Podcast Summary: The Wake-Up Call

Host: Andrew Forrest (Seedbed)
Episode: Prayer Is Like Spiritual Incense
Date: February 14, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode explores the biblical imagery of prayer as spiritual incense, as found in Exodus and echoed throughout the Bible. Host Andrew Forrest reflects on the ritual of incense in worship, how it points to the sweetness of prayer, and invites listeners to make the world “a little bit sweeter” through simple, intentional prayer. The episode blends scripture readings, personal anecdotes, and practical prompts for spiritual growth.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Context: Bible Reading and Tabernacle Furniture

Andrew Forrest introduces the day’s theme:
- The episode falls near the end of studying Exodus, specifically focusing on the construction and symbolism of the altar for incense (00:00–03:22).
- Forrest notes the often-overlooked richness in the repetitive sections of Exodus and encourages digging deeper for theological insights (03:44).

2. Scripture Reading & Meaning of Incense (03:30–05:02)

Scripture Read: Exodus 37:25–29—detailed account of building the incense altar.
Core question: "What is the point of incense? Why is it in the Bible?" (05:09)
Methodology:
- Forrest advocates reading the Bible in context and comparing passages to uncover meaning:
  
  "One of my principles is that you understand the Bible through reading the Bible." (05:33)
Incense symbolizes prayer:
- Cites several key passages:
  - Psalm 141:2: "Let my prayer be counted as incense before you..."
  - Luke 1:10: "The people were praying outside at the hour of incense."
  - Revelation 5:8 & 8:3–4: “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints…” and “the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God…” (06:10–07:00)

3. The Sweetness of Prayer: Personal Reflections (07:02–08:30)

Candle lighting as metaphor:
- Forrest lights a scented candle as an object lesson:
  
  "I'm a sucker for a nice scented candle... I light the candle and then I’ll blow it out, you know, and I’ll watch the smoke twist and curl and then vanish." (07:30)
- Prayers, like incense or the candle, rise up and fill the space with sweetness pleasing to the Lord.
Encouragement:
- Forrest calls listeners to stillness and prayer:
  
  "Why don't you turn off your darn phone today, sit still and offer up prayers for a few minutes, make the world a little bit sweeter and thereby please the Lord." (08:32)

4. Theological Significance & Practical Takeaways (08:35–10:25)

Communal and personal application:
- Prayer is not just duty—it transforms and “sweetens” the world and God's presence.
- The detailed furniture and rituals of the tabernacle serve to teach us about "proper worship" and the significance of prayerful devotion.
Notable quote:

"Our prayers please the Lord and make things sweet and lovely. I think this is just the most glorious idea." (07:52)

5. Reflection Questions / Journal Prompts (10:26–11:09)

What does the tabernacle furniture teach us about worship?
Why is prayer equated with spiritual incense?
What makes prayer difficult for you right now, and what might make it easier?
Forrest emphasizes the value of wrestling with “tough” biblical passages for spiritual insight.

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

On incense as a metaphor:

"Incense is meant to represent prayer rising up to the Lord, as it says in the Psalms..." (06:12)
On the beauty of prayer:

"There's something, I think, particularly spiritually sweet about prayer. It pleases the Lord and makes the world pleasant and aromatic." (07:50)
On reader engagement:

"I know that this part of Exodus is nobody’s favorite, but I really do think there’s value in kind of digging into the scripture and paying attention to what these things actually mean." (10:53)

Closing Hymn: “Nearer, My God, to Thee” (11:11–13:00)

Forrest introduces and sings several verses from hymn #345 of the Seedbed hymnal.
He explains its biblical imagery draws from Jacob’s ladder in Genesis, symbolizing the longing to be closer to God in all circumstances.
Favorite lyric:

"Even though it be a cross that raises me, I want to be close to you like whatever it takes, Lord, it's a gorgeous hymn." (12:05)

Important Timestamps

00:00–03:15: Episode intro, personal updates, and church context.
03:22–05:02: Scripture reading (Exodus 37:25–29).
05:08–07:00: Biblical connections: incense and prayer in Psalms, Luke, and Revelation.
07:02–08:30: Candle-lighting illustration and the sensual/spiritual sweetness of prayer.
08:32–09:43: Practical call to prayer and reflection.
10:26–11:09: Reflection/journal prompts for deeper engagement.
11:10–13:00: “Nearer, My God, to Thee” hymn and spiritual commentary.

Final Thoughts and Tone

Andrew Forrest’s tone is warm, gentle, and encouraging, inviting listeners not only to understand, but to enter into the spiritual reality the text points to. He stresses simple, embodied practices of prayer and careful attention to Scripture, all colored by a sense of wonder over the beauty of what God offers in worship and everyday life.

Useful for Listeners Who Haven't Tuned In

Whether or not you are familiar with Exodus or the tradition of incense in worship, this episode provides an accessible, practical, and reflective meditation on making prayer a fragrant offering in everyday life, rooted in biblical reflection and meaningful practice.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Foreign Sower Nation. It is Saturday, February 14th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I am Andrew Forrest and this is your wake up call. Well, good morning everybody. Happy Saturday. It is Valentine's Day, if you all can believe it. If that matters to you, I'll be honest. I don't care that much about Valentine's Day one way or the other, but maybe it's important to you. But it's a Saturday, always a good day. It's the end of one part of the week, the beginning of the next part of the week. For me, it's always like this, like breath before Sunday morning begins. I've mentioned before on the wake up call here how I, you know, try to take it pretty easy. I'm the senior pastor at Asbury Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I will be Preaching tomorrow at 8 o', clock, 9 o' clock and 11 o'. Clock. We live stream at 9 and 11. If you're ever in Tulsa, come by, say hello or check us out online. I'm also the author of Love Goes First, a new book out with Zondervan and Seedbed. And and this is breaking news In March, on March 9th, 16th and 23rd, I'm going to be teaching a live video course on some of the stuff in the book and some of the stuff that's not in the book from 6:30 to 8:00pm Central Central Time. I'd love to have you join us. You can go onto the seedbed website and just search for Love Goes first title of the book and the course will come right up there. You can register, bring people along with it. A live course is really, really, really fun because, you know, there's questions and there's interactions and that kind of thing. So I hope you'll think about participating. I'd love to get a huge number of folks on there. It'll be a lot of fun and I love, love, love talking about this material. Now today we're almost at the end of our study through the second half of Exodus. In my church, Asbury, we're reading through the Bible in the year. We're using the One Year Bible and we're just about the end of Exodus and we've been studying the part of Exodus that's about God. Well, getting Egypt out of the people. If the first part of Exodus is God getting the people out of Egypt, the second part is God getting the people out of Egypt. And now we're just coming to the tail end of the book and it ends in a very, very surprising way. So all that to say, Lord, we thank you for taking us out of Egypt. Now, Lord, please take Egypt out of us. Wake up, sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. Praying in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Our scripture reading for the day is Exodus 37, 25, 20, 29. Hear now the word of the Lord. He made the altar of incense of acacia wood. Its length was a cubit, and its breadth was a cubit. It was square, and two cubits was its height. Its horns were of one piece. With it he overlaid it with pure gold, its top and around its sides and its horns. And he made a molding of gold around it and made two rings of gold on and under its molding, on two opposite sides of it, as holders for the poles with which to carry it. And he made the poles of acacia wood and overlaid them with gold. He made the holy anointing oil also, and the pure, fragrant incense, splendid as by the perfumer, the word of the Lord. So what is the point of incense? And as I say that, allow me to light my candle this morning. But what is the point of incense? What does it do? Why is it in the Bible? Why do people use it? Why is it prescribed as part of the worship in the tabernacle? Well, at my church, as I mentioned, we're reading through the Bible together in a year, and we're in the final part of Exodus, which is not most people's favorite section. There's a long description of the furniture and the decorations that are to be crafted and built for the tabernacle. And then there is a long, repetitive section that describes them actually being crafted and built. We talked yesterday about how the repetition is actually making a profound theological point about the grace of God. So you might want to check that out. But either way, here we are again. Well, one of the things that this repetition affords is the opportunity to look more closely at the elements of tabernacle furniture and decoration. So today I want to look at the altar for incense and ask, what is the point of incense? Now, one of my principles is that you understand the Bible through reading the Bible. And so further passages of Scripture actually tell us something lovely about the incense in the tabernacle as long as we keep reading. So, for example, incense is meant to represent prayer Rising up to the Lord, as it says in the Psalms, let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. Psalm 141, verse 2. How about this passage? And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense. Luke chapter one, verse ten. How about this? And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb, and each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the Saints. It's Revelation 5, 8. And then finally from Revelation, and another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer. And he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne. And the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints rose before God from the hand of the angel. I just absolutely love that idea. There's something I think particularly spiritually sweet about prayer. It pleases the Lord and makes the world pleasant and aromatic. So I'm a sucker for a nice scented candle like this one. On days when I'm sitting at my desk, I like to light a candle. Now you can't smell this unless you have smell O vision made by Willy Wonka through the screen here, but I can. And when I'm sitting at my desk on like a winter day, I light the candle and then I'll blow it out, you know, and I'll watch the smoke twist and curl and then vanish. And then maybe after a while I mentioned I'm a sucker for a good candle, I will light it all over again. What Exodus is teaching us is that our prayers play the same role in God's creation. Our prayers please the Lord and make things sweet and lovely. I think this is just the most glorious idea. So I'm going to ask you this. Why don't you turn off your darn phone today, sit still and offer up prayers for a few minutes, make the world a little bit sweeter and thereby please the Lord. And so, Lord, we thank you for the gift of prayer and for giving us a role to play in your world that can help make things sweet. Thank you for the Old Testament, which teaches us how to live well and gives us insight into how your world works. Hear our prayers, Lord, and let them be lifted up to you as sweet smelling incense. All this we pray in Jesus name. Amen. So I have some journal prompts for you to get you thinking. What does the tabernacle furniture have to teach us about proper worship? Why doesn't the Lord just tell us, why does he often seem to prefer to show us? 2. Why would prayer be equated with spiritual incense? What's sweet about prayer? 3. What in the way you are currently living makes prayer difficult? What changes can you make to make it easier for you to pray more habitually and regularly? So I know that this part of Exodus is nobody's favorite, but I really do think there's a value in kind of digging into the scripture and paying attention to what these things actually mean. And there's something about this idea of prayer as incense. I've always loved it. I actually first encountered the idea not in the beginning of the Bible in Exodus, but at the end in Revelation. And so it was fun for me to come back through in Exodus and see the things that John talks about in Revelation, how the golden bowls I like the candle has gold. The golden bowls are like the prayers of God's people, their incense before the throne of God. It's gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. Well, today we will sing as our closing hymn, Nearer My God, to Thee, which is hymn 3:45 from the seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer's Praise. I don't have a favorite hymn. I like a lot of them. But if you asked me what one of my favorites might be, it might be this one. I think this is just the loveliest hymn. It's just so beautiful. Now, what I should tell you about this hymn that helps you kind of get more out of it is that it's like a musical retelling of Jacob's experience of the dream when he's at Bethel and he has heaven opens and he sees angels and descending on the ladder. So what the hymn writer has done is taken that idea and worked it musically to like God, I want to be close to you, wherever I am. So here we are. This is Nearer, My God, to thee. M3.