The Altar Life

Welcome to course video number 10. I hope you guys have been receiving from this course. Only three more videos left. Let's get through it. The altar life, building a secret place and daily devotion. This is one of the most important videos in this course. Intimacy. So listen, everybody wants fire from God, but not everyone wants to build the altar for it. Some believers want visitation, but priests build habitation. We don't just visit the secret place. We inhabit it. Some rely on Sunday encounters, one time a week having an encounter with God, but priests establish daily devotion. Christians need to catch this. It is not one day a week or twice a week. It's not just when we go to church. It's every day. We need to build the altar in our home. Even our temple is an altar. We need to build that altar by daily devotion, daily acknowledgement, constant acknowledgement, constantly keeping our mind on Him. Some only run to God when they're going through something like a crisis, but priests live before Him continually, whether there's storm or sunlight. You don't build an altar when you need God. You build it because you love Him. Please catch this. You don't pray, read, worship, and build that altar in your home or in your secret place because you need God, because you're fearful of being unprotected or fearful of being sick or fearful of your family not prospering. You build it because you love Him. Do all those things naturally come like protection and provision and just encountering God? Yes, but we do it because we love Him. A secret place is not a room. It's a rhythm. Catch this again. It's not just going to one room all the time. It could be that you have a room, like for example, I have a room in my house that I go seek the Lord. We dedicated an entire room to the Lord. My wife even has another closet space that she goes to, but it's not just the room. It's a rhythm because when we travel and we go to different places and I'm in a hotel or I'm in a different city, I still seek the Lord and it might be in my rental car. It might be in the closet of the hotel. It might be on the balcony of the hotel. I'll go somewhere to seek the Lord in rhythm, not just a room. What you build in private determines what you carry in public. Tonight, we're talking about being priests of presence, not just people of prayer. What's an altar? In scripture, an altar was a meeting place between humanity and divinity, between a person and their God. It represents a place where you sacrifice what I lay down before God, surrender what He lays down in me, and exchange my life for His life. In Genesis 12, Abram built an altar where the Lord appeared. In Leviticus 6, 13, a fire shall always be burning on the altar. It shall never go out. You guys have heard that song. May the fire of my altar

never go out, right? The altar is where my flesh dies so His fire, His spirit can live. The presence of God. If your fire keeps going out, it's because your altar keeps going empty. So whenever you see someone burning out, going back to the world, wishy-washy, back and forth, double-minded in Christ, it's really because they're not living a lifestyle of intimacy. They're not keeping that fire burning. So the secret place is daily priestly duty. As a priest, it's daily. The secret place is not optional. It's the priest's first ministry, Matthew 6, 6. But when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut the door, pray to your Father who's in the secret place, right? And what you do in secret, He'll reward you publicly, right? Fasting, praying, giving. Secretly you do it, He rewards you openly. He didn't say the Father shows up after you enter. He's already there waiting before you even arrive. Hallelujah. Your secret place is where heaven waits for consistency. You can't carry what you don't cultivate. Some of us think that God's going to show up after we pray. No, He's waiting for us. He's waiting for that intimacy wherever we're going to meet Him. Daily devotion is a rhythm. It's not a religion. So devotion is more than prayer time. It's sacred scheduling. A priest structures life around God, not God around life. I feel like a lot of people do that. Christians, they structure God around their life instead of life around God. We have all these things going on. We got to do this and do that and da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And we say, okay, well, I'm going to give God 10 minutes, 30 minutes later on. We're structuring our life around God and not God around our life. Instead of saying, well, I got to wake up a little bit early to seek God. I'm going to go to sleep a little bit later to seek God because God is more important. I'm going to make my daily schedule, my weekly schedule and put God first when I wake up in the morning. So daily devotion includes praise, getting into praise. I enter in Psalm 100 verse 4, worship, I minister to Him. Word, He ministers to me. Meditation, I digest revelation intercession. I carry His heart and journaling. I record what He says. Devotion is not just checking time. It's giving God time to check me. Hallelujah. Prayer without structure becomes emotion. Prayer without structure becomes transformation. I'm sorry.

Prayer without structure becomes emotional. Think about that. You're praying, but you have no structure. You'll go in the secret place and you don't know what to do. But when you have structure, prayer with structure becomes transformational. You start transforming. At our church here at The Rock, we have what's called a secret place schedule where we have all these things. Praise, worship, word, meditation, intercession, journaling. Based off the temple that was built by Solomon, like we have revelation on how we can enter the Holy of Holies and seek the Lord consecrated devotionally daily. Like it's beautiful that we have all these things that we can do to have a well-rounded structure to become, so that God can transform us. It's important. There's revelation behind the temple. The altar requires sacrifice. Sacrifice is not losing, it's investing. Romans 12.1, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God. So what does that look like? Giving Him time when you're tired, offering obedience when uncomfortable, surrendering desires even when delayed. If it doesn't cost you something, it's not an altar, it's convenience. God consumes what we surrender.

He ignores what we hold back. So again, internally, in your nature, in your heart, you might need some things to be consumed by His presence. So for example, in your mind, you know you should not be drinking alcohol. So you don't drink it, but then in your heart, internally, you're desiring it. That's not something we should neglect. We need to go to the secret place and we need to give it to God and ask Him to burn it up in the secret places where He does that. So important. That's why when I'm going throughout the day, if I have an unhealthy desire anywhere in my heart, in any area, I like to document it. I put it on my prayer list and I address that later in the secret place. And I let the fire of the Holy Ghost burn that thing up and change my nature and form Christ in me in that area. I wanna become more like Jesus every day. So the fire falls where the altar stands. You don't chase fire. You build a place it can rest. 1 Kings 18 30 says Elijah repaired the altar before calling down fire. Leviticus 9 24, fire came after sacrifice was offered. So stop asking for fire if you haven't built a place for it.

The level of fire you walk in publicly is proportionate to the level of altar you build privately. So what are some practical steps to an altar life? So again, number one, set a specific time daily and protect it like oxygen. Don't let anyone take your secret place time. Don't let anything. Make sure that you got it on lock. Designate a place. Again, I said, I have a room in my house. Even if it's a seat, a room, a closet, or even a park bench, designate a place. Follow a consistent prayer flow. If your secret place schedule, that's what we have here at The Rock again. I have a flow. I have a praise list. I have an identity list. I have a prayer intercession list. I have a thanksgiving list. I have a communion list where I have communion points. And I take communion daily and I seek the Lord daily in this way, right? Four is remove distractions. Your devotion reveals your priority. Remove all distractions in the morning. Go straight to that secret place. Get off your phone. Don't even eat breakfast. Go straight to the secret place first.

Eat after. Drink your coffee after. Seek the Lord. And end each time listening. Prayer is dialogue, not monologue. So I like to just meditate on God's voice, on his word. Let him reveal things to me in the spirit when I'm in prayer. It's so important. If you only pray, look at this. If you only pray until you've spoken, if you only pray until you've spoken, you visit the altar. If you pray until you've heard, you live from it. It's important that when you get into prayer, you can hear. You get communication from the Lord, from heaven on what to do in your life. So important. Guys, catch this, man. This is what it is to be a priest. So important. And the altar life produces fruit. When you live from the altar, you become sensitive to his voice. You develop consistency in character. You steward the anointing with purity. You operate from overflow and not depletion. You stop reacting emotionally and start responding spiritually. Your authority comes from your altar, not your assignment. So it's not from you doing things for God.

It's from seeking and ministering to him as he pours into you. Priests don't burn out. They burn before him. Hallelujah. Say, I'm gonna say it one more time for the people in the back. Priests don't burn out. They burn before him. So you were not called to visit. You were called the host. God is not looking for people who can pray occasionally. He's looking for priests who carry an altar daily. If he, Jesus, can find a priest with a private altar, he can trust them with public mantle. The seeker place is where your mantle is born, the altar is where identity is forged, devotion is where destiny is sustained. So tonight, build again, repair the altar, protect your devotion, and let his fire fall. See you in Course Video 11.