Part 2: When Love Meets an Altar

"Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love..."  Genesis 22:2

There are moments in our walk with God when a single sentence changes everything.

After nearly a year of hearing Jesus ask me, "Do you love Me?" I thought I understood why He had been asking. I thought He was simply drawing me into a deeper relationship with Him.

I had no idea He was preparing me for an altar.

One morning, while I was praying, I sensed the Lord speak quietly to my heart.

"Put your house on the altar."

At first, I honestly didn't know what to do with those words. The house wasn't just a house. It represented our future. Our security. Our finances. Our dreams.

My husband had lost his job, the housing market had collapsed, and we were carrying a burden that felt impossible. Every day I wondered how God was going to provide. Every night I wrestled with fear.

Now the very thing I had been clinging to was the thing He asked me to lay before Him. It felt strangely familiar. Not because I had lived it before.

But because Abraham had.

The Altar Reveals What We Love

For years, I read the story of Abraham and Isaac as though it were primarily about sacrifice.

Now I see something much deeper. God wasn't trying to discover Abraham's heart. He already knew it. The altar wasn't for God.

It was for Abraham.

Until something is placed on the altar, we often don't realize how tightly we're holding it. Sometimes we think we're trusting God, when in reality, we're trusting what we've asked Him to bless.

I don't believe God delights in asking us to surrender the things we love. I believe He delights in becoming the One we love most.

That changes everything.

The Kindness Hidden in the Invitation

At first, I couldn't understand why Jesus would ask this of me. Didn't He know how afraid I already was? Didn't He know how uncertain everything felt?

Of course He did.

Which is why I eventually realized He wasn't trying to make my life harder. He was setting my heart free.

The house wasn't the real issue.

Fear was. Control was. My desperate need to know how everything was going to work out was. The house simply revealed where those things were hiding.

The altar didn't create them.

It exposed them.

Every Altar Reveals Another Facet of Jesus

Looking back now, I realize something that never occurred to me while I was living through it. Every altar has introduced me to another aspect of who Jesus is.

Before this altar, I knew Him as my Savior. Afterward, I knew Him in a deeper way as my Provider.

The altars didn't change Jesus. They changed me.

Every surrender removed another veil from my eyes until I could see another facet of His beauty. That's why I no longer measure an altar by what it costs.

I measure it by what it reveals.

At the time, all I could see was what Jesus was asking me to place in His hands. Looking back now, I see what He was placing in mine.

He wasn't simply asking me to trust Him with my house. He was inviting me to know Him in a way I never could have otherwise. Every altar has left me knowing Him more deeply than before.

Not one of them has been wasted.

Not one of them has been without purpose.

Because every invitation to an altar has ultimately become an invitation to know Jesus more.

And I have never regretted accepting His invitation.