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Put It On The Altar (Watch Letter)


We’ve heard many stories about how kidnappers and molesters use things children desire and love to lure them in. They use candy, toys, games, electronics, music, money, information, threaten to harm their loved ones -- whatever they can think of to get a child’s attention, make them feel comfortable, and distract them to trap them.


That’s who the devil does too. He is the father and creator of kidnappers and molesters. He comes to steal, kill and destroy and he uses the things we desire and are drawn to most to lure us away from God, our families, our calling, and everything the word says God has for us.

The devil wants to hijack our lives, he wants to molest our spirits, he wants to leave us broken and damaged, so we accept everything that he throws our way - that’s what abusers do and the devil is the founder of abuse.

In Luke 22:31, the Lord told Simon (Peter) that the devil was seeking to sift him. I want us to stop and think about that word. Sift. It means to separate and to sort out what is useful or valuable. So, the devil will keep trying to lure us in until he removes every good and holy thing - including the word - that God put in us out of our lives. He seeks to isolate us, to leave us empty, to leave us stranded and afraid.


Think about a child who has been abused, molested, or kidnapped. If they ever return home, they come back empty, they are hollow, they are like a zombie in a sense at first, because the abuser has done everything in their power to sift them to make them bendable and only useful to them. That is what the devil has planned for us, if we don’t make a decision today.


So, how can we render the devil powerless? How can we protect ourselves from being lured into his trap and sifted by him and his demons?

Put it on the altar!


Everything we love, we desire, we hope for, we plan for, the devil will use to lure us in if we choose to put it before God. God cannot be touched by the devil, so if God is first in our lives the devil cannot win or draw us away. So, everything and everyone in our lives that we know may be so important to us that we may end up putting it before God, we need to lay it on the altar. We have to give it up!

There was a man who desired a son. But he also loved God. He wanted to do his will.


Side note: As our Pastor and Teacher Chief Apostle H.C. Gunn always tell us, when you love/want something or someone you turn it or them over to God and let him give it/them back to you if he chooses, that way you know it's real and you know it's for you. And if he doesn’t give it back, it wasn’t the best thing for you, it would have probably caused you to be sifted or lured away.


Ok, back to the story: As the Bible says: God knows our hearts. He knows what we can handle before we even encounter it. So, God granted the man his desire to have a son. God wanted him to have that son. He had big plans in the kingdom for his son and for the generations that would come after him.

But God wanted to ensure that the man was willing to continue to put him first and wanted to help strengthen the man so that he would not be tempted by the devil to make his son - or the thing he loved and desired - an idol in his life and tool for the devil to lure him away. So, God asked him to put his son on the altar. To lay his son before him and surrender him to him, to see if he truly desired God first.


Another Side note: God never asks us to do something he wouldn’t do for us. God put his own son on the altar to prove his love for us and save us from ourselves and sin.

The man in the story, if you haven’t guessed by now, is Abraham. We often look at the story of Abraham and his son, Isaac, as a testament of faith — and it is — but it is so much more. There is something God wants us to see here. When a sacrifice was offered on the altar it was consumed with fire.


The Bible tells us about God’s consuming and holy fire. When something is placed in the fire of the altar, it is purified as it is offered to God. When we take all the things, situations, and people in our lives to the altar to God and pray and lay it before him, he can purify them in his consuming fire. Now, if the thing or person, or situation is not God’s will he will burn it up (so make sure we don’t pick back up a thing that's burnt or that has become ashes off the altar), but if it's in his will -- he will sanctify and give it back to us to be used for his heavenly purpose.

Abraham’s love for God gave him the mind and strength to willingly bring his son to the altar and show God (and declare to the devil) that he loved God more than anyone or anything, even that which he desired, even that which God promised him.

So, whoever it is, and whatever it is, I encourage you to put it on the altar. Don’t give room for the devil to sift your life, because you love or desire someone or something more than God.


I thank God for my pastor. He has taught me how to pray and bring things to the altar in a way that has been so freeing. He has encouraged me to take time every day and kneel before God and put what I am facing or concerned about on the altar and to cry out to God out loud to let God hear my heart, to let prayer go into my heart, and to let the devil know my heart is sincere in the things of God.


Please read: Genesis 22:1-8 (then read more below)

22 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.

2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

3 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.

4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.

5 And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.

6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.

7 And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.

9 And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

10 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.

11 And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.

12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.

14 And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.

15 And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time,

16 And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son:

17 That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;

18 And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.

Before I upload and listen to the weekly broadcast from Chief Apostle Gunn or post Youth Pastor Amaya’s Blog, I try to write the Watch Letter, so that God can thread everything together and so that it is a testament to how God can bring his people on one accord. So, I played just the first seconds of this week’s broadcast and Chief Apostle Gunn started to pray and he prayed about laying ourselves down before God.

And that is the key! Not only do we need to lay everything we love and desire before God, but we must lay ourselves down on the altar as well. Because sometimes we can love ourselves more than God too and that pride will be the very rope that the devil uses is to tie us up and drag us away. We need him to consume us in his holy fire and purify our hearts, desires, thoughts, opinions, bodies, etc.

Romans 12 :1 - “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”





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