GODS FAVORITE AROMA

"And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints."

Revelation 5:8

"And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne."

Revelation 8:3

My mother was a fantastic cook. One of the favorite things that she would make would be chocolate chip cookies. I could remember being outside to play and as  I got close to the house when the windows were open I would begin to get a scent of my favorite aroma, fresh baked chocolate chip cookies! When I would open the door the entire house was filled with the fragrance of those cookies from the kitchen.

The scent reminds me of childhood, but it’s not just the aroma that I love; it’s everything that I associate with it: contentment, nostalgia, memories. How this particular aroma stirs me is beyond explanation. It runs deep.

It occurred to me that this must be how God feels when our godliness ascends to him. Pleased beyond explanation — a delightful aroma which he could breathe in all day long. In fact, all throughout the Bible, certain scents seem to hold specific meanings for God. While some delight him, others, unfortunately, cause him to recoil.

Did you know that God has a favorite scent that he delights in? 

When we pray, he smells the aroma from the kitchen as you prepare his special dish. What God delights to do more than anything else, Is the smell our prayers for him to answer. Our prayer is the sweet aroma from the kitchen sending up into the kings chamber's making him hungry for the meal. But the actual enjoyment of the meal is his own glorious work in answering our prayers. The food of God is the answer you get  in your prayers. 

The most wonderful thing about the Bible is that reveals a God who is a happy God who satisfies his own appetite for joy by answering the prayers of the Saints. God doesn't have any deficiency in himself that he needs to fill up, so he gets his great satisfaction by magnifying the glory of his riches by filling up the deficiencies of people who pray. 

No wonder why the Psalmist could cry out,

"Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!"

Psalm 141:2

Because that is exactly what our prayers are to God

In the Old Testament, God commanded the priests of Israel to continually burn aromatic incense — made from a blend of five exotic spices — on the golden altar inside the Holy of Holies. But, like my moms chocolate chip cookies, it wasn’t simply the fragrance itself that pleased God, but what it represented: the constant prayers of his people.

In fact, the incense, associated with the people’s prayers, was so pure and sacredly sweet to God that any deviation from what God had explicitly commanded was met with swift death, as Nadab and Abihu found out (Leviticus 10:1–2)

Just as God prescribed a specific recipe for the incense, he also prescribes specific prayers for believers today — prayers of:

Thanksgiving (1 Timothy 2:1)

Forgiveness (1 John 1:9)

Intercession (1 Timothy 2:1)

Praise and adoration (Psalm 148:1–14)

Utter dependence (Matthew 7:7)

Seeking wisdom (James 1:5)

Petitions and supplications (1 Timothy 2:1; Philippians 4:6)

Seeking peace (Philippians 4:6–7) 

Salvation (Romans 10:9–10).                                  

These particular prayers, in fact, are so pleasant and precious to God that he lovingly collects them in “golden bowls” in heaven (Revelation 5:8). By keeping them close, he can continually enjoy their blessed bouquet.

Think about this God has designed prayer where God is both the source and the agent in doing good to his people. This is one of the reasons that twice that the book of Revelation describes the prayers of the Saints as golden bowls of incense before the throne of God. God delights in the aroma of his own glory as he smells it in the prayers of his people.

God loves to see us do it, which is probably why Revelation 5:8 describes the prayers in the golden bowls in the hands of the elders as incense before God. What does incense before God do? Well, it just fills his room with pleasant fragrance. That is what it does. And what a beautiful image to get down on your knees with and say: I am right now going to light a sweet smelling lamp or candle and it is going to fill the room of heaven with a fragrance this afternoon or this morning that God is going to be pleased by. 

Your prayers are the aroma of heaven, sweet smelling before the throne of God and before the Lamb. I am strengthened and encouraged to pray all the more often and all the more vigorously when I think that my prayers are being assembled and stored up in heaven and offered to Christ repeatedly in heavenly acts of worship.

Let’s all bless and honor and adore Christ here below with our prayers, and then doubly rejoice that the worship council of heaven offers them again to Christ as sweet smelling incense before the Lamb who was slain.

Thoughts on God, His Freedom, and Pleasure in What He Does

One of my all-time favorite books and most impactful on my life was a book that I read when I was a young Christian by JI Packer called simply Knowing God. One of my favorite sentences of the book that has stuck with me for over 40 years goes like this; "the people who know God think great thoughts about God". So today I wanted to write a simple blog just posting something thoughts about God, Why he does what he does, and the unconstrained freedom he has and what he does. 

One of the hardest things to comprehend and the greatest mystery of the universe is that from all eternity,before there was ever a creation, the one reality that has always existed is God. It is exceedingly difficult for us to think of God having absolutely no beginning and just being there for ever and ever and ever, without anything or anyone making him be there, just absolute reality that everyone of us has to reckon with whether we like it or not.

This is the only fountain of lasting joy, God. Without beginning and without ending, without source and without costs, without help or assistance, the spring is eternally self replenishing. From this unceasing fountain flows our being, our life, our existence,  and all the grace and joy and love in the universe.

All of us have an immense void inside us that craves satisfaction from people, pleasure, and powers outside of ourselves. Yearning, longing, hunger, thirst, and desire are the very essence of who we are. We are born deficient, needy, and perpetually dissatisfied, and truth be told these never go away do they?

Think about it we come into the world knowing almost nothing, and have to spend years upon years going to classes, or learning in the school of hard knocks, in order to in a very tiny way fill up a little of this deep void of ignorance inside of us. Parents and teachers tell us to things that we don't like to do because we need to do them to overcome some weakness in ourselves, to increase our knowledge, or strengthen our bodies, or refine our manners, or sharpen our intellect. 

But not God!

He has been complete and overflowing with satisfaction from all eternity. He needs no education. And no one can offer anything to him that doesn't already come from him. He is not constrained by any inner deficiency or unhappiness to do anything he does not want to do. If God wasn't happy, if he was in someway deficient, then he might indeed be constrained from outside in someway to do what he does not want to do, in order to make up his deficiency  and finally be happy. But, this what makes Him God! He is infinitely free, independent sovereign and happy.

Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.(Psalm 115:3)

I am God and there is no either, I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done,saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my pleasure (Isaiah 46:9-10)

Psalm 135:6,“Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps. ” 

In reading these precious verses I discover a God who always acts according to and for His own “good pleasure,” following the dictates of his own delights. He never becomes the victim of circumstance, or Satan or human decision. He is never forced into a situation where he must do something in which he cannot rejoice. Everything he does he takes pleasure in. He cannot and will not be get back from doing what he delights most to do, and he will never be forced to do what he does not delight to do. And this is true everywhere in the universe

"For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever.

Amen"

(Romans 11:34-36)

hoping that you will begin thinking great thoughts about God for your faith, trust, and exceeding joy,

Pastor Bill