I spent years deep in New Age stuff before giving my life to Jesus, so I second-guess things others might not think twice about.
Scripture talks about burning incense in worship, but I haven’t found sage called out by name.
Can Christians burn sage during prayer?
Yes. The smell while you pray, I don’t see an issue. Cleansing a space or getting rid of negative energy is taking on a ritual that comes with its own beliefs.
If it brings your thoughts back to old habits instead of Jesus, that’s reason enough to skip it.
A Christian can burn sage. With your New Age background though, I’d keep it out of prayer entirely, otherwise you’re doing the old ritual under a new name.
Prayer doesn’t need anything added to work.
I stopped burning it while I pray. Scripture never mentions it by name (at least not as far as I have understood) it and I don’t think that makes it off limits for a Christian, but it doesn’t make it part of prayer either.
Thank God the smell of sage just calms me now, but if it ever pulled my thoughts back to old habits I’d drop it, Amen.
1 Corinthians 10:23 comes to mind. Paul asks whether something is good… it means you can weigh something by what it contributes, even when there’s no rule against it.
A smell is just a smell. But I noticed my own thoughts drifting back to ‘clearing the room’ before I even lit it.
Sage won’t do anything against demons, and in the Gospels the spirits fled at Jesus’ name. If you believe the smoke is what’s keeping evil out, then that’s where your trust has ended up.
If you’re dealing with something spiritual, pray in Jesus’ name.
I’d skip white sage. Some Native groups say it’s gotten hard to find because so many other people are buying it up, and Scripture already mentions incense, so you could burn that or rosemary or regular kitchen sage.
Asking ‘what am I trusting it to do?’ works a lot better than arguing over whether sage is mentioned by name. If you just like how it makes the house smell, that’s a different situation.
Deuteronomy 18:10-12 calls divination and sorcery detestable to the Lord.
Back in my New Age days I used to walk every corner of the apartment waving a smoking bundle. Nothing ever left except the smoke detector’s patience.
Now when the house feels heavy, I praise God and Jesus out loud. Demons can’t stand hearing Him glorified.
I was in the New Age too. The spiritual stuff I was doing messed me up until I cried out to Christ and he saved me, and 5 years in a clean break works way better than trying to hang onto the harmless bits.
Ditch it, in prayer and everywhere else.
You’re already second-guessing, and I think Romans 14:23 says if you’re doubting something that’s a sign to hold off.
This thread sent me to Psalm 141:2: ‘Let my prayer be set before you as incense.’ So the prayer itself is the incense?
Pretty much. Revelation 5:8 has the golden bowls of incense before the throne, ‘which are the prayers of the saints.’
So you don’t need to prepare the atmosphere first, a prayer from a cramped kitchen rises as surely as one from a smoke-filled room.
Frankincense is a solid 8/10 swap if you want something that smells nice while you pray. It’s in Scripture too (the magi brought it in Matthew 2:11) and it doesn’t carry any baggage from your old life.
Most shop bundles are white sage, which a lot of Native nations consider sacred.
I burn sage now and then when the house gets stuffy, and it makes the air feel fresher when I sit down to read the Word.
I think it’s fine as long as you’re not expecting it to do any spiritual work, since the plant itself doesn’t have any power either way.
When I came out of my own reiki phase I couldn’t even look at sage for about a year, and my grandmother put it in nearly everything she cooked.
Reading Exodus 30 helped. God gave an exact recipe for the tabernacle incense, then told Israel not to make it for themselves.
If it’s the sage specifically that bothers you, you don’t have to use it. Incense is made from all kinds of stuff, so you could pick something like frankincense that doesn’t have the old associations for you.
