Our Prayers Must Be Kindled by Fire on the Altar

Stirring words here to motivate us to pray in the Spirit:

There were no sacrifices without fire in the Old Testament, and that fire was kept alight perpetually; and so there should be no prayer now without some inward fire conceived in the desires, and blazing up and growing into a flame in the presenting of them to God.

The incense that was to be offered on the altar of perfume in Exodus 30 was to be beaten and prepared. And truly, prayer would do well to be made out of a beaten and bruised heart, and contrite spirit, a spirit truly sensible of its own unworthiness and wants, and that beating and pounding of the heart will yield a good, fragrant smell, as some spices only do when beaten...

Above all, like the incense, our prayers must be kindled by fire on the altar; there must be some heat and fervor, some warmness conceived by the Holy Spirit in our hearts, which may make our spices send forth a pleasant smell, as many spices do only when they get heat.

— Hugh Binning, A Treatise of Christian Love (2004 reprint, Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth), pp. 96-97.