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Lift Up Your Prayers Like Incense

Author

Wes Schaeffer
November 19, 2020

From today’s reading…

The Lamb came forward to take the scroll from the right hand of the One sitting on the throne, and when he took it, the four living creatures prostrated themselves before him and with them the twenty-four elders; each one of them was holding a harp and had a golden bowl full of incense which are the prayers of the saints.” Revelation 5:7-8

While volumes could be written about these two verses, today I want to discuss incense. We take it for granted that incense is used in liturgies to worship God but do you know why the Jews used incense going back thousands of years ago?

Part of it was practical to mask the smell of the blood shed from the animals sacrificed in their ceremonies.

But it’s much deeper and more significant than that. Since day one man has known that there is a great power “up there.”

We see it in the depictions of the Aztecs holding up the still-beating heart of their human sacrifices, the Scythian warriors holding up scalps 2900 years ago, and even in our own posture and physiology today, which is why the military has you stand up straight, shoulders back and down, eyes straight ahead.

In my sales training I’ve both learned and continue to train others to stand up when making prospecting calls, smile, and stand up straight.

There is something about rising up—our posture, our vision, and our prayers—that is associated with the good, the powerful, the holy.

You and I are called to be living saints. We’re called to lift up our prayers for one another.

We’re called to pray with our entire bodies—all five senses—so our prayers are full and complete and so the transformation within us is swift and complete.

So learn from John, the four creatures, and the 24 elders as you lift your prayers to the Lamb like the holy incense, which is the only way to……

Stay the course. Keep the faith. Endure.

Now go sell something.