“Then God said to Jacob, ‘Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar to God who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau.” (Genesis 35:1)
Altars were a way to commemorate a place where God intervened in Israel’s history. God asked Jacob to set up an altar to commemorate his wrestling with God. He asked Moses (Deut 27) and later Joshua (Joshua 4) to make an altar after they crossed the Jordan -stones from the middle of the Jordan, “to serve as a sign among you. In the future when your children ask you, ‘ What do these stones mean?’ , tell them that the flow of Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord.”
God asked his people to set up those altars - the request was from him! Why? To remember what He had done so anyone who came across that altar afterwards would see the place where the event that had been handed down through generations, had happened. It was a way to remember God’s faithfulness, to be encouraged and to draw near to Him again. Similarly, the stories that the missionaries share with us during Global Awareness week are their “altars”, their witness of God’s work and love in their lives for the nations.
Where are our altars? How do we communicate the “But God” moments where we encountered God and our lives and perspective changed forever? Do you have a prayer journal where you keep a record of answered prayers? I have begun to make the walls of my house a series of altars for me and for my children - putting up artwork that symbolizes an answered prayer, with the verse associated with it on a plaque. My husband and I tell them stories about how God led us, and, as Scripture is, we are vulnerable with our failures. Altars help us remember how good God has been and how faithful He will be!
Prayer Prompt: Dear Lord, thank you for all the ways that you have led me all these years. Lord, I will memorialize those testimonies of what you have done, and I will share them with others, so that they will be encouraged by your faithfulness and your love. I praise and thank you, Lord!
Song of the Day: Faithful Now - Vertical Worship
