 Like I said, we have Portage is joining us. We have a Fall House over at Portage for Seek, the very first time that we've ever done this. Come on, can everybody just welcome those who are over at Portage. Guys, this is going to be an incredible season of prayer and fasting and gathering together. We're going to have our Wednesday night gatherings at both of our campuses. The final week, which is the night of worship and kind of the culmination of it, we're all gonna be at the Richland campus together. So it's gonna be packed out. But next Wednesday night, we have a great friend of this house, David Perkins is going to be with us. The pastor of Radiant Church, Kansas City. I believe one of the leading voices calling the church to prayer and fasting. The week after that, our good friend Corey Russell is going to be back with us. And we are super excited and thrilled to have him back with us. The final Wednesday night is going to be a night of worship and praise and pizza. Come on, somebody. And tonight, we are officially kicking off the fast. And we also want you to know, in addition to our Wednesday nights and our weekend services, every day for the next 21 days, we are going to have prayer meetings that we want everybody to participate in. And so every Wednesday or every weekday for the next 21 days at noon, we're gonna have a noon prayer meeting at Portage. And then every evening at 6.30 p.m. here at the Richland campus, another prayer meeting. I want to encourage you to avail yourself, come. Fasting without praying is just starving. But when you mix prayer and fasting, that's like the atomic explosion that takes place within your spirit. And it's encouraging to be around other people in an environment of worship and praise as you are fasting. And I know that there's lots of different ways to fast. If you have not already picked up one of our Sikh booklets, those are available in both of our locations out in the lobby, please do that and get inside of there. There's all kinds of information about fasting, how you can participate, different types of fast. So avail yourself to that. And I think it's gonna be really helpful. And I really believe that the more people that participate in this together, the more powerful, the corporate anointing is together and producing a breakthrough in our region, our city, in individuals' lives. When we were in Myanmar, is there, if I tell you a testimony, you guys okay with that? So when it was a Myanmar, Myanmar, I can never pronounce it correct, but I got an email from someone in our church who said, last year during Sikh, you declared on the opening night that this was a year of the prodigals returning. Some of you may remember that. And then she also mentioned, she said that a couple different times you prophesied about prodigals. And you said specifically that there was a woman whose son had been gone for many, many years and almost lost hope and but don't give up hope this year, a breakthrough. Well, she said in the email that she's had a son who has been away from the Lord for 20 years and that she has been praying for him to return back to the Lord. So all year long during Sikh and then throughout the year, she's been praying and believing this was the year of her son's return. On New Year's Eve, with her family gathered 20 minutes before the ball in New York fell, her son called her kind of aside and said, mom, I just wanted you to know. I went to church recently. We found a church a lot like radiant. The message resonates with us. And we just wanted you to know we're going back to church on a weekly basis. 20 years later, I mean, come on. God's never early, but he's never late. So he's right on time. So I'm believing this year as we enter into Sikh that God has surprises, that God has miracles, that God has breakthroughs, that God has revelations. But most of all, here's the biggest part about why we pray in fast is beyond all of the things that God does, what we're praying is that God would give each and every one of us a little bit of a greater glimpse of his glory, of his beauty, and his goodness, and his love towards us. We don't necessarily fast and pray just for what God can do. We fast and pray to silence all the other voices so that we can once again be fascinated by the one who is raised from the dead, who reigns forever, who is our Lord and our savior. So tonight I want to begin this season by bringing a message entitled Alters. And I want to invite you to turn with me to Genesis chapter 22. Genesis chapter 22 is a chapter about Abraham, who's widely reviewed or revered as the father of our faith. The man who first believed God and was justified. In Genesis chapter 22, in beginning in verse number one, it says after these things, and the things that it's talking about is, leaving his familiar territory of Ur of the Caldees and going on a journey of faith, believing God, even in their old age, believing in his promise of a righteous seed and an inheritance. Children, even as he's almost 100 years old and Sarah was 90 years old and the belief that it took in establishing a covenant and now they have received the gift of Isaac, the son of their laughter. And all that went with that. And it says that after these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, here I am. And he said, take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains on which I shall tell you. So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him and his son, Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and he arose and he went to the place of which God had told him. And on the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to the young men, stay here with the donkey, I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you. Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and he laid it on Isaac, his son and he took in his hand the fire and the knife so that they were both of them together. And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father, he said, here I am, my son. He said, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. And so they went both of them together. And when they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac, his son and laid on him, laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and he took the knife to slaughter his son, but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here I am. He said, do not lay your hand on a boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son from me. Abraham lifted up his eyes and he looked, and behold behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. Abraham went and he took the ram and he offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, the Lord will provide. As it is said to this day on the mountain of the Lord, it shall be provided. In the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, by myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and not withheld your son, your only son. I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gates of his enemies and the earth will be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. So Abraham returned to his young men and they arose and they went together to Bersheba and Abraham lived at Bersheba. This is the word of the Lord and it's a story about Abraham and his faithful response to God and seemingly what is probably the most challenging test of Abraham's life. And Abraham, by the way, has had a lot of tests. Abraham, like most of the patriarchs in the Old Testament, shared one common habit and that is this, that Abraham was an altar builder. When you look back through the Old Testament, the very first mention of an altar is Noah. After the ark came to rest and God reestablished his covenant with Abraham or with Noah, Noah comes out of the ark. The very first thing that Noah does is he builds an altar to the Lord. Abraham comes along, he's an altar builder. Isaac builds an altar. Jacob builds an altar. You can look at all of the major patriarchs. Moses built an altar. Elijah rebuilt the altar of the Lord. David, perhaps one of the greatest figures in the Old Testament, was an altar builder. And it's significant when we think about their relationship with God, their journey of faith, and how God intersected and interrelated to their lives that altars were not insignificant. Altars were at the forefront of how they related to God. And it's because of what an altar is. An altar, here's the definition, is a sacred place to sacrifice to God and also to receive from God what only he can provide. Another way of thinking about what an altar is is an altar is an intersection between heaven and earth. It's an intersection between God's world and our world, between God's reality and our reality. An altar is a place where heaven and earth meet. Jacob, when he was on his way to finding a new home, he stopped in a place called Beth Al. He'd set up a rock, he put his head on it. And what did he see? He saw a ladder between heaven and earth with angels going up and descending, doing the will of God. And he said, this is none other than the gateway to heaven. This was an altar that he's talking about. And what he was able to see in that moment is he was able to see what in our earthly reality we can't always see, which is that even when we don't see it, God is always at work. God is always at work. And there are divine intersections where heaven and earth meet. It's not just the physical building of the altar, it's the faith behind the action that opens a door into the heavenly reality. And that's what Abraham was commanded by God to do, except in this particular situation, it was specifically, I want you to go to this place, the land of Moriah, and I want you to build an altar of worship, and I want you to offer your son, your only son, on that altar to me. Now, I don't know about you, but if God were to challenge me in my old age after having fought the battle to receive the promise of one son, having made the mistake of trying to do it in my own power with Hagar and ending up with an Ishmael, you still have your Isaac, and every day you wake up in your old age and you look at Isaac and you see your future. You see your promise, you see all of the cost associated with leaving home, your family, your familiarity, your wealth, your language, everything, to pursue a dream, to pursue a promise that God has made that seemed ridiculous, and yet after all of those battles, now you've actually received the promise, and on this particular day, God asks you to take the promise, your only promise, your only option. For Abraham, there was no option A and B. He didn't have a couple sons, per se, that were children of promise, there was one. He said, I want you to take him, and I want you to offer him to me on the altar in the place that I will tell you. If that were me, I'd be rebuking the devil, I'd be going on a prayer and fasting retreat to make sure that I'm hearing from God, I'd probably argue with God, I'd probably make a theological case on how this is not how God operates or works, God's not a killer, God's a redeemer, God's a blesser, God wouldn't contradict himself, this doesn't make any sense, why in the world would he do this? But Abraham does not do any of that. It says that Abraham immediately responds to the Lord, and he says, I'll do exactly what you asked me to do. Ben, can I have a bottle of water? And he goes on this journey, thank you, Ben, appreciate that, he goes on this journey, to a place that God said that he would lead him to, a place called Moriah, and he brings his son, he brings the firewood, he brings all the utensils, he brings everything that he's going to need to make this offering, and he sets out on this journey. It's a three day journey, he has three days to think about the altar that he is about to build and the sacrifice that he is about to make. You know, looking back on this story, knowing what we just read, that it ends up that God does not require him to offer Isaac, he actually provides an alternative, he provides a ram whose horns were caught in a thicket, and we realize that it was a test, it was not just some random arbitrary request, but it was actually a test, that's how the chapter starts, God tested Abraham. We see on the other side of it, Abraham's faithful response, and God's faithful provision. In the New Testament, what we see is in the book of James, that Abraham later on was actually called the friend of God, James 2.23, because he believed God, it was reckoned to him as faith, and he was called the friend of God. How many would like to be called the friend of God? Wouldn't that be an awesome thing to be said about your life at the end of your life? It's like if the only thing that could be written on your gravestone was friend of God, that would be a pretty awesome thing. But can I tell you something? If you have friends, maybe you have one, hopefully you have at least one in your life, friends don't always make sense. How many have come to realize that? That just because you're friends, friends don't always make sense to you. If you're gonna have real friendship, deep friendship is built on trust. Even when it doesn't make sense, the little idiosyncrasies, the things that they do that you're just like, why do they do that? Why do they say that? I wish they were more like me. Here's the thing is if the people you call friends were just like you, you would only be friends for about 10 minutes. Because you would not like yourself in someone else. Abraham was called the friend of God, and the reason why he was called a friend of God is because unlike everyone else, he trusted God. That's really what faith means, that his trust was in God. Even in this moment, when God calls him to offer up his greatest expression of faith, which was also his greatest fear, which is his son, Isaac, God calls him to sacrifice his son. And in his son, what he's really calling them to sacrifice is his future. He's calling him to sacrifice his miracle. He's calling him to give back to God his promise. God, why did you give me this promise if you're just gonna ask me to give it back? I don't know about you, but it would not make sense to me. I would have three days to think about how, God, this does not make sense. I'd have three days to think about how this was contradictory to God's promise. I'd have three days as I'm walking on this journey to ponder what this means in the long term. Maybe I'm never gonna fulfill the words. Maybe I'm never gonna fulfill the promise that my descendants are gonna be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Maybe that's not going to happen. Or maybe he thought to himself, if God's able to give me a son at almost 100 years old, then he can do it again at 120. You'd have three days to think about how you're gonna build the altar, but more importantly than what you build the altar is what you're gonna put on the altar. And that would be a long three-day journey. But what I love most about this story is, I mean, you see God do what you expect God to do, which is blow Abraham's mind, provide in a way that he could not see, and be the good God that we know that he is. So we expect that part, but what we see is something that's unexpected, which is Abraham's response. Here's what Abraham said in essence to God's invitation. He said, I will go on this journey. I will build an altar. I will put my flesh on it. I will put my plans on it. I will put my pain on it, and I will put my fear on it. And I will give it all to God. That is why Abraham is called the friend of God. God, I'm gonna put everything on there. My future, my desires, my dreams, the narrative that I've played out in my own thinking about how my future's gonna go, my grandkids, my great-grandkids. I'm putting it all on there. And God, I'm also putting my fears on there. My fears of what if and how. I'm also gonna put my pain on there. If you don't think Abraham carried around some pain. The pain of leaving everything. When you left Ur-the-Caldes, it was not like leaving Kalamazoo to go to Hong Kong, where, yeah, you're on a plane for 16 hours, but you can get home in 16 hours. When you left, you never went back. You don't think that's some pain? Leaving some things behind? How about Lot? His nephew, that was painful. How about Ishmael? That was painful. It had to be real painful in his marriage. It's like, well, you told me, yeah, but you don't, you never listened to me, Abraham. And the one time I make a suggestion that you should have said no, you said yes. He's gonna live with that for the rest of his life. In fact, thousands of years later, we're still living with that decision. You don't think Abraham carried around some pain? But he said, I'm gonna put my pain on there and I'm gonna give everything to you on this altar. And that's exactly what he did. And what we see is that when he built the altar and he postured his heart towards God beyond everything else, we realized that in spite of the fact that Abraham was a man who in natural sense had not yet possessed the promise of the land of his posterity and even of his future prosperity. What we see is that even though on the outward, he may have looked like he had a level of poverty or deficit, his poverty, when it was tested, actually revealed his internal prosperity. Because his internal prosperity had nothing to do with the possessions that he had and had everything to do with the trust in God and who he was. You see, it's possible in our world for you to be prosperous on the outside and to have poverty on the inside. The greatest level of poverty that we could possibly have is the trust in the things that we hold. You see, if you look at anything that you own or have or are working towards in your life as the potential solution to your future happiness, legacy, satisfaction, sense of significance, importance, then what you have is an internal poverty even on the outside. If you have millions and millions of dollars, you own great possessions, a massive reputation and massively talented. But it's possible for you to have nothing on the outside. I mean, nothing on the outside. And yet on the inside, because you have developed such deep friendship and trust with God by the altar that you have built with your life, they didn't, in spite of what people see on the outside, you might be driving a 1978 Pontiac Catalina with the dino suspension blown. You might be living in a rented spare room in the basement of the back 40 of some farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and have to commute an hour to your minimum wage job. You might have absolutely nothing in the natural, but you've got such deep commitment and trust in God and his ability to provide and to deliver on the promise that he's made to you that the world around you sees you as poor and insignificant but heaven calls you a friend of God. And it all has to do with how we respond to God's testing in our lives and the altar that we build. See, building an altar is something that every person of faith is called to do. That's what prayer and fasting is. When we go into a season of prayer and fasting as a church, what we're doing is we're building an altar with our life, with our time, with our appetites, with our desires. We're building an altar. We're doing it individually. We're doing it corporately as a people. And we're saying, you know what? God, we're responding to your divine invitation and we're building an altar. And we're saying that we're putting everything once again on the altar of prayer and fasting. We're putting all those things there and we're re-giving them to you because we're not trusting in any of them. You know that it's easy to fall prey to trust in natural things. When Tom Lane, who's one of our overseers, apostolic overseers came and he did the first prophetic presbytery here in 2012, one of the words that he gave to me was he said, lead never be afraid to push all the chips to the center of the table and go all in again. He said, remember this, when you were 25 and you planted radiant, you had nothing to lose. You and Jane didn't have anything to lose because if it didn't work, we didn't have anything to begin with. It was just kind of like, well, that was a nice try. Let's go work someplace else. But you know, as you begin to grow and God's faithfulness is rewarded and you begin to accumulate things and reputation and quote, success and growth. And it doesn't have to be a ministry can be in your individual life. You're 50 years old and you're 60 years old and you've got your 401k and you've got your cars in the garage and your vacation home and you've got all those things. You have more to lose now. And I've never forgotten those words, never be afraid to go all in because here's the worst thing that can happen to us. The worst thing that can happen to us is we begin to put our trust in things, to produce security, to fulfill the promise and the desires of our heart. And what's God's answer to that? What's his antidote to keep us disconnected from those things that way? It's to consistently come back and build altars and put everything on it again. Because what happens is when God tells us, I want you to think about this, when God calls us to build altars like in this season, he's not calling us to build altars to necessarily remove things. Calls us to build altars because fire reveals things. It reveals things. What does God want to reveal most in our lives? Well, sometimes the fire of fasting reveals our own weakness or dependency on things, but most of the time what God's desire is, is to reveal his goodness and his faithfulness in our lives. And that's exactly what happens when we build an altar. When Jane and I were in Miramar, one of our assignments there was two families in our church four or five years ago who have become dear friends of ours, but both of them in the natural, both of these families in the natural are affluent by worldly standards, comfortable and could have just kind of coasted into retirement and done really, really well with their lives, love God, been faithful. They were churchgoers, all their life raised great family, but both of them said to Jane and I, when they were telling their story to us, that even though that was happening, we felt hollow on the inside. We knew that there was more that God wanted us to do. Well, through a series of God's instances, a orphanage in Miramar, none of them could have even found it on a map. They became aware of it through one of the kids that was in the orphanage needed a surgery and they're in a medical profession. They brought them over what was supposed to be a week, ended up to be several months. This individual lived with them. They fell in love with this kid and while that was all going place, the leadership in this orphanage fell apart and they had a choice to make. And so what these two families decided to do was, we're gonna take this responsibility and we're gonna care for these orphans. We're gonna care for this place. And they just kind of got swept into taking care of this orphanage in the middle of Southeast Asia with about 30 kids and this compound, these kids lived on one meal a day rice. They slept on dirt floors until Radiant Church helped by buying and building bunk beds for them and bedding. And they had nothing in the natural. These kids had been left abandoned, rejected by their families. Some of them abused, some of them sex trafficked. These kids had just been taken in and nobody to love them. And here's these two Christian families on the other side of the world who were very comfortable, who stepped up and said, okay, we're gonna take this upon ourselves and we're gonna care for them. And that was several years ago. And now when you meet these two individual families, what you would find is that they are the most Holy Spirit filled, passionate for Jesus, loving families. Now their kids are all involved, their extended family is all involved and they invited us on this trip. We wanted to go see what we've been supporting all these years. So we went there and we spent a week going to this orphanage and all loving on the, the kids are magnets, they just like run to you and you got your arm around one every single minute and they're like holding your hands. I'm uncomfortable with a young man holding my hand in Southeast Asia, that's what they do. So I'm walking around with a teenage boy holding hands and I got little kids hanging off me and calling me Uncle Lee or Pastor Lee and I got to baptize several of them and Jane and I prayed over them and I haven't drawn in years but I'm drawing little cedar point characters of them and then we're praying over them and these kids have nothing, they have nothing but when they worship Jesus, ha, the place fills. One of the stories that just so blew my mind was Larry and Deb and Dave and Sharon were telling us a story that shortly after they took over the leadership of this orphanage, they, one of their parents died and so they had a memorial fund of several thousand dollars and they thought to themselves, we're gonna use this to build these kids a kitchen because up until this time, the only place that they cooked was over an open fire in the dirt like a campfire. So they thought we're gonna build them a proper kitchen so that they can cook and provide for all these kids. So they called the young lady who kind of leads the orphanage. She's kind of an older sister to everybody and they said, hey, we have, you know, there's thousands of dollars we wanna build this kitchen and she goes, oh, that's a really nice thank you but, you know, we've been praying about it and what we would really like to do is instead build a prayer house. Well, these two couples were annoyed. It's like, you don't need a prayer house but what you need is a kitchen. And they said, no, what we really want is a place on our compound where we can go and we can pray individually, have prayer meetings and we can seek God and then later on we'll build a kitchen. So what they did was they took money and I think we have some pictures of it. Here it is. This is the little prayer house that they built. Off to the side, there are private little rooms where individuals can go in and pray and then at the center of it is a small little room but they pray there. Show the next picture there. Here's another picture of it. Go ahead and show the next. There's another, this is a picture of some of the kids in front of the prayer house. Beautiful, beautiful kids. There's leaders from all over Miramar who will travel all an entire week to get there and spend seven days in there praying and they just bring food to them while they're in this prayer house. You know, it's so convicting. Here are people that have nothing. In fact, if you are under the poverty line in America and you went there, you would be considered wealthy. That's how poor they are. But in the midst of their poverty, they have incredible prosperity that was revealed in their prioritizing of the presence of God. What did they build? They built an altar. And these kids, when they pray, they pray. We call it praying Burmese style because Esther just goes, all right, we're gonna pray and she goes, ready, set, and all the kids go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like for three, four minutes and you don't even know what they're saying. You just know God's in it. And then when they worship, they dance around. They have nothing. None of them have smartphones. None of them have Instagram accounts. None of them have cars, barely any education. One or two sets of clothes. They've got bamboo framed bunks in a house and all of them are running the risk that a family member could come back at a certain age and put them into the work market to earn money off of them. But you know what they have? They have an altar in their life that they have built unto Jesus. And I just wonder this. I wonder if we are in danger in the West of having everything on the outside, but yet having a hollow heart. And the only antidote to that is to be people that are consistently building an altar to the Lord. An altar in our hearts. Because I believe that fasting and praying reveal more than it removes. What does it reveal? Fasting and prayer reveals, number one, it reveals our weakness and it reveals God's strengths. Praying and fasting reveals our poverty and God's provision. Praying and fasting reveals our love of comfort and God's love to comfort. Praying and fasting reveals our sticky heart and it reveals God's steady hand. Our sticky heart, what does that mean? It means, you know, have you ever played around with like sticky tape and everything sticks to it? Jane and I, we have a beautiful dog. He's a golden retriever. But because of the fall of Adam and Eve, that dog sheds like you have never seen before. We have tumbleweeds that flow through our house, literally, of his hair. And I love that dog, but he sheds. In the kingdom of God, he will not shed. Somebody said, well, you should get like a golden doodle. And I just think poodles are of the devil. I don't care if they shed or not. Now you might have a poodle, that's between you and Jesus. That's an issue of conscience that we should not argue over. But in my house, as for me in my house, we will serve the Lord. And there will not be poodles in our house. But our golden retriever sheds. So we've got rollers all over the house. Do you guys, you know, roller tape. So it's like, all over the house. And the reason why you use those is because they're sticky. Your heart is sticky. The more you roll through the world, more of the things in the world stick to your heart. And prayer and fasting revealed that. Your attitude. How many have ever gone into prayer and fasting and been totally disgruntled with yourself? It's like, why did I cheat on God? I ate cheeseburgers. Woe is me. Or if you ever prayed and fasted, go into a prayer and fasting season and you think this is gonna be amazing. God's gonna speak loud and clear. And the only thing that speaks to you is your bad attitude. Or of your greed. Or people just irritate you. Anybody ever, I know nobody in this church. Nobody over at Portage either. I know you guys are sanctified and holy. But when I sometimes, I get irritable. I get cranky. It reveals all my weaknesses. But if I'm looking at myself, I'll see my weaknesses. But when I'm looking at God, I see his goodness. If I look at myself, I see how sticky I am. But God does not call us to build altars, just like he didn't call Abraham to really cause him to give up his son. What he did was he wanted to put everything on the altar so that the only thing left for him was his friendship with God, his dependency on God. What does building an altar require? Well, let me just give you a couple of things that I believe, praying or building an altar, what they do in us and what building an altar requires. Number one, building an altar, when we look at Abraham's life, it requires an undeniable invitation from God. An undeniable invitation from God. That's what Abraham had. It says after these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, I want you to go to the place I'm gonna tell you, a place called Moriah. And there, I want you to go and I want you to build an altar. It was not just an invitation, it was a command. And God commands us, Jesus commands us in Matthew 6, that when you pray, when you fast, when you give alms, he didn't say if, he said when. Why is that? It's because the call to build an altar is not just something that we do in January. January is a good reset button, but every day of our lives we're called to rebuild the altar of the Lord because sometimes things fall apart, sometimes the stones get knocked down, sometimes the weight of what we're called to put on the altar actually shifts things and moves things. And so we've got to consistently, like Elisha, come back and rebuild the altar of the Lord. It's a daily call, it's a daily invitation. Number two is it requires an unrestricted yes in your heart to God. An unrestricted yes. God, I'll give you everything. You can have it all. There's nothing off limits. Here's what I found in my relationship with God, the thing that you hope God will not ask you to give is exactly the thing he will ask you to give. God, you can have everything except that. God's like, oh good, let's talk about that. It's kind of like when you invite, have you ever had friends over for dinner and you have that one bedroom that is just a mess and you keep shut and you show them the rest of the house and you just think, oh, we're safe. God is like that guest that when he comes over to your house, he's like, I love your house, what's behind that door? Oh, don't worry about that. That's just kind of, you know, it's our catch all room. He's like, no, no, I want to see it. No, no, you don't. And he's like, no, let's go in there. In fact, let's have dinner in there. Let's get our plates and go have dinner in there. But God, I prepared a beautiful table. He's like, yeah, I know that's your preparation. But what I want to see is what's behind door number one. Because that's why I'm here. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. An unrestricted yes in our heart towards God. Here's what he's saying, do you love me more? More than what? More than everything. Because whatever it is that you would say or be tempted to say, I love this more than you, God, is the one thing that he's saying, I want you to take the restriction off of that. I want to deal with that. For Abraham, it was Isaac. God was testing. Abraham, do you love Isaac? Do you love the promise more than you love the promise giver? Abraham, do you love the potential in your son more than the realization that there would be no son without me? When you look at the stars and you think about all of your children and your children's children's children that I've promised you, do you see me or do you see Isaac? I want it unrestricted. Jesus kind of said a similar thing in Matthew 10, verse 37. He said, anyone who loves their father, mother more than me is not worthy of me. If anyone loves their son or their daughter more than me, they're not worthy of me. That's hard. When our kids were real little and we would drop them off at school, real little, when they would get out of the car in the morning, I would tell them, I love you, but not more than Jesus. And I said it so many times to them that I could say, I love you, but, and they would say, but not more than God. You know, it's important that as parents we have our hearts in the right place, but it doesn't matter if you're a parent, it doesn't matter who you are. Here is what God is asking for, unrestricted access to everything. What is there in your life that maybe you look at and see your future potential? Oh, this relationship ultimately is gonna bring me happiness. Or this career path is gonna bring me fulfillment. Or this pet little secret sin that I have that brings me pleasure that I keep saying I'm gonna deal with, but I kind of justify it by saying I do everything else, but that's the thing that God's saying, I want that unrestricted, I want the limit taken off of that. And I want you to be willing to put it on the altar and to sacrifice it to me, not because I want to ruin your life, not because there's not even some value in that thing or that area of your life, not because there's not potential, not that even the fact that God couldn't and won't use it. It's just because as long as it controls you, you are not controlled by God. As long as you see your fulfillment in that thing or that area or that fear or that security or that relationship or that thing in your life, then you're trusting in something other than God. And that's why God oftentimes will ask us to take those things that are Isaacs in our life and to go on a journey and to be willing to put them on the altar. If you're gonna build an altar, number three, it's gonna require an uncomfortable sacrifice that you offer to God. Let me tell you something about how powerful, how good God is. My firm belief is this, that a lot of our struggle in trusting God has absolutely nothing to do with the strength of the things that we tend to trust in as much as it is, we have a puny view underdeveloped of how much God loves us. We have a puny, anemic, limited, human, fallen perspective of the love of God. If we could see fathom, grasp, gain a glimpse of God's love, it would be like putting our tablespoon under Niagara Falls and it would blow our minds and it would eclipse any and all other weak things that compete with our heart. If we're going to build an altar, we have to bring an uncomfortable sacrifice. You know, when you fast, it's uncomfortable. If it's not uncomfortable, you're not fasting. You know, I'm just, you know, I'm fasting healthy food. I'm just gonna eat, you know, fast food for 21 days. Just gonna go to Cudobah and non-Liburguer and, you know, meet Pueblo Taco Tuesday. Nothing that's good for me. I'm all clean foods out the door. That's not uncomfortable. That's a reverse fast. That's called gluttony. Praise the Lord. But a fast and when we pray, even when we approach God in prayer, if it's not uncomfortable, then it's not sacrificial. Hosea chapter six verse six in the living Bible says, God says, I don't want your sacrifices. I want you to love me. I don't want your offerings. I want you to know me. See, in the end, God's not really looking for the sacrifice, the thing. As much as he's wanting what that thing, what is as a placeholder is keeping from him. I want you to love me more than this. I want you to know me more than you know this. Do you know the brilliance of God is what he was about to do? He told Abraham, Abraham, I want you to take Isaac, your son, your only son, and I want you to bring him to a place, I'm gonna tell you, place called Mariah, and I want you to offer him there. So Abraham does all this. He puts him on there. He's about ready to do it. The angel says, stop. He looks over to the side. There's a ram caught in a thicket. He takes the ram instead, offers him instead. And what God was showing Abraham was, you've passed the test, you trust me. Now, let me reveal to you what my kind intentions are going to do in the future, because on that very same spot, in that very same spot, 2000 years later, God would offer his son, his only begotten son, on a mountain called Calvary, right near the Mount of Mariah, and Jesus would become the ram caught in the thicket that would be the fulfillment of all the promises to Abraham, and he would bring a blessing to all the nations of the world because Jesus was the fulfillment of his promise, not Isaac. Isaac was the foretaste of what God intended to do in the very end when he not only brought about the promises to Abraham through Isaac, but he brought about the promises to bless the whole world. And we get so narrow in our view. We're just like, God, this doesn't make any sense. Why would you do this? Why would you contradict yourself? Why would you be so cruel? And God says, you don't have any idea what I intend to do in the end. You have no idea. I has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it even entered into your heart what I have prepared for those who love me. God says, I'm gonna blow your mind. You see what I'm gonna do is this Isaac is gonna have a son named Jacob. Jacob's gonna have 12 boys who are gonna come along. And one of them is going to have an offspring who will lead to a man named Jesse who has another son named David. David's gonna have a son named Solomon. Solomon's gonna have a descendant that brings about the exile of all of the people of God. But I'm gonna raise up in his lineage a man named Zerubbabel who comes back into the land and says, not by power, not by might, but by my spirit declares the Lord. And I'm gonna build a house that pales in comparison in the natural to the temple of Solomon. But I'm gonna fill it with my glory to where the glory of the latter house is greater than that of the former. And I'm gonna raise up a priesthood. And out of that priesthood is gonna come an obscure man who's a carpenter who's dwelling in a small little town who's gonna marry a teenage young lady. And I'm going to have the Holy Spirit overshadow her and pregnate her and the seed of the woman who will destroy the seed of Satan is going to be born in obscurity in the midst of a place that is covered in darkness. And when he's 30 years old, he's gonna walk into the Jordan River. My spirit's gonna come upon him. And I'm gonna declare this is my son in whom I am well pleased. And he's going to become the savior of the world. None of us, none of us could have ever known that we just stand stunned going, what? And we've got our Bibles. Everybody loves to read the stories and see the completion of them. But can you believe the story before God gives you a peek of the final chapter? That's what the altar is for. It's saying, God, I don't know the final chapter. I don't know how you're gonna do it. I don't know what it's gonna look like. I don't know what the journey's gonna be. I don't know. But here's what I know. I don't have to know the content of the final chapter. I just have to know the writer of everything in between. He is the author and the finisher of our faith. I don't need to know what it's gonna look like. I just know it's gonna be good. I may not know how it's gonna say the end. I just know that when it is, I'm gonna stand back and say how great is my God. We've gotta have an uncomfortable sacrifice. Number four, an unashamed confidence. An unashamed confidence. The very first evidence of sin in the garden was Adam and Eve said that we heard your voice and we hid ourselves from the presence of the Lord. Shame. Jesus, when he was talking about prayer in Luke chapter 11, he was talking about a friend who goes to his neighbor and asks him for food. And he says, because of his shamelessness, he will rise and he will give it to him. Prayer is about returning to the place of shamelessness. Building an altar is not about us coming in our own strength and our own power, but it's realizing that God is the one who performs the promise. And in Christ, we are shameless, we are righteous, we are made whole. Even in our perfection, the fact that we're coming after God, God's like, your sacrifice is puny. It's imperfect, it's weak. Yeah, you're gonna mess up. Yeah, you're gonna pray. Some days you're not gonna pray. You're gonna have a bad attitude. You're gonna cut somebody off. You're gonna be irritated. You're not gonna like how I do things. God says that's all right. To obey is better than sacrifice. I don't want your sacrifices. I want your heart. I don't want your gift. I want you to know me. Shamelessness. And number five, an unwavering desire to please God. We just keep coming back. Like Abraham, we just keep coming back. Abraham's not a perfect man. Abraham messed up over and over and over again. Oh, Sarah, she's my sister. Almost gets killed in Egypt. So they leave. You think he learns this lesson? No, it comes along. Abimelech. Oh, Sarah, she's my sister. Hagar, failure. Lot, failure. But he just keeps coming back. Why? An unrelenting desire to please God. In the end, even after the whole story, it says that he dwelt. He went and lived in Bersheba. Bersheba is the southern most part of the kingdom of the Promised Land. And the name Bersheba means the place of seven wells. A well was a source of life. If you didn't have a well, you couldn't live. Seven is the number of completeness. Abraham lived the rest of his life in a place called seven wells, which means God's complete provision. That comes on the other side of being altar builders. Tonight I want everybody to stand up with me at both campuses. And what God's inviting us to do with our lives, our prayer, with our fasting is to build an altar. Someone just today, by the way, we had a meeting with downtown inspectors and things about our downtown city center and the prayer room. People have asked, why would you want to do that downtown? It's because we believe God's called us to build an altar in the center of the city. That's why we're gonna pray and have all these prayer meetings over the next 21 days. Why? We're building an altar. It's why we're fasting. It's our sacrifice. We're putting it on the table. It's not legalism. It's not religious observation. We don't pet ourselves on the back. We're just saying, God, I love food, but I love you more. And I'm saying everything in my life is unrestricted and once again, God, I'm inviting you to take a look at it. Say whatever you want to say. I've got desires. I've got dreams. I've got things that I would love to see you do. I've got breakthrough, miracles, salvation, healing, all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, I'm building an altar, not because of what you will do, because I'm coming back and saying, God, I want you more than anything else. I want to know you. I want your love. I want to be called a friend of God. That's what seek is about. It's about, let me say this, the most revolutionary, subversive thing you could possibly do in this generation is to build an altar to Jesus in your life. Abraham lived in a place where there were altars all over the place. An altar to Baal, an altar to Molek, an altar to Ashtara, all the gods of those ages. But in the middle of that, he built an altar to the Lord. You live in a land of all kinds of idols, a generation full of idols that were called to celebrate self, were called to celebrate desire, were called to celebrate pleasure, celebrate entertainment, celebrate food and excess, all those things. But as a Christian, the most subversive, revolutionary, radical thing that you could do is in the midst of all of those idols, build an altar of sacrifice to the Lord and put all of your guitars on the altar. What's the Lord saying to you, Corey? Lay it down, there you go. What's in your hand? You know, Capital One always asks a question, what's in your wallet? Let me ask the question, what's in your life that God's calling you to put on the altar over the next 21 days? What are you looking to hear from God? What does God want to say to you over the next 21 days? Tonight, in both of our locations, I'm gonna ask you tonight, if there's an invitation in your heart, if there's a yes in your heart, and you say, I want to build an altar to the Lord. I'm committed, I'm saying I'm consecrating myself to build an altar to the Lord. I want you to step out of your seat and make your way to the front, and we're gonna pray. Now both of our locations, just step right out of your seat. You may not be able to get to the front, but one step in the direction of the front is a faith step. Altar builders, God's saying come, come, come, come, come, come, come. You're saying yes to the invitation, God over the next 21 days, I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna fast, I'm gonna go to a prayer meeting, I'm gonna show up at church, I'm gonna read my Bible, I'm gonna get up early, I'm gonna lay some things down. I'm gonna give up social media, I'm gonna give some different, give some things away, and I'm just saying, God, I'm doing it all, not just to prove how holy I am, but because I want you more. And this is the altar that I'm putting before you. Just make your way, you can squash up to the front, even if it's out into the outer aisles, just even if you have to scoot one, take one step to the chair next to you as a symbolic gesture that you're building an altar. Do that tonight, and God is going to meet us. Yes, Lord. Here we are. Lord, here we are. And we're going on this journey for 21 days to a place that you've called us to, to build an altar in your presence. God, I pray that you would answer by fire, answer by your goodness, answer with your goodness, answer with your mercy, answer by blowing our minds, answer by revelation, but Lord, more than anything in our poverty, give us prosperity. Help us to be rich in God, rich in your presence. Lord, that we would never again trade your presence for anything of temporary pleasure. Lord, that this would be a season that the voice of God speaks loudly and clearly, even in our pain, even in our fear. God, you're replacing it with soft hearts. You're replacing it by reminding us of old promises that you have yet to see come to pass, and God declares over you, you have not yet seen what I see, for I am the God who sees the beginning from the end. I am the God who has plans and purposes over your life declares the Lord, not plans to harm you, not plans to take away from you, but plans to prosper you, plans to bless you, plans to multiply you. I'm the God who's gonna open doors of influence. I'm the God who's gonna speak with clarity, even in the still small voice of the wind. I'm the God who's gonna shake the mountains, and I'm the God who will shake you from the inside out. Lord, like a gentle breeze, sweep over this place tonight with your seal. Seal our hearts. Seal our hearts with your presence, God. Seal your hearts.