Is It Wrong to Light Candles and Burn Incense in My Prayer Space? What 2 Kings Taught Me

I built a prayer corner in my room. Credit to an account called God Bless Her on Instagram for part of the inspiration, but I already had plants sitting in that corner before she posted anything. I added white lights. My favorite candle and incense, both made from onyx. Genuine gemstones. Some tea lights. I am working toward a full prayer wall next, framed prayers on the wall above it all. Every time I walk into that room, especially at night, I love it. It is peaceful. It is inviting. That is what I mean when I say I architect my atmosphere.

Then I was listening to the Bible Recap, day 187, 2 Kings 14, and the reading mentioned a king who did not remove the high places, so people kept going there to offer sacrifices and burn incense. My stomach dropped a little. The way it was worded made it sound like both things, the sacrifice and the incense, were treated as wrong. That made me think about my own corner. Was I doing something God is against?

That question made me dig deeper.

Incense was never the problem. God commanded it. There was a specific altar built just for incense, and the priests burned it every single day as an offering to Him (Exodus 30:1-8). The smoke itself was never the sin.

The high places were a different issue entirely. Before the temple was built, people worshipped God all over the place, wherever felt convenient. A lot of those same sites had already been used for Baal and Asherah worship. Once God established the temple in Jerusalem as the one place for corporate worship (Deuteronomy 12), the high places were supposed to be removed. Most kings did not remove them, which is why you keep reading he did right in the eyes of the Lord, but the high places were not removed. People kept mixing true worship with leftover idol worship in the same spot. That mixing is what scripture keeps flagging. Not the candle. Not the incense. The location, and what it was tangled up with.

My prayer corner is not a high place. It is not dedicated to another god, and it is not replacing anywhere I am supposed to be worshipping instead. If anything it lines up with what Jesus said in Matthew 6:6, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father in secret. That is exactly what I built.

The gemstones matter to me for a reason I did not expect to have to defend. They come out of the earth. God made the earth. There is something beautiful about the fact that stones this stunning came out of dirt and rock. Using something He made to build a space that points me back to Him is not idolatry. It is the opposite of it.

The only thing I am watching for, and the only thing anyone building a space like this should watch for, is whether the object ever starts to feel like it carries power on its own. If the candle becomes the thing that makes me feel close to God instead of a tool that helps me focus so I can feel Him, that is the line. Right now I am nowhere near it. My corner does exactly what it was built to do. It draws me in, it quiets me down, and it points me straight to Him.

Peace, Love and Joy always. Infinite Faith and Favor | InfiniteFaithandFavor.com