Only On The Altar

Boooo wind

Last summer, I decided to have a bonfire in my yard with some friends. My grandad and I spent the afternoon chopping wood from behind his house. I brought it home and stacked it carefully around the fire pit, ready for later that night. That evening, however, the wind was a bit rowdy, making it too dangerous to start a fire. So… we told ourselves we would wait for a better night. 

Since then… fourteen months have passed, and the wood is still there, untouched. The once neat stack of wood has weathered in the sun and rain, with weeds growing up through it, and has now become more of an inconvenience than anything else.

Several thousand years earlier…

In the Old Testament, sacrifices were not casually placed on the altar. They were either killed or bound before they were laid there. And the altar was not a place you wandered onto by accident… it was a place of surrender, where something’s purpose was sealed. Once something was given to God in this way, it belonged entirely to Him and could not be taken back.

Scripture makes it clear that the altar is where God’s fire fell, where His presence met His people, where the sacrifice was accepted and transformed. If it wasn’t on the altar, it wasn’t consumed. If it wasn’t consumed, it wasn’t changed. God chooses to accomplish His deepest, most eternal work with what is fully surrendered to Him.

The Conundrum

When Paul calls us in Romans 12:1 to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God,” he is describing something different, but not detached, from the Old Testament picture. God doesn’t tie us down. He doesn’t drag us kicking and screaming onto the altar. He invites us. He calls us by name. He leaves us the choice.

This is the seemingly contradictory truth at the center of Christianity: we must die to live. God calls us to come alive, to become a living sacrifice. The problem with a living sacrifice, however, is that it’s always going to try to climb back off the altar, which is why it’s so important for us to put ourselves back there every single day. 

This is the real, daily struggle. It’s where the things we hear in church and read in our Bibles come face-to-face with what we actually experience.

It’s easy to live in full surrender until God asks you to do something that goes against the things you have always wanted. Until it goes against your comfort. Until it doesn’t make sense. Until it causes you to leave people you love or give up on dreams you have built your life around.

It’s easy to put your life on the altar… until God actually starts using it. The burnt offering in Leviticus was totally consumed, meaning nothing was returned to the worshiper. Once it was on the altar, it was His. The same is true for us. When God starts using what we have surrendered in a way we didn’t expect, we can’t try to take it back.

Yes, it is scary

The truth is, being on the altar is vulnerable. It feels like being under the knife because that’s exactly what’s happening. You don’t control where it falls. God might ask you to let go of the very things you’ve spent your whole life preparing for. He might send you to a foreign country. He might lead you to leave a job you love or step into something you feel completely unqualified for. But God is a better God than we are. He sees further. He knows what He is doing. And He doesn’t waste anything we lay down in surrender.

We have to learn to trust that when we give something to God, including full seasons of our lives, He can accomplish far more in and through us than we ever could on our own.

A break from the death talk

The cool thing is, altars in the Old Testament weren’t just about death… they were also places of encounter. They were where God met His people, where prayers were heard, where mercy was found. Adonijah clung to the altar’s horns in desperation and found his life spared. On Mount Moriah, Abraham laid Isaac down and discovered God as Provider.

Over and over, the altar is where God showed Himself faithful. When we live daily on the altar before Him, we meet Him there. It’s not comfortable. There is uncertainty. But without uncertainty, there is no faith.

Shout out Mrs Travis

One of my favorite teachers in high school reminded me often that the safest place to be is in the center of God’s will. Over the years, I’ve heard several people push back on that idea because following Jesus will often lead us into danger. After all, following Him has never been about comfort and has always been about faith…

I understand what these people are saying because lying vulnerable and defenseless on the altar doesn’t feel safe… until you realize that where you are lying is exactly where you are supposed to be—where you were made to be… in complete surrender and dependence on the Father.

God loves us more than we could ever imagine. He wants more for our lives than we want for ourselves, which is why we can trust that He has our best interests in mind. The altar is where grace meets need. It’s where dreams die and are resurrected into something better. It’s where our lives stop being ours and start becoming something eternal.

So today, I would encourage you to ask yourselves:

Have I crawled off the altar?
Is there something I’ve taken back that I once surrendered?
Am I willing to trust that what God will do with my life is better than what I could do with it?

Don’t be the wood

I love fires. There are very few things I enjoy more than sitting around a bonfire with my friends. Now I’m no fireman, but I’m pretty sure wood is one of the most important parts of building and sustaining a fire. In other words, wood has a purpose. In the same way, our purpose is only realized when we are fully given over and placed on the fire. We have to give ourselves up to fulfill the reason we were made.

Problems arise when we aren’t where we’re supposed to be… when we aren’t placed on the altar under the consuming fire of the One who created us. Apart from that, we become like a pile of unused wood… in the way, inconvenient, and ineffective. Weeds begin to grow, and before long, people can no longer see the One our lives were meant to point to. This is why we must fight every day to return to the altar, to stay in the place we were made for. Because only on the altar can we truly be used by God.

Father, today I place myself on Your altar again. 

I give You my mind… every thought and plan.

I give You my heart… every desire and fear. 

I give You my body… every word and action.

I give You my relationships, my time, my resources, and my dreams.

Even the outcomes I long for… I release them to You.

Keep me here, Lord, and let my life be wholly Yours today.