The Path from Prayer to His Presence
Notes
Transcript
The Path from Prayer to His Presence
6 And you shall put it before the veil that is before the ark of the Testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the Testimony, where I will meet with you.
7 “Aaron shall burn on it sweet incense every morning; when he tends the lamps, he shall burn incense on it.
8 And when Aaron lights the lamps at twilight, he shall burn incense on it, a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations.
34 And the Lord said to Moses: “Take sweet spices, stacte and onycha and galbanum, and pure frankincense with these sweet spices; there shall be equal amounts of each.
35 You shall make of these an incense, a compound according to the art of the perfumer, salted, pure, and holy.
36 And you shall beat some of it very fine, and put some of it before the Testimony in the tabernacle of meeting where I will meet with you. It shall be most holy to you.
17 pray without ceasing,
What does God receive as an acceptable sacrifice of prayer?
What Are The Ingredients of Prayer?
What Are The Ingredients of Prayer?
God says 4 ingredients must be mixed in equal proportions.
That is a reference to balance.
Prayer isn’t a technique or methodology. Prayer is simply being with God.
Four Ingredients
Four Ingredients
Stacte was a sweet spice. It was found on or near the northern border of Isreal and in Syria. It took a full days journey by foot to reach the trees that oozed forth the resin that was baked until the spice, called stacte, emerged.
Both the Greek and Hebrew names for this spice mean “to ooze forth or to drop.”
It was used as a metaphor for the emergence of the Word of God or for the act of prophesying. In both cases, it creates the picture of something that has been stored up inside of you oozing or bubbling out from an inner abundance.
When we store up the Logos, or written Word of God, within our hears then, when the wind of God breathes upon it, it may become a spoken, revelatory rhema word into our lives.
The first quality of acceptable incense of prayer is a rich store of the Word of God in our lives, which oozes forth upon demand to drop onto other people. Prayer is abiding in the living Word, which is obviously Christ.
It will cost you something to store the Word of God in your life.
Time and priority shift.
It will ooze forth from every pore of your life and being and permeate your prayers with a sweetness that pleases God and blesses everyone it touches.
Onycha refers to finely ground aromatic powder produced from a mollusk shell found in the Mediterranean sea.
Although the distance involved to get onycha was less, this powder could only be obtained by getting a particular type of mollusk or mussel.
The shells were ground into fine powder and then burned with fire to produce the sweet fragrance so vital to the holy incense.
Our lives should continually release an aroma of fragrant offering unto the Lord.
Have you ever felt like you’ve been ground into pulp? Or broken into tiny little pieces by trial or circumstances?
Have you ever been burned by the thoughtless or deliberate actions of people?
The prayer you offer after enduring these events bears the fragrance of onycha.
Prayer is a lifestyle of brokenness before God.
A sweet fragrance of a crushed spice called humility and brokenness.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart— These, O God, You will not despise.
Galbanum is “a yellowish to green or brown aromatic bitter gum resin derived from several Asian plants.”
The original Hebrew word, chelbenah, meaning “richness or fatness,” implies that galbanum comes from the riches or choice part.
Galbanum is the oily substance that is used to hold all of the other elements together.
The overriding conviction that “God is good” will hold your life together.
Holds:
People of the Word camp
People of the Brokenness camp
Together!
We need an equal portion of the extravagance, richness and fatness of our good God to bind us all together in harmony.
6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
We must believe in the richness and fatness of our God.
Frankincense is “a resin from the bark of trees of the genus Boswellia. As the amber resin dries, white dust forms on the drops or tears of frankincense, this giving rise to the Semitic name.
In biblical times most frankincense came either from Sheba or southern Arabia.
The Hebrew word for frankincense is lovona, which literally means “to be white”.
Christ hung on a tree and by the time His blood dried on it we were made the righteousness of God in Christ” by God’s grace and love.
It is His blood, shed and applied to us, that cleanses us from all sin.
Freshly Made
Freshly Made
Purchased fresh each day and mixed in equal proportions. The incense could not be “stored up”.
Only fresh made incense would do.
You and I cannot live on the prayers of the past.
We can’t thrive on the relationship, the intimacy, or the communion that we enjoyed with the Lord yesterday.
Day by day we must make our way into His presence to be renewed, transformed, empowered, and filled with His glory.
This is the path to the shekinah glory (the manifested glory or presence of God.
Get soaked in His presence.
Have you been around somebody who smokes?
Odor gets in their clothes...
Others will think you smoke too.
Your presence will remind them of His presence.
16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
We need to come on into the Holy of Holies!
The greatest thing in life is to be able to touch the heart of God and have His heart touch you.