Place your trust in God and commit yourself to His care. Psalm 37:5.
Have you seen your prayer as ‘incense’ before the throne of the Lamb?
In Revelation 5 and 8 we find a couple of verses that challenge me to consider the impact of prayer. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people (Rev. 5:8; see to Rev 8:3).
Do the golden bowls full of a sweet-smelling incense indicate how precious the prayers of the saints are to God; as someone more poetic than I once said “possibly just as incense is precious, pleasant, and drifts to heaven, so do our prayers”? Psalm 141:2 says Let my prayer be set before You as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. It seems that our prayer is an expression of our desire for ‘access’ to God and is an expected routine of daily life. Do you see prayer in that way, vital to your day and your relationship with your Saviour? The importance of the prayers of God’s people are also somehow linked to Jesus’ final coming and the consummation of history. Even so, come, Lord Jesus! (Rev 22:20).
Geoff Hinch
