for 300 pence; or she could have used it on herself to attract anyone she wants to attract. She could have given it as a gift and got something back of like value. But her love for the Lord and her Savior is more than anything else in this world. She said I was going to pour it all on Jesus at the first opportunity and all I wanted to do in my life was to anoint my Lord. God wants us to give him the best. He wants our precious time. The best time in a day is about 4 o’clock in the morning. In Mark 1:35, it says, "And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed." All the great men of God, like David, they all prayed early in the morning. In Psalms 63:1, David said, "O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee:" Holiness is born in the womb of morning, not in the middle of the night. Give God the early part of your life everyday. Jesus said, "Watch and pray" – watch is going without sleeping and fasting is going without food. Give God the first part of your time everyday. Four or five hours of sleeping is plenty. You may think you are a night person but when you get right with God, you may become a day person. God’s word is precious food and until I get God on my side in the morning, I am not going to eat.

What I am now preaching is what was preached hundreds years ago. Nowadays messages are mostly warm and cozy, everything is love and smiling, and everything is all right. But I can tell you nothing is going to be all right util you get right with God.

God wants you to give your money for the work of God. You yield your money to God and if you are not tithing, then you are a sorry Christian. I gave up tithing long time ago, I am giving 30, 40 50% of my income to God. We have more money than ever before – all the bills are paid for and we have more money in the bank. You want to know how do we do that? Just take the money out from the pocket and put it in the offering plate. God will bless it and bless it.

Young people, God wants the precious days of your youth. You may want to give them to Rock & Roll music and chase behind the idiotic singers. You may say you only listen to the soft Rock, but there is no such thing called soft Rock. You cannot listen to one piece of Rock music without being affected. You may have to give up some of your precious friends and even precious family if they are holding you back from serving God.

If some of you women can give up your grips on your husband and submit to him, you will be surprised how much God can use your husband. Recently I heard a sweet testimony. Pastor Sammy Allan is a pastor in Georgia, and his wife is a sweet, little lady. She told me that she gave up her dream when she married her husband so that he could have his dream come true. This is real womanhood. She had given up her dream so that Pastor Allan could work 50 weeks out of a year outside their home. You will be surprised how far you can go by yielding yourself and let God break the box.

The ointment that Mary brought over worth 300 pence. At that time, one penny was a day’s wages; so she gathered about one year’s salary to buy this ointment which worth 30,000 to 60,000 dollars in today’s money. It was a sacrifice from her as it does cost her something to break the box, and it will cost you something to break the box too. But those that were around Mary thought that she was out of her mind. Mark 14 says, "And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made?"

They thought Mary was going overboard in religion and she was a nut case. When you go all your way for the Lord, people will raise their eyebrows and say that you have lost your mind. James Elliot, who was the one of those five missionaries that lost their lives in India, he said that a man is no fool to give up what he cannot keep to gain something that he cannot lose. It surely cost you something; it cost his and his friends’ lives.

But Mary broke the box, she brought her best and she was blessed. She had a successful life and she had done what she could. This is what God expects you to do. You probably can do a lot more than you are now doing if you really want to try; you take your hand off your life, and yield your life to God. There is no limit what you can do, 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." Wow, there is a brand new world out there and you are just sitting by and let others enjoy it. You can have it yourself too; you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.

I have been pastoring for 49 years in the same church and I have a big time. I have probably sent out 100 preachers, missionaries, soul-winners, and educators. It has been a wonderful 49 years. The sweetest and wonderful moment of my entire life is when I broke the box, when I made my consecration. I can remember it was just like yesterday, I was struggling for years before I came to consecration. Jesus said to the disciples that there were two commissions, one is going to all the world to preach the gospel; but there is a commission to tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high (Luke 24:29). Only through consecration, God’s power will come upon you.

I raised six children. God saved every one of them, and called every one of them into his work. God blesses my life. I am thrilled what God had done for this old man! I have a wonderful, wonderful life. I traveled all over the world to preach and thousands of people got saved. God can do that to you too, he has no respect of men. You are just as spiritual as you want to be, you are just as far as you want to go. You are just as carnal as you want to be too. Are you afraid to be filled by the power of God? Are you afraid to let go and let God put his hand on your life? But Mary was determined. Psalms 51:17 says, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise."

Mary surrendered all and she went to the limit. She gave everything to God.

This is an everlasting testimony and even today in this church her testimony is still going on. So break the Box like Mary did! I wonder why you cannot come to the place of breaking your box of rebellion, resentment, your bitterness and your renegade spirit. You may say nobody can tell you what to do. You probably can do whatever you like and live like an outlaw as far as God is concerned. Break your box of regard of worldly things, break the box of rejection of God’s work, God’s will and God’s way in your life, make your consecration and completely surrender to Jesus; and you will have a wonderful life. I can tell from my experience that you will have a wonderful life, that you will see things that you have never seen before. And you will be used by God like you were never used before. A dedicated life makes a helpful life. Nobody can care for the wounded and help all the people like a dedicated Christian can. The world is not going to come to the compromiser, the carnal and ungodly people in church for help. They will come to the spiritual people that live for God because they are the people that can really help you. Not only this, this is a happy life. I am rejoicing myself, I am having a wonderful time; and I can tell you that it is wonderful! Besides, it is also a holy life, it is a life that lives in harmony with the Bible, and a life tat has a honorable ending, there is a heritage that you can leave to your family, and has a heavenly reward after it is all over with. And I do not know why anyone would not want that.

So come and break the box!