SWEET TO GOD
Golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
Revelation 5:8
The prayers the Lord accepts are not the chantings of functionaries, the litanies of priests, or the devout tones of an organ—they must be the prayers of the saints. In the believer’s life, character, and soul, the sweetness lies. The acceptance comes not unless they are the prayers of the saints. And who are the saints? They are those whom the Lord has made holy by the power of His Holy Spirit, whose nature He has purified, whom He has washed in the precious blood of Jesus and so sanctified unto Himself, whom He has filled with His Spirit and so set apart to His worship. They love Him, praise Him, bow before Him with solemn awe, lift their whole souls up in adoring love to Him. Their thoughts, desires, longings, confessions, pleadings, and praises are sweet to God. This is music to Him, perfume to His heart, delight to His Infinite mind, and pleasant to His sacred spirit, for “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). After no other fashion is a spiritual God to be worshipped.
In prayer, that which is sweet to God is not the words used, though they ought to be appropriate; but the sweetness lies not in anything perceptible to the outward senses but in the secret qualities comparable to the essence and aroma of sweet spices. In the incense there lies a subtle and almost spiritual essence that is drawn from it by the burning coals that causes the latent sweetness to spread itself abroad till all around confess its power. So it is in prayer. Our prayers may be very beautiful in appearance and might appear to be the very paragon of devotion, but unless there is a secret spiritual force in them, they are vain things; faith must be a part of the fragrance of prayer. When I hear a person pray, I am not able to tell whether he prays in faith or not, but God perceives the faith or the absence of it, and the prayer is received or rejected as the case may be.
Our God and Father, You see the depths of my soul. May my prayers be pleasing to You. Amen.
If only we would realize what a putrid stench we must be in His nostrils...
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