Let’s continue to ponder on the mystery of altars.
Your altar is a point in time and space in your walk with God when you give up something valuable for him.
Now, ponder on that for a while.
It is a point in time and space where you sacrifice your most valuable treasures to God in obedience to Him, as an expression of your love, your loyalty, your allegiance to him; that’s what makes it an altar.
Just like Abraham, my walk with God has been a string of altars. I remember a certain time and place that I gave up my studies for God. I was a first-class, third year student of Electronic Engineering at the University with a very promising career ahead of me. However, in obedience to God’s calling upon my life, I left it all and dropped out from school. My parents were devastated – I am their first child and that means a whole lot in Africa; my siblings were in shock; one of my professors at the university broke down in tears when he heard about it; my friends were dazed. Everyone thought I had taken leave of my senses, or possibly become demon –possessed.
At that point in time it was painful. It was difficult. It was tough. I was bleeding; but I had to show God that He was first in my life.
So I have an altar in a certain room there at that University. If you were to go there right now, you’ll neither see a cathedral, nor a church building. You’ll most probably see the current occupants of the place that was formerly my hostel room – the point in time and space that I knelt down and sacrificed my academic ambitions to my God.
Nevertheless, that room is an altar because that is where I sacrificed the most important thing in my life to God. That place is my altar. It lives in my mind. It’s a monument; it’s a memorial in my consciousness about my walk with God. It’s an unforgettable part of my journey.