Build Your Altar - Part II
“Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.” Genesis 22:2
There’s another person who had to build his own altar of faith and his name was Abraham. He was asked by God to sacrifice his only child, his son Isaac, in order to prove his unwavering devotion to the Lord. But at just the right time, God provided a ram as the substitute sacrifice and blessed Abraham to become a great nation, the nation of Israel, and to have his lineage bring the awaited Messiah, Jesus.
God not only wants us to build our own altar of faith chiseled with our own stones that represent moments in our lives where we have grown in our faith trusting Him, but He also wants us to surrender our greatest desires and dreams upon that altar. He wants nothing and no one to compete for His spot in our hearts. He wants our sole devotion at all times, and so He will ask us to submit our life—including our dreams, desires and comforts—on the altar of faith in order to show Him our unwavering devotion. And when we fully surrendered, that’s when God can do the miraculous and use us for His greatest work on this earth to show His love and salvation to others. Our dreams may seem big in our own minds, but they fail in comparison to the plans God has in store for each of us.
Comparably, many Israelites thought Jesus was going to be the earthly ruler they needed to overthrow the Roman government, but God used His life as the ultimate sacrifice upon the cross in order to complete the greatest eternal plan of salvation for humanity. As people, we tend to always look at the temporal, but God is always looking at the eternal.
Reflections
What are you going to surrender on your altar of faith today?
What temporal plans are you willing to sacrifice to God in order to advance His eternal plan for your life?
How can you prove your unwavering devotion to God every day?
