But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Matthew 6:6
Leading a church or family that prays begins with you. The first altar that must be built is your personal altar of prayer—your secret place with God. It doesn’t matter where you lead, how big or small, a family or a church, God has given you a measure of authority. That authority is not just earthly power. As Jesus said, we are not like those earthly leaders who lord their power over people (see Matthew 20:25–26). The authority you have been given is first and foremost a spiritual authority. It is formed by your time with God.
You have been given access to the throne room. You have been given the spiritual authority to lead and to come before the God of the universe. Your church and family will not be all that God intends them to be if you, as their leader, fail to step into the responsibility and authority God has given you. But spiritual authority doesn’t begin on stage or with a microphone. It is not formed in a classroom or a board room. Spiritual authority is formed in a secret place of prayer.
Jesus made this point perfectly clear to His followers. Prayer did not begin with a public display. They weren’t to pray as a display to the synagogue or on the street corners so that others could hear their prayers and be impressed. If you are looking for a reputation as someone who prays, that is the reward you will get. People may think you pray, but you won’t have real spiritual authority, and you won’t have the kind of divine relationship that moves heaven and earth.
Instead, Jesus commanded His followers, “When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:6).
Jesus wasn’t against praying in public. He prayed publicly over the bread and fish before the five thousand followers. He also prayed from the cross before the soldiers, and He often prayed with His disciples. But He understood that a life of prayer begins in private communion with God. If you want to pray, if you want to lead a church or a family that prays, start with a personal altar of prayer.
Jesus’ disciples were impressed by His words and prayers not because they were spectacular or poetic. They were impressed because He prayed and spoke with authority and in intimacy with God. They sensed that He knew God and that He walked in a spiritual authority uncommon to other leaders and teachers. When they asked Jesus to teach them to pray as He did, Jesus didn’t respond, “You could never do what I do!” Instead, He simply told them to pray after His example. He taught them how to pray. Jesus wanted His disciples to walk in the same authority and intimacy He had.
There is a secret place where God forms us. There is a place where we are known and where we are empowered to carry His authority. There is a place where we are permitted to approach His throne, to bear our hearts, to seek His help, and to be rewarded by a Father who knows all that we need even before we ask. We all long to find a place where we are known, a place where we belong. Where is that place? What must we do to find it? That secret place is an altar. It is your personal altar.
An altar is a place of death. It is a place set aside for intentional sacrifice. Throughout the Old Testament, altars were places where God’s people offered sacrifices to Him. That tradition of sacrifice eventually came to focus on a bronze altar in the courtyard of the temple. Every day, worshipers brought animals to be sacrificed. During special religious festivals, the number of sacrifices could swell into the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, as it did when Solomon dedicated the temple.
When all the elders of Israel had arrived, the priests took up the ark, and they brought up the ark of the LORD and the tent of meeting and all the sacred furnishings in it. The priests and Levites carried them up, and King Solomon and the entire assembly of Israel that had gathered about him were before the ark, sacrificing so many sheep and cattle that they could not be recorded or counted.
1 Kings 8:3–5
Worshipers would bring the best of their unblemished livestock and offer them to God at that altar. These daily sacrifices were an act of worship, but also a personal sacrifice that each worshiper made.
The temple’s system of worship must have been an overwhelming thing to witness. It was one of the most spectacular scenes in the ancient world. Who wouldn’t have been impressed by the scale of the worship, the gold of the temple’s architecture, the massive stones, the giant bronze altar, the crowds of worshipers, and the songs of their praise? But do not miss the central act taking place. At the center of their worship was an act of death—an animal was sacrificed. The altar was the symbolic place of that death.
Why was death so central to Israel’s worship? It was because of sin that separates us from God. There was no way to approach God’s presence without a sacrifice. At that time, sacrifices were the means of recognizing the consequences of sin and were an image of their willingness to put to death those things that kept them from His presence. It was an act of relationship. The Israelites would sacrifice the best of what they possessed to receive something better from God, His presence and blessing. Sacrifice was the path to God.
This practice of sacrifice prepared God’s people for the coming of Jesus, who would be the ultimate and final sacrifice. As it had been with Israel’s worship and the temple itself, the center of Jesus’ life and obedience was also death, His own death. As the Old Testament prophets had long understood, the blood of bulls and rams could never fully deal with sin. They were an act of hope, a sacrifice that anticipated a better sacrifice to come.
The sacrifice of Jesus demonstrated how much God wanted to be in relationship with His people. “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Jesus’ death did what all of the sacrifices of Israel’s history never could: it gave us eternal access to God, and it established a new intimacy with Him. As the author of Hebrews put it, “We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (10:10). Jesus was the final sacrifice for sin, and there would be no more temple sacrifices. It wasn’t, however, the end of the altar or sacrifice or death.
There is still a required death in order to follow Jesus. We are required to put to death our flesh. We are required to die to ourselves. To receive this new relationship with God, each of us must still die to ourselves. The apostle Paul famously explained, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” (Romans 12:1).
We no longer place bulls or rams on a temple altar, but we still make sacrifices. We still worship through death. We now offer our own lives as the sacrifice, a living sacrifice. We offer the death of our will. We build an altar, and we place our lives upon it. You must remember that first and foremost, your personal altar is a place of death to self-will. Entering that secret place with God always requires fresh resubmitting of ourselves to God and His will.
An unwillingness to die to ourselves inevitably stunts our relationship with God, our willingness to pray to Him, and our desire to be with Him. Oftentimes, people fail to pray because they don’t know how to say no. They don’t know how to put to death the priority of their own calendars, appetites, emotions, and distractions. Every day that you pray, you will make a sacrifice. Every day that sacrifice will be consumed and, the next day, you will do it again. Your life is now a daily living sacrifice. You enter that secret place with God through the altar of putting to death your flesh, your agenda, and your will.
We learn to do that, as the ancient peoples did, through three parts: the part removed, the part shared, and the part consumed.
But the hide of the bull and all its flesh, as well as the head and legs, the internal organs and the intestines—that is, all the rest of the bull—he must take outside the camp to a place ceremonially clean, where the ashes are thrown, and burn it there in a wood fire on the ash heap.
Leviticus 4:11–12
The book of Leviticus offers a detailed description of how Israel was to make sacrifices. For the regular sin offerings, they were given specific instructions about the parts of each animal that were to be removed. This was to happen not only at the altar in the temple, but in the entire city or camp. The animal hide, head, legs, and specific organs were to be taken to a clean site outside of the city and burned in a fire of wood. The sacrifice for sin included what was given to God but also this part that was removed and carried away.
As we prepare our lives for daily sacrifice, we often have things that need to be removed. Each day, as we place our lives on the altar, we go about the work of removing what is not pleasing to God. We search our hearts for unconfessed sin, for evil desires, unholy motives, and wrong ideas. Often, we discover things in our lives we had not noticed before.
These aren’t always just sins, though it certainly includes them. As we grow in our relationship with God, we discover things that distract us from Him and things He finds unpleasing in us. It is a constant process of removal and refinement.
The expectations my wife and I had of our children were different when they were toddlers than when they were teenagers. As they grew, we expected more from them. There were things in their childhood that we expected them to grow out of as young adults. Our parental discipline was based on the child’s age and development.
So it is with our heavenly Father. His discipline is not all at once. He walks with us. He expects more of us as we grow and mature in faith. You are in a lifelong process of removing and correcting things in your heart. You are in a lifelong process of growing up in faith and learning to please your heavenly Father. That work is done daily at the altar.
I once spoke with a minister who had left the ministry due to a significant moral failure. He shared that it had not been a single moment of temptation that brought him down. He had gone through a long period in which he had daily refused God’s warnings.
“How long had God been dealing with you about this?” I asked.
“A long time,” he answered. “Eventually, I stopped praying altogether because God kept bringing it up.” It’s usually that way. God graciously offers to help us remove things in the privacy of our secret place. It is also God’s grace that He doesn’t give up on us. He pesters us. His heart is to reveal these vulnerabilities before they lead us into sin. But when we neglect this daily work, He is forced to discipline us in public. The consequences can be devastating.
God offers this daily lesson of discipline because He is good to you. God points to something and allows you to recognize that it isn’t pleasing to Him. You begin the work of removing that thing from your life, carrying it outside the camp, and leaving it behind. You don’t have to do that work on your own. God helps you, but you do have to do it. And where else in this world are you instructed how to say no, how to grow in holiness, how to voluntarily give up things that are holding you back?
You need a daily altar to take up that work. And I want you to see the potential of it. A lifetime of daily sacrifice changes you. It matures you. It grows your relationship with God and the power of the authority you can walk in. Come to this altar each day with a willingness to remove what God demands and you will change. You will grow. You will not be the same person—not tomorrow and certainly not a year from now or a lifetime from now. There are things God wants to remove from your life, and they begin at your altar of sacrifice.
The sin offering is to be slaughtered before the LORD in the place the burnt offering is slaughtered; it is most holy. The priest who offers it shall eat it; it is to be eaten in the sanctuary area, in the courtyard of the tent of meeting.
Leviticus 6:25–27
There is often a second part to a sacrifice. The ancient sacrifices that were offered each day were the means by which the priests survived. Dedicated to serving the Lord, the priests were allowed to eat a portion of the sacrifices. They lived off the sacrifices that others offered. If every Israelite had decided not to sacrifice, the priesthood could not have survived.
It is always that way with sacrifice. As we become a living sacrifice, our life becomes a service to others. We give something of ourselves away to support them, to help them survive. As God removes things from our lives, He also frees us to give and share in ways we weren’t previously able. Dying to ourselves means living for others. Being a living sacrifice changes the way we think about our rights, our finances, our desires, and our time. Having placed them on the altar, God is now able to use them in new ways. We tend to think of sacrifices as only something lost, but God uses them to feed and sustain someone else.
A sacrifice frees us from needing to look out for ourselves. We spend much of our time trying to protect what we have and trying to accumulate more. When others make demands of us, expect things from us, or use us in ways we didn’t agree to, we often get frustrated and defensive. We push back and start protecting ourselves. But when God reworks our hearts through sacrifice, we begin to see what we have as something to be shared. We give so that others might have. Ultimately, your life is in God’s hands to be distributed to others as He sees best.
Jesus understood that He had not come to be served but to serve, to give His life away to others (see Mark 10:45). His sacrifice became our bread of life and cup of salvation. Jesus was able to make that sacrifice not because of some personality type or special gift of hospitality. He could give His life away because He had submitted it fully to His Father. He had sacrificed His will and offered His life to be used by God.
When Jesus asked John to baptize Him, John was reluctant. John understood water baptism as a sign of repentance. He knew who Jesus was. What did Jesus need to repent of? Certainly, it wasn’t sin. But Jesus insisted on John baptizing Him. Jesus knew He was about to enter a season of temptation, a wilderness time in which Satan would test His faithfulness to God. Jesus’ baptism was a turning away from His divine rights as God. Jesus was baptized as an act of submission, submitting His power, will, and rights to God. He would turn away from self-preservation and offer His life as a sacrifice, the blood and bread by which His people would live. He would give Himself away to the world.
As His followers, we do the same. We place our lives on the altar as an act of submission. We allow God to use us on His terms. We renounce our rights and our will. We make ourselves food for others.
You need an intentional moment to make that commitment each day, to place yourself on the altar and remember again that your life is now His life. You need an intentional act of surrender that frees you to live for others, for Him.
He shall remove all the fat from the bull of the sin offering—all the fat that is connected to the internal organs, both kidneys with the fat on them near the loins, and the long lobe of the liver, which he will remove with the kidneys—just as the fat is removed from the ox sacrificed as a fellowship offering. Then the priest shall burn them on the altar of burnt offering.
Leviticus 4:8–10
While part of the sacrifice was removed and part was shared, the best parts of the sacrifice were to be consumed by fire. They were to be burned so that the aroma would ascend and please God. There are things in your life that need to be removed and things that need to be given to others, but there are also things that God reserves for you and Him alone. You need an altar because you need a daily place to be with God. A place to enjoy His presence and a place to grow in friendship. You need a place to be honest, to struggle, to argue, to confess, to receive, to worship, and to enjoy. It will take cleansing and submission to get there, but there is a secret place God has for you and Him alone. You need a personal altar because it is your access to that secret place with God.
If that is new to you, I would suggest you spend some time reading Psalm 139. It is a psalm in which David describes his secret place with God. He writes:
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.
Psalm 139:13–18
Deep within our hearts are some pretty important questions. Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose in life? At times, those questions can feel like a curse, even a joke. We can’t seem to find answers, at least not meaningful ones. The world tells us to search our heart or to buy some self-help product. But the world doesn’t really know how to answer those questions. It is not willing to make the sacrifice necessary to find them. Those are the questions to be answered in our secret place with God. David understood it.
There is a place you were made beyond your mother’s womb. There is place in which your identity, your abilities, your image, and your purpose were knit together by the hand of God. It is the place where you were fearfully and wonderfully made. There is something deep within you created by God. Sure, sin and broken humanity sometimes make it hard to recognize, but God has not hidden it from you. He has invited you into it. He offers you His thoughts, His plans, His design for your life. David experienced these secret things in numbers uncountable. God wants to flood you with a sense of His love, purpose, and your true identity. He longs to do it.
As I stated before, I believe altars are a means of connecting heaven and earth. That also means that your personal altar is the place where who you are on earth is connected with that secret, heavenly place in which you were first formed by God.
I have this crazy idea that as we enter heaven and Jesus shows us the place He went ahead to prepare for us, we will recognize it. I think it is that secret place where we were created. That place we have experienced before through prayer and daily showing up at our personal altar. I think for those who pray daily in that secret place, that heavenly mansion will feel instantly like home, a place we have gone to pray each day on earth. It is a place in my life that has long been marked out, where my daily bread has been stored, and where God has met me so many times before.
I believe that David wrote Psalm 139 in his secret place. I think he wrote it sensing who he really was and what he had in God. He wrote it out of a deep, personal, and private relationship with God. He concluded that psalm by writing, “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (verses 23–24). Our way into that place is by praying: God, search me. Reveal my heart. Test me. Remove anything offensive to You. Lead me into that eternal everlasting place.
I don’t know what waits for you in that secret place, but I know it is good. I know that your church and those you lead depend on you finding it. I know it will require you removing things from your life and submitting things to God you would rather protect and keep for yourself. But if you are willing to build a personal altar, if you’re willing to daily lay your life on it, God will meet you there. He will take you to a new place. He will show you things, speak things to you, and pour His love and grace into your life. You will live differently. You will lead differently.
Perhaps you have tried before. Perhaps you have prayed and not made it yet. It doesn’t matter. Some days it is discipline and work, some days it is glory upon glory. What matters is that you keep showing up. What matters is that you keep listening, removing, sharing, and sacrificing.
Go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in heaven. He will reward you. He is the reward.
“I rise before dawn and cry for help; I have put my hope in your word” (Psalm 119:147).
Decide when you will pray. Most of us live by our calendars. Until prayer makes it into our daily planners, prayer is only a good intention. We all tend to pray when pressure or desperate situations move us to pray, but that isn’t a daily altar. You need to fix an appointment with God and keep it. I suggest making prayer your first priority of the morning. Morning prayer reminds us of our need for Him and invites His blessing upon the rest of our day. So, find a time, put it on the calendar, and show up.
Decide where you will pray. Look for a place away from others where you won’t be easily distracted. People often refer to their personal place of prayer as a closet. It describes a place without windows and is usually only large enough for one person. The point is to find a place to which you can daily return. I have a place in the basement of our home where I go each morning. When I travel, I find a spot in my hotel room. I have even made my rental car an altar when it was my only option. Even if you struggle to find an ideal place, don’t allow your surroundings to keep you from praying.
Start with the Bible. The Bible itself reminds us that “in the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). As part of my responsibilities serving in an executive position with the Assemblies of God, I’m privileged to lead a team of highly qualified content developers working on the Bible Engagement Project. Our research has helped us cultivate ministry partnerships with Barna Research, the American Bible Society, and the Center for Bible Engagement. One of the most important things we’ve learned from our combined studies is that when a person reads the Bible four or more days a week, it has a greater spiritual impact on them than any other discipline, including regular church attendance.1
If a person engages with the Bible four or more times a week, their likelihood of them giving into temptations such as drinking to excess, viewing pornography, lashing out in anger, gossiping, and lying significantly decrease.
Receiving, reflecting on, and responding to God’s Word four or more times a week decreases a person’s odds of struggling with issues such as feeling bitter, thinking destructively about self or others, having difficulty forgiving others, and feeling discouraged.
Engaging with Scripture produces a more proactive faith among Christians. When a person increases his or her time in Scripture to at least four times a week, the odds of giving financially, memorizing Scripture, and sharing his or her faith with others increases.
People’s perceptions of their own spiritual growth are also impacted by how often they hear from God through the Bible. Those who engage with Scripture most days of the week are less likely to feel spiritually stagnant and to feel that they can’t please God.
The powerful effects of Bible engagement on spiritual growth have been reliably demonstrated across many studies. When you pray, there’s no better place to start than with the Word of God.
Keep a journal. When I go to prayer, I often begin by reading from the Bible. I journal what I hear God saying to me through His Word. That experience moves me to pray through worship and with new requests. The Word of God is active and alive and is a powerful guide to prayer (see 2 Timothy 3:16).
Learn to pray the Lord’s Prayer. When Jesus’ disciples asked Him to teach them to pray, He offered them the Lord’s Prayer. It is a wonderful prayer prompt. Begin by reading the prayer or reciting it from memory. Then slow down and use each phrase as a prompt to pray. Learn to pray for His Kingdom to come. Learn to pray for daily provisions of bread. Learn to pray for His forgiveness and His way of escape from temptation. You can’t go wrong with Jesus’ prayer as your guide.