Present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable unto the Lord — this is your true and reasonable worship. And in this season, God is calling the church back to a place many of us have quietly left: the altar.
The altar is a place of sacrifice. A place of death. We know that the Old Testament is a shadow of the New — a picture of things to come — and the place of the altar has not been ruled out. If we are to attain all that God has for us, we cannot walk around it.
A place of deathOn the altar, things die
On the altar, things die. And here is the sober truth for the church: we cannot create, and we cannot impart, what God intends if we refuse to understand the death process that must happen in the life of every believer. There is an emptying that comes before the filling. There is a surrender that comes before the sending.
On the altar, things die — and in that death, something greater is born.
John 12 : 24 · The harvestExcept a grain of wheat
Jesus said it plainly. Except a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest. The single grain, clutched and preserved, only ever remains one. The grain surrendered to the ground multiplies.
So it is with us. What we hold back stays small; what we lay down bears fruit we could never manufacture on our own. This is the way of the kingdom, and it begins in one place.
Let us return to the altar.
