In our journey of faith in Jesus, there will be many times of choices to be made, which way to turn and other testing moments! But one thing we must continue to do is to have our eyes on God and continue to ‘build’ an altar of prayer and praise.
We see with the story of Abraham from Genesis chapter 12, when God called him out from his homeland to journey to the ‘promised land’. In this chapter and also chapter 14, we see Abraham at moments on the journey where he camped, build an altar. This altar was for worship. It was here where he would have sacrificed a praise, to come before God, worshipped and seeking to Honour the One who called Him. It is the same for us on our journeys. Though we don’t always know the way to go, which choices to make, we must always stop, pray, repent and keep short accounts with God to prevent any roots growing bigger. It is when we pray, worship and pour out our love on Jesus that the Spirit comes to meet with us and gives us a sense of peace and direction and strength. This is so true for believers in difficult choice situations and facing persecution.
When there are important choices to be made, continuing our building of altar’s is of extra significance, because when we are not in that moment, we may hear voices giving us advices to do something, that may sound like a solution to a problem, but in actual fact is not from God at all.
In the case of Abraham, we see his wife Sarah in chapter 16 suggest a solution to the problem of having no children! In this famous story we see Abraham agree to this proposal and a child was conceived through Hagar the servant girl!
Why did Abraham not build an altar at this time? Why did he not consult with God about this suggestion regarding Hagar? His mind was not on worshipping, his thoughts were not on the Lord and the Lord’s will.
When things come along to tempt us, especially things that concern our ‘carnal nature’ – we need to turn our thought’s quickly on an altar of praise before God, to allow the Spirit in us to reign stronger than the flesh. So decisions are made from a position of praise, rather than the voices speaking to us.
As the Lord build’s His church. we must continue to pray and seek Him to receive His guidance and Will.
