The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - What Do You Smell Like to God?

Episode Date: May 10, 2019

Did you know God likes certain aromas and smells? It’s not the literal smell that finds favor with God, but the meaning behind the smell. For example, the smell of incense represents prayer going up to heaven, which God loves. Jeff breaks down the four favorite aromas of God in today’s episode: prayer, repentance, kerygma, and loving sacrifice. He also reads out some feedback and answers questions from listeners. Do you have comments or questions for Jeff? Use the comment box below, or email Jeff at [e-mail]. You may hear your question or comment in an upcoming podcast episode! Snippet from the Show “God commanded the priests of Israel to continually burn aromatic incense ... but it wasn’t simply the fragrance itself that pleased God, but what it represented: the constant prayers of his people.” Check out the shownotes and resources from this episode at ascensionpress.com/thejeffcavinsshow or email us at [e-mail]

You're listening to The Jeff Kaven Show, episode 115, what do you smell like to God? Hey, I'm Jeff Kavans. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kaven show. Hey, welcome to the show this week. So glad that you could join me. Always look forward to sharing good things with you about the Lord and being a disciple of the Lord and real practical stuff, you know, about living your life out on a daily basis. And I do want to say thank you again for many of you who have sent emails to me in texts and so forth about the passing of my mother-in-law, Alice Tobler. I appreciate your prayers so much. And we're going to be doing a show

on her in the future. She had a big, big role in my life in the Bible, and I want you to know about it. We're going to be doing that at some time in the future. My email is The Jeffcaven Show at ascensionpress.com. That's how many of you have been in touch with me, and I just put that out there again, and I appreciate it so, so very much. Well, I want to talk today about a topic I don't think I've ever really mentioned on the show in the past, and that is, what do you smell like to God? and this is something that we are very, very familiar with, and that is different kinds of

smells in the world. Isn't that right? We pay attention to them every day. We buy them. We destroy them. We burn them. We experiment with them. Sometimes we abhor them. And other times, well, frankly, we're attracted by them. And you like some, but you hate others. What are we talking about? We're talking about smell. We're talking about aromas that are out there in the world. Most of us can identify with waking up in the morning. In fact, I remember this very well in walleye opening when I was a kid up in Red Lake, Minnesota, the big lake up there, if you look on the map, it's the two big lakes up north, and woke up in the morning to the smell of coffee, eggs, and bacon, and man, it put a smile on my face. And you probably have

a story like that, too. I think not too long ago that there was actually an article written about favorite smells for men, favorite smells for women. I do remember the men's, and that was bacon. Bacon was the number one smell. And a couple years ago, at the Minnesota State Fair, they have a, they have all kinds of strange things at the Minnesota State Fair. And one of them is a booth called bacon on a stick. And what they do is they take bacon and then they dip it in chocolate. And they had people lined up around the block to get that. And the people that were working at the booth had t-shirts on that said, it doesn't matter who's president if you have bacon in your mouth. And to a lot of people, that's probably true. On the other side of

that, the smell of a sour disposal, for example, will make you crinkle your nose. I know I've been out in public before, and I've been on a flight, or I was in the back of a restaurant, you're walking in an alley, or some other place, and a smell really turned me off. It was just this last week that Emily and I got into the car. It was my car. And she got in and she said, what's that smell? And I said, what do you mean? What's that smell? And oh, I said, yeah, I guess I do smell that. It smells like, she said, did you, did you dump something in the car? Like, were you eating something? I said, no, I've, I've actually never eaten in this car. I like to keep the car clean. And it really, it really confused me. It stumped me. And when we pulled back home,

I opened up the back, and there were two garbage bags from our weekend that had been in the back of my car baking for like three days, and I, too, was wondering, what is that smell? And we figured it out. It has, smell has a way of getting our attention, doesn't it? It really does. But have you ever thought about the fact that God smells, that he can smell? And it's really, really true. And there are a number of aromas, a number of smells that get God's attention. And you can find a lot about this on the Internet. There's one particular article that I thought was very helpful. In fact, I'm going to give it to you on the notes by Denise Colemanier. And she has an article called The Four Aromas of God. And I'm going to borrow a little bit from that as far as headings. But you you can go and read that. I'll put it in the show notes. So I want to start off by telling you a true story. All of them are true, but it's a true story from my time at EWTN on Life on the Rock. When I was doing the show Life on the Rock, I was also doing Mother Angelica's show at times and a couple of others. And I did one show with a wonderful woman who works in the pro-life movement and natural family planning. Her name is Mercedes Wilson. And a lovely lady.

lady from Europe. And we got to talking about natural family planning and, you know, these issues of life and so forth. But I was, I was somewhat distracted by the perfume that she was wearing because it was so amazing. You know, have you ever, have you ever run into certain people and you think, wow, they really smell good? I wonder what that is. And I think, I think a lot of people do that. Well, that was my case in interviewing Mercedes-Wilson. And after the show, I was talking to her, and I said, I said, please understand, I'm just really curious here, you're wearing something that really, really smells good. And I said, what is it? Because I wanted to get some for Emily. You know, I thought, well, that's a nice smell. I'll get that for Emily for a present, you know,

Mother's Day or her birthday or Christmas or something. And she rattled off some name of the perfume, you know, blah la Beauchumnia, whatever. It was French, I think. And anyway, I wrote it down. and I said, well, where do you get that, thinking I'll go up to Sears or pennies or somewhere and get this for my wife? And she said, well, I think it's only available at one place in France, in Paris, France on the Chonse Lessee. And I thought, well, great, that's not going to do me a whole lot of good. I'm not going to fly over there to get this perfume.

But as God would have it, I was asked by EWTN to go over to France, I think this was 98, 1998 to cover for television World Youth Day. So I went over there, and I had that piece of paper with me in my time system. And I thought, I'm going to track it down. So I found out where this perfume place was on the Chonseillaise in Paris. And I went in, and they only featured like three or four, two or three, four different scents. And I found the one. And then I looked at the bottle, about a four-ounce bottle, and I asked, you know, how much is that? And they told me it's about $600. And I thought, oh, man, well, that isn't going to work. And then I said, well, how about this other one? This two-ounce one. They said, well, that's like $350 or something. And then there was this

teeny, teeny, tiny little bottle, one ounce. I said, how much is that? And they said, it's about 200. I thought, oh, brother, that was a lot of money, you know, and it still is a lot of money for you and for me. But I made the decision. I came all this way. I'm going to get the perfume for Emily. So I bought it. and I came home, and I was so excited, and I said, honey, I got this perfume in France for you, and go ahead and put it on. I think you're going to like it, and she smelled it first, and she kind of crinkled her nose a little bit. She didn't particularly like it, and then she put it on, and I was so looking forward to smelling it, and it didn't smell anything, like Mercedes-Wilson. And I was so disappointed because I thought this was going to be such a neat gift,

but I found out something about aromas and scents, and that is that, One perfume on one person, mixing with their body chemistry, does not necessarily smell the same as somebody else. And so, till today, that little bottle of perfume is sitting in the closet. In fact, I think I might take a picture of it and put it in the show notes just for you, so you can get to take a look at it. So back to our topic of what do you smell like to God? Well, there's certain things we can do. I'm going to give you four of them, and these are in a number of articles. and different other presentations out there. I'll give a little bit of my own spin to it,

but there are four. And the first aroma, the first smell that kind of gets God's attention is the smell of prayer. The smell of prayer. When you look at offerings in the Old Testament, you'll see some major offerings, like the burnt offering, peace, offering, sin, guilt offering, these types of offerings that are in the Old Testament. And there's a number of other other types of offerings as well. And it says in the scripture, and I'm just going to read this to you in Numbers Chapter 15, because when we read about sacrifices and offerings in the Old Testament, we have to look at what is behind that. And what is behind that is prayer, the relationship with God, the heart, a good life, right? A repentant life. Well, prayer is so important. It says in Numbers 15, the Lord said to Moses,

say to the people of Israel, when you come into the land you are to inhabit, which I give you, and you offer to the Lord from the herd or from the flock, an offering by fire or burnt offering or a sacrifice to fulfill a vow, or as a free will offering, or at your appointed feast to make a pleasing odor to the Lord. Then he who brings his offering shall offer to the Lord a serial offering of a tenth of an Ifa, a fine flour. And then it says, mixed with a fourth of a hen of oil and wine for the drink offering, and a fourth of a hen, you shall prepare with the burnt offering. And then it goes on, down to verse 10, it says, and you shall offer for the drink offering half a hint of wine as an offering by fire, a pleasing odor to the Lord. So twice in Numbers chapter 15, 1 through 10,

it talks about a pleasing odor to the Lord. Now, the pleasing odor to the Lord is symbolic of something. It represents something. God just doesn't really get into the smell of animals or grain being burnt or anything like that. But it's what that represents. And what it represents is prayer. It represents the relationship with the Lord that Israel has. and in the same way for us as well.

You know, when we pray behind that prayer is a beautiful fragrance that goes up to the Lord, and the Lord loves it. It says in Psalm 141 in verse 2, Let my prayer be counted as incense before thee, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice. Isn't that beautiful? So one of the things the Lord is attracted to is prayer, and there's an incense attached to prayer.

And the question is, in this show, do you smell like that? Is that something that has caught the Lord's attention, right? Prayer can be counted as incense before the Lord. When you think back to the New Testament in Luke chapter 1, remember Zacharias? Zacharias was fulfilling his role as a priest in the New Testament. And when he went in to the temple, he went in to burn incense. You can read Luke 1, 9 through 10. put it in the show notes for you. Don't worry about that. But the important thing to remember is that

when Zecharius goes in to offer incense in the temple, what's happening outside? Well, the whole multitude. All the people are praying outside at the hour of incense. Okay? And so prayer is represented by incense. Now, one of the beautiful things about this is that in the book of Revelation in chapter 5. I'm going to read it to you here because it's so good, is that prayers of the faithful, prayers of the saints, like you, these are so beautiful to the Lord, so fragrant that he has golden bowls in heaven, and he fills these golden bowls with the incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And it says in Revelation 5, and when he, this is verses 8 through 12, and when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders

fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song saying, Worthy art thou to take the scroll, and to open its seals, for thou was slain and by the blood dis ransomed men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. Isn't that beautiful? So it speaks of these prayers of the saints as incense, and that God collects in the bowls in heaven. I love that. I think that that is so beautiful. It all really began, you know, in the Old Testament, clear back in Exodus 30. And you can read that whole chapter, but it says from like verse 34 on, and the Lord said to Moses, take unto yourself sweet spices,

and then he names off the spices, Tacta and Anika and Galbanum and these sweet spices with pure frankincense. I think I got the pronunciation a little right there. and he talks about how you are to mix them and use them in the sacrifice. So it's a beautiful thing. So incense is representative of the prayers of Israel, and it has a certain scent to it. And you can get in on that. And there's a lot of different kinds of prayers that you can offer up to the Lord, right? There's intercession. You can pray for other people. And that's a real beautiful type of prayer. where Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 1, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

All right. You've got prayers for wisdom in James. You've got petitions. You've got prayers of Thanksgiving, Toda offerings in the Old Testament. And of course, in our tradition as Catholics, we have beautiful prayers like the rosary, which is so related to roses, you know, and the beautiful smell and the scent of roses. We got the Angelus, the Divine Mercy Chaplet. They all release an aroma that is pleasing to God.

And so that's a little bit about this scent, this aroma of prayer that God loves. The second one is the smell of repentance. That's right. Repentance. When you look at God's walk with Israel in the Old Testament, you continually hear the prophets crying out, repent. And what is repentance? Well, repentance isn't admitting that you got caught and you're sorry about it. You know, that's not really repentance. Repentance comes from the word metanoia. And metanoia has this idea of changing one's mind, changing one's mind,

and followed by actions that return to the Lord, return to the source of life, return to the source of grace and mercy, and away from what is hurting you. It's really repentance is turning from what stinks to what is fragrant, obedience to the Lord. And so, what do you smell like to God? Does he smell that sweet fragrance of repentance, a broken and contrite heart? I love what it says in Psalm 51 in verse 17, which is a Psalm. It's a Psalm that David wrote, after the deal with Bashiba, and he was caught. And he wrote the psalm as a psalm of repentance. And he said in verse 17, the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Oh, God, thou will not despise. You see, there's something about a change of heart in our mind,

in our lives that is so fragrant to the Lord. He loves it. It smells sweet and beautiful. And it's like if you have children, I have three daughters, you have children. children, think about how it makes you feel when they come to their senses, when they repent. It's very refreshing, isn't it? It's refreshing. In fact, that's what Peter, that's how Peter describes repentance in the book of Acts chapter 3 in verse 19. I'll stick that in the notes for you. He says, repent, therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. So I'm going to challenge you today. as I'm challenging myself. In the area of my heart, am I moving away from the Lord or toward the Lord?

Am I stinking it up, or am I becoming a beautiful fragrance with a heart that is repentant? And it's followed by action. That's something that we both need to think about today, don't you think? Hey, I'm going to take a break when I come back. I got two more aromas for you, two more scents that God loves, and I'm going to share those with you. right after this. Every one of us is made in the image of God. We are unique, worthy of love, and called to greatness. In this world, though, we can be distracted from that truth and begin to doubt God's love is real. You see, we live in a world that tells us we are not smart, attractive, thin, or rich enough.

It is easy to focus on the ways we fall short of worldly perfection and forget that we are already made perfect. We are already enough. I'm Danielle Bean, author of You Are Enough, what women of the Bible teach you about your mission and worth. You Are Enough dives into the stories of women in the Bible so that you can fully see God's plan for your life. To order, visit ascensionpress.com or Amazon. Welcome back. We're talking about an important issue today. What do you smell like to God, right? Have you ever had beautiful perfume on or a cologne? And someone says, oh, that smells so good. Very, very attractive. Or they say, have you been eating garlic? Have you had onions lately? Because they're smelling something else.

Well, we talk a little bit at the beginning of the show. We spoke at the beginning of the show about the smell of prayer and the smell of repentance. A couple others I want to share with you. One is the smell of the charygma, the smell of the charygma. This is the message. This is the proclamation. This is what we have to share it with the world. We have a set proclamation of the gospel that we share with other people. And when we do, when we do that, there is a fragrant offering.

There's a fragrant offering that takes place. Let me read this to you. Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 2, verses 14 through 16, he says something about fragrance here to the Corinthians when he says, but thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph. And through us, get this, get this, get this, get this, through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. Isn't that great? I love that. Second Corinthians 2.14, through us. How is God's fragrance going to be spread everywhere? How is the knowledge of him going to be spread at your work, at your home, in your neighborhood, at that Boy Scout

council meeting, right, at the Optimus Club? How is his knowledge going to spread? That fragrance of his knowledge through you. That's right. And Paul goes on and says, for we are the aroma of Christ to God. Among those who are being saved, and among those those who are perishing. To one, a fragrance from death to death to the other, a fragrance from life to life, who is sufficient for these things. So in other words, we could say that truth smells good to God. Truth smells good to God, right? Well, we call this the corigma. I'm going to put this in the show notes for you. The corigma is the seven-point basic proclamation of the gospel that we find in the book of Acts, and it's something that you and I are responsible for sharing

with other people. That's right. And the corigma basically goes like this. If you find it in the New Testament, in the book of Acts, there's a structure to it. And it goes like this. Number one, and you can share this with anybody. And in a prior podcast called a cup of corigma, I explain how to do this in a prior podcast. And you can go back and look at all the show notes and explain, you know, how do you start up a conversation and so forth? So we'll put that in the show notes for you as well. But here's how it goes. Number one, God loves you and has a plan for your life.

That's the first bit of hint of this fragrance, this spice, you know, that we share of the knowledge of God. God loves you and has a plan for your life. Number two, sin has interrupted this plan and ruin this relationship. Right? It broke the relationship with God. That's what sin does. that's what sin is designed to do. Number three, there's good news. There's a good, good news.

There's another spice in this fragrance, and that is that Jesus came to die for you and pay the penalty, pay the price for sin in our life. That's wonderful. Next spice in that beautiful fragrant aroma. Number four, we need to repent. We need to repent. We need to reorient our lives to Christ. And then number five, we need to be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit. We receive grace, and we receive the Holy Spirit into our lives. Number six, we join the church, the source of his grace and life and family. And then number seven, we in turn make disciples ourselves. That's the corigma. Now, as I've said, and I know it's cheesy, but if you can't remember a curig machine, a coffee machine, right? And just put ma on the end, curig ma. And you've got it.

Now brew up a cup for your friends. It smells good. It smells good. It smells good. Everybody likes to smell of coffee, don't they? I do in the morning, for sure. Well, truth smells good to God, and the corigma smells. It smells. That's number three. That's the smell that God loves. Again, I ask you, what do you smell like? What's your message? What do you talk about? What do you laugh about? What do you think about? You know, what do you read about? Oh, we have a chance to spread the aroma of Christ everywhere, such a fragrant aroma. If we would just learn that message and have the guts to share it with people and the fortitude to continue on, smells good. Smells good. Number four, the fourth one is the smell of loving sacrifice.

The smell of loving sacrifice. Paul puts it this way. He says in Ephesians 5 versus 1 and 2, therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. So what smells good to God? A fragrant offering and sacrifice. That's the smell of a loving sacrifice, my friend. In spiritual terms, that is the ultimate barbecue to people here on earth. A beautiful smell, a luscious smell.

And God loves the smell of his chest. children who are lovingly sacrificing. Why? Because they are walking as he walks. They are living as he lives. They have the mind of Christ. One of the great scriptures dealing with this is Colossians 124, which says, now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh, I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body. That is the church. So what Paul is saying is is that he says, I rejoice in my suffering. And he says, in my flesh, in my flesh, I'm completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. Well, what could possibly be lacking in Christ's afflictions? I mean, that's a good question. It's a good question. And John Paul II, he asked it. St. Augustine

asked it. St. Augustine said, what is lacking is the sufferings of the mystical body of Christ, the church. And St. John Paul II said that there's really nothing lacking. but that you might come to know the love of God, he's made room in his suffering for you to participate. And so you see that when you suffer and you offer it up in union with Christ, it becomes a beautiful, beautiful, fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. And you come to know His love. So if you're facing some suffering today, it hasn't been going well for you recently. I don't want you to rehearse it and curse it and nurse it. I want you to offer that up to the Lord. Notice, offer it up. It's like a fragrant. It's like an incense. Offer it up in union with

Christ, and it becomes valuable. If you have suffering going on in your life, you potentially possess a coin that can purchase what cannot be bought, and that is souls. This is a beautiful. This is a beautiful thing. Never look on suffering is just something you've got to always run from and you got to curse it and, you know, and, and all that. No, it's an opportunity to offer up a beautiful sacrifice, a beautiful fragrance to the Lord. It says in John 15, the great high priestly chapter, the high priestly prayer of Jesus, he said, greater love has no one than this, that someone laid down his life for his friends. When you sacrifice as Christ and you join yourself to him, you possess a beautiful fragrance for God. So what are you going through right now? Something stinky? Change it and offer up

your suffering. I want to conclude with a scripture and then an analogy that I picked up a while ago at the mall. In Romans chapter 12 versus 1 and 2, Paul talks about our whole life, a sacrifice to God. And he talks about our mind in sync with Christ. I love this. It's the first two verses of Romans chapter 12. Listen to this. I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. So we want to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. Everything we do, everything we say, everything about us releases a

beautiful fragrance for the Lord. Now, I was at the mall a while ago, and I noticed something, not for the first time. I mean, I've noticed this before, but it suddenly hit me. And I was walking by one of these perfume counters, they're massive, aren't they? You go into Macy's or some of these other stores, and they have these massive perfume and cologne counters. And they have, you know, 10 people working behind them, and they're walking around, and they're asking, would you like to try a sample of this particular cologne? Or you can yourself go to the counter and they have samples. You know, it's a sample bottle, and you can try it on if you want. Well, the idea there is that if they give you a sample, it's not just your initial smell, but if you put it on your wrist or on your

neck or somewhere, it's going to follow you. It's going to follow you while you shop. And if you like it or your husband comes up to you and says, hey, man, that's really nice. You just might go back and buy the whole bottle, right? So the idea is that they hand out free samples hoping that you're going to like what you smell and you're going to come back and buy the whole bottle. Well, I got to thinking. Since we're talking about a show about what does God's, what do you smell like to God, if we have a beautiful fragrance because of repentance, because of prayer, because of loving sacrifice and the good news, the corigma that we proclaim, why not start handing out free samples? Everywhere we go, how do we do that? We are cognizant of the fact that.

that our life, our conduct, and our speech is a fragrant sacrifice to God. And we can hand this out to everybody, free samples, every day. And you know, some people might come back and say, what is it that makes you different? And you'll have an opportunity to tell them where that fragrance came from. That is your relationship with the Lord. I want to encourage you this week, my friend, whatever you're going through in life. God loves you. God has a plan for your life. God is with you. He will not forsake you. And if you will walk in prayer, repentance, walk in the good news, and walk in loving sacrifice, things are going to smell different in your life. And for those around you as well. I want to remind you that we've got some big things coming up.

Big, big things coming up. I got two trips to Israel coming up in January. You can go to my website, jeffcavens.com for that. Next June, Father Mike Schmitz and I are going to take a lot of young adults to Israel. That's up there, too. If you're 18 to 30, right around 30, you know, you can come with us to Israel, and we have three amazing singers who are going to put concerts on in the Galilee and Jerusalem. We got Ali Alia. She's going to be with us. Taylor Tripodi is going to be with us. Brother Isaiah, from the Franciscan friars of the renewal. They're all going to be doing concerts and leading the music. Father Mike Schmitz will be there. I will be there. I hope you're there. Go to the website, get some information. And again, you can follow me on

Instagram or Twitter. And my Facebook is just jeffcavens.com. Again, thank you for leaving some show notes and iTunes and Google podcast, the Google Play. And there's a number of places now that you can get the show. But I do appreciate your rankings and your comments. They help in the algorithms. I want to pray for you as we conclude. In the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Lord, I lift up to you, my friend, and ask you, Lord, to help them to live a life of repentance and prayer and to give them courage with the good news and help them endure the sufferings that they are facing in their life with loving sacrifice. May their life truly be a beautiful fragrance to you. And may we spread everywhere we go, like free offerings

and free samples. May we share the fragrance of the knowledge of you, Lord, all around us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Remember something. Remember, I love you. And I'm asking you to pray for me and I'll pray for you. Talk to you next time.