Prayer – A Designer Fragrance!

There is a huge trend in Hollywood right now for all the “it” people to have their own designer fragrance. Now let’s see…Liz Taylor’s is “Diamonds”, Vera Wang smells like a “Princess”, and Paris Hilton sprays on – what else – “Paris Hilton”! Did you know there is a designer fragrance in the Bible?

God commanded Moses to build a sanctuary so He could “dwell” among His people. God gave Moses very explicit building instructions for the sanctuary and all of its components. One of these components was the Altar of Incense (Golden Altar).

Here, a special mixture of spices, myrrh, frankincense, and a few other ingredients were beaten into a fine powder and burned on the altar of incense. In Exodus 30:36-37, God tells Moses that this incense was to be placed before the “testimony”, or the Ark of the Covenant, and the recipe was not to be used on anyone else. In other words, they were not to dab any of this designer fragrance behind their ears or on their wrists! It was to be a holy fragrance totally dedicated to God.

In Exodus 30:8, we see that the fragrance would be perpetual incense before the LORD. So what does this have to do prayer? That sweet aroma that arose from the altar of incense is representative of our prayers before God. Look at this prayer of David from Psalm 141:2 “May my prayer be counted as incense before You; The lifting up of my hands as the evening offering.” This compares our prayers to that perpetual sweet smelling incense.

Isn’t it comforting to know that our prayers are sweet to God? Revelation 5:8 tells us that when the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb (Christ), they were holding golden bowls (or vials) full of incense, “which are the prayers of the saints”.

Our prayers can be like the designer incense fragrance in the following ways:

How many times have you been in a department store and took a sniff of a fragrance? I love the image the Bible paints for us of God inhaling the sweet aroma of our prayers from special vials. How full would your vial be friends? Would there even be enough in your vial for God to detect the scent?

Prayer is our most powerful tool of communication with God. He longs for our fellowship – that is why He had Moses build the tabernacle in the first place. Now we have direct access to God, without the need of a high priest offering the incense. We can offer up our prayers to God as perpetual incense to Him any time, any place!