Time began in a garden.  Herbs, plants, trees, flowers, and fruits with hundreds of diverse and beautiful fragrances filled the atmosphere.  Later in history, God chose aromatic spices to create the sacred anointing oil used in the Tabernacle of Moses.  The altar of incense was to burn before Him continuously.

Scripture presents different names of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah, in floral terms.  He is the Lily of the Valley and the Rose of Sharon.  Lilies and roses emit lovely fragrances.  Spices are mentioned repeatedly in Song of Solomon which does, on one symbolic level, allude to Messiah as the Bridegroom.

The purpose of the fragrance calling is written in 2 Corinthians 2:14-16:  “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.  For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.”  (bold, mine)

The fragrance calling in the land or through our spirits releases knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Physically speaking, certain perfumes or smells can draw us to a person or to a meal.  Smells bypass our rational minds and current time, transporting us to another time and place in our memory—Grandma’s house with its fragrant home-cooked meals, the fort in the woods as a child, or Daddy’s workshop.  The fragrance calling in our spirits has this potential—to bypass the mind and the time of pre-believers and to draw them to the Son of God, Christ Jesus.

On the other hand, we will repel the forces of darkness and workers of iniquity with the smell of life upon us.  And, we will be repelled by the stench of death on them.  For example, some video games with violent and/or occult content can emit smells of death.  A young person does not have to play the game to determine its wickedness; his or her spirit can “smell” its defilement which marks it as a tool of the enemy.  This whole dynamic may occur by physically smelling an odor or fragrance, or it may occur when our spirits “pick up” the spiritual smell in the background whether or not we are consciously aware of its presence.

When a team discerned a fragrance portal (door) in the land on which one intercessor’s home stood, the team maximized this discovery by intentionally planning strategy meetings there (after they had cleansed and dedicated it to the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ).  They wanted to understand the knowledge of Christ and to extend that knowledge through their intercessory work.

. . .to be continued.

(excerpt from “Spirit Components–Recognizing & Blessing” in Perfect Peace by Crystal Wade, 2010)