Thirty Days of Prayer in the Home...Day 10

In Heaven Part II.

One of my favorite passages about heaven and about prayer is this: 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 the saints. Revelation 5:8

How wonderful to know Jesus frees Christians from their sins and makes them to be a kingdom and priests to serve God forever. When we pray, our prayers rise up to the Lord in heaven with a sweet savor like the incense offered by priests in the Old Testament.

As Octavious Winslow says, "It is the merit of our Immanuel, who gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God, for a sweet-smelling savor, that imparts virtue, prevalence, and acceptableness to the incense of prayer ascending from the heart of the child of God. Each petition, each desire, each groan, each sigh, each glance, comes up before God with the smoke of the incense which ascends from the cross of Jesus, and from the golden altar which is before the throne. All the imperfection and impurity which mingles with our devotions here, is separated from each petition by the atonement of our Mediator, who presents that petition as sweet incense to God. See your Great High Priest before the throne! See him waving the golden censer to and fro! See how the cloud of incense rises and envelops the throne! See how heaven is filled with its fragrance and its glory! Believer in Jesus, upon the heart of that officiating High priest your name is written; in the smoke of the incense which has gone up from that waving censer, your prayers are presented. Jesus? blood cleanses them―Immanuel's merit perfumes them―and our glorious High Priest thus presents both our person and our sacrifice to his Father and our Father, to his God and our God. Oh wonderful encouragement to prayer!"

Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice! Psalm 141:2