How Do You Smell?

1. Scientist tells us that smell also helps us recognize one another. The truth is we all smell a certain way and others do take notice and our smell helps us to be recognized.

2. We are recognized by how we smell! Catch that!

a. First impressions are often lasting ones. Indeed, if you play your cards right, you can enjoy the benefits of what sociologists call the "halo effect." This means that if you’re viewed positively within the critical first four minutes, the person you’ve met will likely assume everything you do is positive. Four minutes! Studies tell us that are the crucial period in which impressions are formed by someone we’ve just met. Within a mere ten seconds, that person will begin to make judgments about our professionalism, social class, morals and intelligence. People tend to focus on what they see (dress, eye contact, movement), on what they hear (how fast or slowly we talk, our voice tone and volume)… and I add How we smell.--from "More Power to You!" Connie Brown Glasser and Barbara Steinberg Smalley

b. Now the big question “So how do you smell?”

i. Check your Body odor- Do you smell good? Rancid?

ii. Now the reality check to see if your perceptive nose is right or not ask your neighbor to take a whiff!

1. Do you stink?

2. Do you smell like springtime?

3. Do you smell like Dial soap?

a. My grandmother’s house always smelled like Dial!

4. Do you smell like perfume?

5. Do you smell like dead fish?

6. Do you smell like rotting flesh?

7. Do you smell like a fragrant flower from Heaven?

T.S. - We have discovered that physical smell makes a difference in how others perceive us and even how they will relate to us. But now let’s observe that smell makes a difference to God and to those we come in contact with in the spiritual dimension.

II. How do you smell spiritually?

a. Let’s read our text today and discover that smell also makes a difference to God and to others in our life.

i. 2 Cor. 2:14-17 (NIV) 14But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. 15For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. 16To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? 17Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God.

1. Out text draws our attention to what type of fragrance we radiate in our travels throughout our life.

2. Our text informs us that God uses us if we are in right relationship with him to cast a fragrance about Him to those we come in contact with in life.

a. For you graduates you are off to new places and new adventures and the way you live your life will determine your fragrance to God.

b. “For we are to God the aroma of Christ”

c. I want to add here if we act like Christ and remember his sacrifice everyday God will look at us and take in a deep breath to smell the fragrance of Jesus coming from our lives.