This is a testimony and significant part of the reason why I am so adamant about no smoking at Titus 2 or around my home. Written a couple of years ago, I have shared it a number of times with women in recovery. Kicking nicotine along with other chemical dependencies provides significantly greater long term sobriety success according to multiple long term studies.
“I have written in the past about randomly smelling stale tobacco smoke in the past and, after medical consultation, Christian counseling and discussion with others who have experienced the same phenomenon, I had recognized that it was the spirit of fear that I was discerning that seemed to be stalking me in spiritual harassment and oppression. I was able to pinpoint the start of my experience of the smell to a particular encounter with someone who was clearly experiencing an oppressive spiritual attack. My friendship with this woman through work led her to seek me out in a time of personal emotional and medical and mental health crisis. I felt a strong caution in my spirit to “be careful” when she came into my home seeking help. Based on what she was experiencing, I asked her if she believed it might be possible that she was being harassed by a demonic spirit. She said, “Yes.” I ministered to her through prayer and spiritual guidance over a period of several months until she was able to get medical care and get stabilized. She was diagnosed with glaucoma, diabetes, an auto immune disease and depression. After several months she regained emotional stability and somewhat improved medical health and subsequently qualified for disability income. Two months after beginning a healing journey with her I began to smell a tobacco smoke smell at oddly random places and times with no apparent cause. It would come and go for over three years before other events led to me to the realization of what I’d been experiencing.
If the presence of the Holy Spirit can lead one to have a sensory equipping from God used to discern the presence of evil, like the presence of a spirit of fear, it makes sense He might also use a sensory equipping to discern the presence of an angel of the Lord….And, in fact, I have had that experience, too, several times. One particular Tuesday In September 2018, I went to the home of a Christian friend and mentor to pick up a donated bookcase. As I walked from the curb to her door, I smelled a sweet fragrance that was very potent and pleasant. I stopped and walked around her front yard trying to locate the source, thinking it might be a sweet Tea Olive tree or some other kind of shrub or vine, but I found nothing. She walked out of her door and asked if I was looking for something. I told her that I was looking for the source of a wonderfully sweet fragrance. She wasn’t aware of anything in her yard or the neighborhood that could have been responsible. I told her what I had just experienced and we quickly concluded that it was a manifestation of an angelic presence. We both had experienced similar unexplained presences of a sweet fragrance at moments of great peace and affirmation from God. I had been experiencing a strong presence of the Lord’s peace that day after a particularly long counseling session that broke new ground in a recovery process. I think that angelic manifestation was a confirmation of the recognition that God was definitely doing something new, especially in that particular case. I recall two other specific moments of smelling that sweet fragrance and looking for the source of it in something physical. But both times no other human was around and an investigation of the plants or other potential sources in the vicinity turned up nothing. The last time it had happened was a couple of years before one morning as I exited Lynn Haven Church and walked toward the parking lot. The fragrance met me as I walked out under the side doors of the portico entrance. I looked around the landscape for something blooming or fragrant, and then walked to my car. It has seemed to generally occur outdoors and has seemed to simply “join” me as I walked.
God gave us our physical senses that work well in addressing a variety of physical, relational, and emotional needs. But God may also
use them for spiritual sensing, too, to signal spiritual realm comings snd goings around us.”
After another woman wrote to tell me she’d had similar experiences I replied to her;
“I know that feeling of “is anyone watching me? They must surely think I’m crazy!” when one experiences such a spiritual experience for the first time. After one becomes more “at home in the land of the living” (i.e.,within her own Holy Spirit surrendered and awakened self) she realizes that she is being given the privilege of glimpses into the realm of angels. It becomes a less jarring experience and one in which one may simply receive the gift of the Holy Spirit Presence (and whatever accompanying insight or vision He gives) with gratitude and humility, asking “How may I glorify God with this experience of worship?” Sometime the only thing one can do is “treasure these things in her heart” because there are so few people, we think, who will understand and share our joy. But when we are bold enough in safe community to share such things about how God draws near and speaks in our spirit/soul, we are often surprised by how many others have experienced God’s abiding, too. I think, when we get more at ease with the awareness of God’s Presence at a liminal level, as we live at the borderland between the physical and spiritual realms, He begins to make Himself known in more ways, within the ordinary coming and going of our daily activities. He truly becomes a Companion and Friend.”
Addendum: 4/8/25 from 2022 article
Smelling Heaven B.J. Funk in Good News, Nov/Dec 2022, pg. 44
“In the past few years, I have had a sweet, calming, and beautiful surprise happening in my life. I have smelled heaven.
I first recognized this indescribable occurrence when I sat in the lounge chair in my living room. Suddenly, from out of nowhere came the most beautiful fragrance. I looked around, started by the compelling, comforting wonder. No one else was in my home, no candles were lit, I had not earlier sprayed perfume that might have lingered in my bedroom and now wafted into my living room. Besides, I had never smelled this scent before.
Within a few minutes, it was gone, as if compelled to take flight back to its origin. The delicate fragrance left completely. I sat pondering what had just happened.
Months passed. I was in the same lounge chair when suddenly without any notice, another beautiful smell passed over my face. This was the second time, and this smell was different. I put my head back and allowed the sensation to completely permeate my nose. In a few minutes, the delightful smell left.
Months later, a new, soft fragrance surrounded me in that same lounge chair. I sat as if suspended in time, not sure of what was occurring, filled with questions, and hoping the lovely small would stay longer. It did not.
In all three of these situations, I was alone in the home. No candles burning, no perfume, no room spray, no hair spray, nothing had been released into the air. This happened several more times. Perhaps I might have ignored this intriguing occurrence except for what happened next.
One night, I was in bed and about to go to sleep, I was suddenly surrounded by another delightful smell reaching my nostrils. I was puzzled. How was this happening? Where were these beautiful smells coming from?
In my bed, lying next to my husband’s place, something clicked in my soul. All of the pleasant smells were connected to Roy. After thinking in solitude, I believe I interpreted, with the Holy Spirit’s help, exactly what was happening.
My lounge chair sits in the exact spot where a hospital bed cradled Roy as Jesus took his hand and carried him to heaven thirteen years ago. As I sit here, my head is in the direct vicinity where Roy’s head was as eternity embraced him into another realm. I had never realized this before.
It is with this new understanding – that heaven is reaching down to me at the spot where Roy lay – that I drew the revelation that for some unknown reason, heaven’s smells were making a connection with me, always at the place where he had last been at rest. There is no clarity about why this happens to me.
You may ask if I feel God is getting me ready to leave earth. Not really. I have no clue about that. I don’t ask him to explain. I feel that if I did, he would say, “You can’t figure this out. Just enjoy.”
Addition 4/8/25 from my prayer files:
Dear Jesus,
Help us to spread your fragrance everywhere we go.
Flood our souls with your Spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly
that our lives may only be a radiance of yours.
Shine through us and be so in us
that every soul we come in contact with
may feel your presence in our soul.
Let them look up and see no longer us but only Jesus.
Stay with us and then we shall begin to shine as you shine,
so to shine as to be light to others.
The light, O Jesus, will be all from you.
None of it will be ours.
It will be you shining on others through us.
Let us thus praise you in the way you love best
by shining on those around us.
Let us preach you without preaching
not by words, but by our example
By the catching force
the sympathetic influence of what we do
the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to you.
Amen