Building Our Altars

“At noon Elijah began to taunt them. ‘Shout louder!’ he said. ‘Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.’ So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.” 1 Kings 18:27-29.

This is one of my favorite stories from the Bible. Try to take a few minutes and read the entire story for it is the template for our life played out in our day. Elijah, a prophet of God, was basically challenging the prophets of Baal, their god of worship, to enter into a competition of the greater god between the two. They both built altars and the god who sent down fire to light the altar was considered the supreme deity. Elijah’s sarcasm has always been a source of humor for me when reading this story. He provides the possibilities of their god having a “sleepy day” or “maybe traveling on vacation”. He has complete confidence in His God, Elohim, which means God of all gods and LORD of all lords.

When life challenges us to a dual of the greater god, do we accept the challenge and build our altars with confidence, knowledge and faith that our God will light the mighty fire to show Himself to us as Elohim? We are building opposing altars everyday of our lives when fret, worry and fear take hold of our hearts. Building our altars with fear make us no different than the prophets of Baal running around with frantic attitudes trying everything in our own strength and power to light our own fires and bring resolution to our problems.

Building our altars with sticks of faith and stones of belief will always bring the Fire down from Heaven.