Heart Tracks - Prayers & Incense

      A friend recently shared about a worship service he'd been at.  He said as the service started, machines began to fill the sanctuary with a kind of smokey mist.  He said the mist so affected his sinuses that he couldn't breathe, and had to leave the service.  I'm not sure what the intent of it all was.  Maybe they hoped to re-create the events of the Old Testament dedication of the Temple, where the glory of God was so intense that the priests were unable to minister, and could only fall before Him. Maybe it was meant to be a reflection of the incense offered up in Temple worship. Maybe it was just meant, like so much of today's "worship," to create a sensory effect in the people.  Whatever the intent, it was proof once more that only God, and not we, can bring forth His Presence.  In worship, in prayer, in all things.  His glory and presence will indeed take our breath away.  Our fleshly efforts to do so may well, as it did my friend, drive us away, but they will certainly drive Him away.  Yet this isn't the way of the Father.  This is not what He intends prayer and worship to be.

     I was impacted this past week by something said by two great men of God, Oswald Chambers and Watchman Nee.  Nee spoke on prayer and worship using Psalm 141:2, "Let my prayer be set forth as incense before You."  Incense has little place in the evangelical church, but it was a central part of Old Testament worship.  The incense used was a product of the frankincense tree.  Frankincense was one of the gifts of the wise man to the baby Jesus.  Nee explained how frankincense was obtained by making "successive incisions on the bark of the tree."  A white resin would then come forth and from it was produced the incense.  He then equated true prayer, and I believe, worship with this deep cutting.  He said it is "the presenting of something drawn painfully out of the innermost heart. as though it seeped from our very wounds."  Machines and diligently planned services cannot produce this.  Neither can daily devotions done from a sense of duty, from an attitude of "I have to."  It can only come from a heart, a broken heart, that cries out for Him.  A heart that His Spirit cuts into more and more deeply.  Heartcries that seep out from our deepest wounds, needs, and above all, desire for Him.  This is worship.  This is prayer.  Is it our worship?  Is it our prayer?
    There was then something that Chambers said regarding intercessory prayer.  He said in effect, that true intercessory prayer doesn't come from a place of our sympathy for those lives and situations we pray for.  It comes from having the very heart that the Father has, that Christ and the Holy Spirit have, for those who are the ones we pray for.  Literally, we pray with His heart, His desire.  It doesn't come from our sympathy, which often depends on our feelings, but from His passion and love for those being prayed for.  Such prayer is powerful, mighty, and sees miracles unfold.  Is such prayer our prayer?  My prayer?  Your prayer?
    So, will we go on trying to use machines, lights, effects, in hopes of producing His Presence, and failing every time, or, will we cry out to Him with hearts that He has been able to cut deeply into, fully invade and inhabit, and so experience not only the visitation of His glory and presence, but His habitation as well?  Will our prayers, our worship, truly be incense before Him?

Blessings,
Pastor O