Throughout the Fall our focus was “Heart Check”
- “God wants to work in us so he can work with us and through us”
- We need to continue to allow the Lord to work in our hearts but He is working in us with a purpose
- As we come into 2019 my heart is stirred that we will individually and corporately go after the callings and purposes of God in our lives. IT’S TIME!
Romans 12:1 TPT – 1 Beloved friends, what should be our proper response to God’s marvelous mercies? I encourage you to surrender yourselves to God to be his sacred, living sacrifices. And live in holiness, experiencing all that delights his heart. For this becomes your genuine expression of worship.
The key: I encourage you to surrender yourselves to God to be his sacred, living sacrifice!
ALTAR’D is about building an altar to the Lord where we offer ourselves as sacred, living sacrifices and thus being ‘altered’ or changed and transformed.
- Last week we talked about the difference between Abraham and Lot – Abraham prioritized building the altar of the Lord but Lot simply pitched his tent
- Which spirit are we carrying? Are we prioritizing the altar of the Lord in our lives or are we simply pitching our own tent?
- We want to have a heart like Abraham where we build and prioritize the altar of God in our lives, our marriages, our family, and our church.
Let’s look at three different altars the Bible tells us that Abraham built and ask the Lord to speak to us through them – and that we would “build these altars in our lives”.
1) SHECHEM
Genesis 12:1-7 (NLT) – … And Abram built an altar there and dedicated it to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
- Shechem is the first altar we are told about that Abram (later Abraham) built to the Lord – it was a response to the Lord appearing to Him.
- Where is YOUR Shechem with the Lord?
- We are part of the body of Christ and we need each other but each one of us needs to know God for ourselves – we need to walk in personal revelation – we need to hear God speak to us!
Matthew 16:13-17 (NLT) -… Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?”…
- Are you borrowing someone else’s altar or have you built your own? Are you living off of someone else’s relationship with God or are you building your own?
- Shechem means ’shoulder’ – when you have a Shechem you have a place to take the burdens off your shoulder and place them on His. This is vital for those who will walk in destiny!
- A secondary meaning is to ‘rise early, or to make an early start’ – I believe there is a key in this for walking in what the Lord has for us.
Let’s build our altars at Shechem – that place where we are walking with God for ourselves and not living off someone else’s relationship with Him.
2) HEBRON
Genesis 13:14-18 (NLT) – …18 So Abram moved his camp to Hebron and settled near the oak grove belonging to Mamre. There he built another altar to the Lord.
- We see that after Lot had gone God spoke to Abraham again and he moved to Hebron an built another altar
- Hebron = To Join or Team Up, or to make an alliance
- There are some alliances that you need to break! What are the “Lot’s” in your life? If you don’t leave Lot you will never walk in the promise/destiny of God!
- It’s not just about ‘leaving’ – God wants you to leave the ‘lesser’ for the far greater of teaming up with Him! God wants to team up with you for His plans and purposes in the earth!
Let’s build our altar at Hebron – it’s time to ‘leave Lot’ and team up with God for all He has!
3) MORIAH
Genesis 22:1-2 (NLT)… 2 “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.”
- The final altar was on Moriah where God instructed Abraham to take His dream and give it back to God
- The crux of this: is this about me or this about Him!
- Moriah is about complete surrender! Moriah is about offering our lives a sacred, living sacrifices.
- Abraham was tested by God – the point of taking a test is about graduating to the next level!
- What are we holding onto that is holding us back from His greatness?
- Moriah also points to us to the most important thing… that several thousand years later on an appointed mountain a Father gave up his son to be sacrificed for the sins of the world!
Let’s build our altar at Moriah – where we remember the sacrifice of Jesus and completely surrender our lives as sacred, living sacrifices.
brendan witton.com 