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(upbeat music) - Hey, this is Pastor John Ryan Cantu from PNEUMA Church in Houston, Texas. Thank you for listening to the message today. I hope that it blesses you and all those that you share it with. God bless you. (upbeat music) Y'all feel that this morning? The Holy Spirit is in the room. He's in the room. And I believe that he wants to do something this morning as he always does. The Holy Spirit, you know, he comes to church with an agenda and his agenda is to transform. His agenda is to heal, to restore and to bring freedom. And I don't know what your agenda is this morning, but that's what God wants to do this morning. And if you allow him, he will do it. Amen. I wanna go to God in prayer. We'll skip the hellos and all the introverts say amen. But we'll just go to God in prayer and say, heavenly Father, we thank you, my God, for this moment, my God, in which we get to be a part of, Lord, your presence. There's nothing more beautiful than your presence there's nothing greater than your presence, my God. And I just wanna thank you, Lord, for opening the doors to the heavens gates this morning, Father God, as we got a glimpse of your glory, Father. I pray now that you would speak to us through your word, Father God. I pray that you would open our ears, our eyes, and our hearts this morning to receive what you have. In Jesus' name, amen and amen. Praise the Lord. God is good all the time. Amen. I wanna go with you to Genesis 22. And Pastor Demaris was picking up the offer and she said a lot that confirmed what God wants to say through the word this morning. And I'm excited to bring this word. And I will tell you that the Lord preached it to me first, and I receive it. And I just pray that you receive it this morning. It's Genesis 22, one through nine. If you have it, say amen. Amen. Amen. It says this, 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 of which I tell you. So Abraham rose early in the morning. He saddled his donkey and he took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey and I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. And so they both went together. And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father, sorry, and Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father. And he said, here I am, my son. He said, behold, the fire and the wood, but where's the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So they went, both of them together, amen. You can be seated. Make your altar. Make your altar. That is the title of my message this morning. Make your altar. Today I wanna talk about what we've been doing for the last 15, 20 minutes, which is worship. There's no doubt we are a worshiping church. And I think as pastors, you don't get any more proud than that, you know? It's like when you're with your congregation and they're worshiping and we're worshiping together, the king, that's a beautiful thing. And so there's no doubt about that. We are a worshiping church, you know, that when we come in here, we're going to sing and we're gonna praise and we're gonna lift up our hands and there's gonna be healing and there's gonna be freedom and there's gonna be restoration in the house of the Lord. How many of us can agree to that? Amen. And there's been a lot of emphasis on that lately, that that is a church that God is looking for and that is a church that we wanna be known for our worship, man. We wanna be known for our worship. We wanna be known for the move of the Holy Spirit and what he does in the church as well as through the church. And a couple of years ago, I shared this with you before, the Lord showed me that we were going to have to teach people how to worship in church because if we were going to be reaching the unchurched, we can't expect the unchurched to know how to do church worship. And we were going to, you know, the Lord put on our hearts to reach our neighbors and to our communities and to start really fulfilling that great commission and that's extended not just to the church leaders or the pastors, but all of you where our network of people, we are ministering to people outside of the church, at work, at school, wherever it is. Many of you have brought people into the house of God. You brought them to the altars. My boy, Mike, that's what he does, like for a living. And it's a beautiful thing. But with that mission comes the task of discipling new believers in so many ways. And one of those ways is in the area of worship. And I don't, let's not lie. One of the weirdest places that you can go to church for a casual visit is the Pentecostal church, right? That's one of the oddest places that you can go and bring a friend on friends and family day. And to this day, I've really only heard mostly good things. I hear about how people, they walk in, they feel the presence of God. They don't understand what they're feeling, but they feel some type of peace. They feel some type of joy. People who never go to the church, they have amazing experiences. I hear about how people love the worship, how they love the word, how they love the people and they feel welcomed by the people. I hear all the good things, but I'm sure there's gotta be some bad things, right? That I just don't hear about. I'm sure there's people that say, nah, those people are crazy. Don't take me back there, right? And so I've tried my best and I tried to be intentional about it to explain how it is that we worship. I don't do it perfectly, but I want people to know how it is that we worship, that when we lift up our hands, that is a symbol of both surrendering and victory. We're not just throwing up our hands for no reason. It symbolizes something. When you come to God like this, you're saying, God, I surrender. When you come to God like this, you're saying victory is mine in the name of Jesus. I have to explain that some people like to dance because they are filled with the joy of the Lord and they wanna express it with their praise dance and same goes with shouting. Some people just can't contain it. They're excited to be in the presence of God. Some people cry during worship because the Lord might be ministering to you through the song or through the word and it moves you to cry. I have to explain sometimes the reason that you might hear someone speaking in what sounds like foreign languages. That one's a little bit harder to explain. Takes a little bit more time. But it's based on Acts chapter two when the Holy Spirit miraculously gave different languages into the mouths of the disciples as a means to deliver the gospel message to the world. The Bible also speaks of tongues as a way to minister to God through prayer. And so I try my best and I know that some of you try your best 'cause sometimes I see you kinda like explaining this is what's going on and I appreciate that. Thank you. And the more you are exposed to these kinds of services, the more normal it becomes for you and the more comfortable you become engaging in this type of worship. And so I've talked to many of you in the past where you say, if you go to another church that does things a little bit different, you say, pastor, they don't do altar calls. Can you believe that? They don't believe in altar calls and you're tripping 'cause they don't do altar calls. Or you go to another church and you're like, pastor, they're so quiet in that church. They're so quiet. I can hear myself breathe. There's no presence in that church because they're so quiet. Pastor, they ain't got no drums. They got no guitars. How can I sing Maverick City without guitars and drums? And look, I understand that as worshipers, we wanna be around like-minded worshipers. I understand that when you're looking for a church, you wanna be in a place that fits your worship preferences. It's kind of terrible as that sounds. We make it about us, but that's the case. You wanna be around people who worship like you. But what I wanna tell every person is to not marry the church. We got more churchians than Christians. We got people who have no authentic relationship with Jesus as their savior, but they got a really good relationship with the way that they do worship at their church, at my church. And you go to different churches. Every other church is wrong. I don't even know how these churches are gonna get into heaven. They don't do altar calls. They don't do altar calls. If you can't go to another church without criticizing every little thing that they do and how they do things a little bit different than Pneuma, you haven't really learned what worship is yet. You've only learned an expression of worship. I'm gonna preach to some Christians this morning, okay? 'Cause look, I don't wanna be a pastor that only teaches one expression of worship. I'm not gonna say, oh, it's gotta be this way, and it's only gotta be big songs and minor key songs like the one we just sang, which is fire. And I don't wanna say, oh, it's gotta be big worship songs and big bridges, and if you can't deliver a big bridge, then the Holy Spirit can't move. I'm gonna be that because that's not true. The church needs to learn how to worship wherever you are, wherever they are. This means if you're with the Baptists, the Lutherans, the Anglicans, the Charismatics, as long as you got some Bible-believing Christians around you, you don't need to be affected by their worship because you don't depend on their altars. You know how to make your own altar. (congregation applauding) Churchians, churchians. And I also don't want you to be confused as to what worship is because I do believe that we have gotten to that place where corporately together, man, Holy Spirit moves when we come together. And I love it. But I don't want you to be confused and think that when you come in here, this is all worship is. What we do here only scratches the surface of what worship is. Honestly, honestly, what we do in here is more praise than it is worship. Just because we're singing a slow song doesn't make it worship. If you were to do a word study on the word praise in the Bible, you'll find that praise is more closely related to everything that we do here. It involves shouting and music and singing and rejoicing and dancing. Worship, on the other hand, if you do a word study on worship, it involves work, serving. In fact, some of the English words in the Bible translate one of the Hebrew words for worship as slaves, enslaved or servant. And so this is why Paul says in Romans 12, "Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, for this is your spiritual act of worship." So worship is not an expression, it's a lifestyle. You worship God by obeying God. You worship God by having faith in God. You worship God by living for God. You can sing a song, you can sing a worship song, but if none of the above are true and you're not living for God, you're not having faith in God, you barely believe in the God that you're singing about, you're not worshiping. And when you do these things, when you obey God, when you go out and you have faith in God and you trust in God and you're living for God, when you do these things, it produces a genuine expression of worship that makes you wanna sing when you come in here. It makes you wanna, your cup is overflowing because he's been so good to you. You need to find an outlet of which to express it. And that's when we come in here and we express our worship. And a worshipful heart will make you want to express your worship in different ways. I love my children, I love my daughters, and because I love them, I express my love to them in so many different ways. Look how cute she is. I can't even get mad at her. She's running in church, but she's so adorable. Like your love for God, it produces the expression of worship. A worshipful heart will make you express your worship in different ways. Where you do find a church that expresses worship in the same way that you do, but worship, man, it begins in the heart. It begins in the soul, man. That song then sings my soul. That song knows what's up. Because worship begins in the depths of your spirit. It begins when you wake up in the morning, all the way to when you lie your head in the evening. In a perfect world, you would be thinking about God so much that even in your dreams, you're worshiping him. It's what you do for him, and it's what you do with him. Worship is inserting God into every area of your life and making him king. But when we talk about worship or when we think about worship, we don't think about it in terms of what it really is. Worship is sacrifice. And if worship is sacrifice, that means worship hurts. It hurts the flesh. King David said, "I will not give to God "that which costs me nothing." Sometimes it hurts to give, to bring up your offering. It hurts when you're living paycheck to paycheck, you don't know how you're gonna make ends meet, you don't know how you're gonna buy groceries. It hurts to be faithful in your giving. Sometimes it hurts to obey when the word of God is leading you into places that you would never go on your own. Sometimes it hurts to trust in God when you are fearing the unknown and God is asking for your faith, he's asking for your trust. It hurts, it hurts. To me, that's what makes a Christian walk challenging. It's not the oppression, it's not the spirit to come against you, it's not the devil. God has given you victory over all of that, all of it. The challenging thing is us. It's you, it's me waking up every day and deciding to kill the flesh and walk in the spirit. That's the hard part. It's the hardest part, it's dying to yourself instead of giving in to yourself because I know how easy it is for us to wake up in the flesh. When you wake up in the flesh, you continue the rest of your day in the flesh. When you wake up in the flesh, it sets the tone. Some of you wake up grumpy, that sets the tone for the rest of your day and maybe you can get over it with a taco or two, but when you wake up in the flesh, it sets the tone for the rest of your day. You're still with me, right? This is why, I have a theory. This is why Christians love Sundays because when you wake up on a Sunday, you know you're only about two, three hours away from the house of God and so you get yourself ready mentally and spiritually, you put on some worship music on, you tell yourself the devil's not gonna have my joy today because this is the Lord's day. You try really hard not to yell at your kids and you're like, Holy Spirit, give me the patience, give me the peace, give me all the, I need all the fruits this morning because it's Sunday morning. This is the Lord's day. And then you get into the house of God, you raise up your praise song and you listen to the word and you leave here on a spiritual high because Sundays at Pneuma are fire. But when Monday comes, you're not getting ready for church. You're getting ready for work. You're getting ready for kids, taking them to school. You gotta get ready for traffic and work and dealing with people and clients and customers and your boss and you gotta deal with the real life so you start your day in your flesh because you know you don't have anywhere spiritual to be. This is why every day, somebody say every day, every day you have to make your altar. Every single day you make your altar. Verse three says, Abraham rose early in the morning and he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to a place of which God had told him. What if tomorrow morning you woke up like you do on Sundays with a heart that is ready, a spirit that is ready to worship the Lord? You're ready, you can't wait. Most people don't wake up that way because they think worship is singing and worship is congregating and worship is doing church. What if, I know I'm asking a lot of you, what if you woke up extra early? I know some of you are like, Pastor, I wake up at 4.30. I wake up at four. I ain't waking up extra. What if you woke up extra early, and I'm talking to myself, but what if you woke up extra early to offer your day to the Lord? I'm gonna give you some practical stuff right now because most people, you wake up when you need to wake up. Some of you wake up after you need to wake up. Right? But generally, that's the way it is. You wake up when your flesh needs to wake up, when you have to start getting ready for the work day. You're an adult, you got responsibilities, that's cool. But what if you woke up to get your spirit ready? This is an obvious sign that we walk more in the flesh than we do in the spirit. Just like you prepare the flesh for your day, the spirit needs to be prepared. - Amen. - Doesn't it make pretty good sense? If you gotta prepare yourself for the physical day and all the things that you have to do physically in life, don't you think that your spirit needs some preparation as well for all the spiritual warfare that's gonna come throughout your day and throughout your week? You're gonna go into that with a Sunday morning? That's like taking a shower once a week. That's like eating once a week. You think that's gonna give you enough energy for the rest of your week to make it through the rest of your week? You're gonna get up, you're gonna come to church at 11 o'clock on a Sunday, and that's supposed to take you into the next Sunday? And you think you're gonna get victory over your every single day? That's not the way that it works. You have to prepare your spirit every single day, just like you prepare your flesh, every single day. You wake up, you take a shower, you get fed, you make sure your kids are clean, your spirit needs the same maintenance. (congregation applauding) But the spirit isn't prepared. The default is the flesh. We wake up immediately, we start taking care of our flesh. What if we woke up first to prepare our spirit? And we woke up early and we said, "All right, God, I give you this day "because I wanna bless you with this day. "I wanna bless you with the work hours. "I wanna bless you with my day off. "I wanna bless you, even if you're on vacation, "I wanna bless you with this vacation "because I know that there's gonna be some things "that I confront during the day "that I wanna be able to defeat." See, Abraham wasn't getting ready for a Sunday morning. He was getting ready for the most difficult test of his life. And what was he doing? He was gathering up all that he needed to make an altar. This is why you begin each day with the Lord. Because when you gather what you need to face each day in the morning, you're ready to construct your altar at any given moment. You're ready if the most trying test comes in your life. You're ready to go with all your materials to create an altar to the Lord. You don't have to wait till Sunday morning. You don't have to wait till night of worship. You don't have to wait for the perfect worship song because your spirit has made preparations. And so whenever the temptation comes, you've already got an altar constructed. All you have to do is lay it down at the altar that's already there. Whenever a little bit of doubt or fear or anxiety begins to creep up, you can lay it at the altar that you already prepared. When God is asking for your yes, you can sacrifice your no that you really wanna give him because the altar is already prepared. Tell the person next to you, "Make your altar." Make your altar. This is so important. I think it's something that Christians just don't do. And this is it. This is why we struggle with the same things. And it's like we're living spiritually week after week. What if every day we were strengthened by the altar that we made? See, in the Old Testament, you have time for a quick history lesson? In the Old Testament, altars were constructed as a place of sacrifice. Oftentimes, they were mobile, right? They weren't like this altar that we have here. They were mobile because the people of God, they were always on the move. And so whenever they were on the move, they had to be ready to make an altar to the Lord to present an offering to God. And the Hebrew word for altar is a mitzvah, mitzvah. And it means, anybody know what it means? Anybody know what it means? We talked about it before. I ain't paying attention. It was probably like two years ago, but still, y'all should have those notes. Altar literally means, it literally means to slaughter. It ain't that pretty, huh? It means to slaughter. And so altars are symbols of sacrifice. And in the Old Testament, they were always used for some sort of sacrificial offering given to God. Altar calls, altar calls like we do here every Sunday after a message. Did you know that altar calls weren't a thing until the 19th century? So like 1800s. So if you were a Christian before the 1800s and you all of a sudden started seeing churches do altar calls, you'd be like, what kind of church is this? You would think they're doing some type of heresy. Why are people going to the front? Charles Finney, Charles Finney's the man who led the Second Great Awakening, which was a big revival movement in America. He's the one who's credited as the one who made altar calls popular. Because when he presented the message of the gospel, he invited people to come upfront in a tangible way because he wanted people to see it tangibly to offer their lives to Jesus. And so thereafter, altar calls became a part of churches. And this is why I often say that Christian culture sometimes has a bigger effect on us than a genuine relationship with Jesus. Because you might think that coming to the altars every week means that you're somehow receiving more of God, when in reality altars are not a place to receive, they're a place to die. What matters when you come here is what you leave here. What matters when you come here is what you offer here, what you surrender here, what you die to here. This is not a place to get, it's a place to give. And I'm not saying you can't ask, I'm not saying don't ask, I'm just saying that you might need to shift your mindset a little bit because when you present an altar to the Lord, you are presenting a sacrifice. You're giving something to God that your flesh doesn't really wanna give. It hurts, it's uncomfortable, it's hard, but that is worship. That's worship. And so when you come to the altar, you gotta come with something. You have to come with something because you have to leave it here. This is not just a place to get closer. Jesus isn't right here. This is a place to offer. It's a place to step out in faith and give something that the Lord has been asking for. He's been asking for it all week, he's been asking for it all year, all your life, he's been asking for it. That's when you bring your offering to the altar. I know all of you have something to give to God. These altars should be full every week. I know you got some stress that was built up during the week that God is saying, give it to me. I know you've got some worry that you need to present to the Lord and say, God, I give this to you. I know you've got something to give that you have not yet been willing to let go. And I know, it's so easy to say, give it to God. Just give it to God. I used to hate when people tell me that. I'd be worried about something, I'd be anxious about something. Just give it to God. It's like, don't you think if I could just get rid of it, I would? Like, nobody wants to hold on to worry. Nobody wants to hold on to fear. Don't you think if I could just let it go, I would do it? I know how it is, walking around with baggage that you don't wanna be holding onto. This is why you can't be waiting till Sunday. You gotta prepare your altar every single day because that baggage will find its way back to you. Every single day, you have to learn how to slay it. Just give it to God. I know it's not that easy, but when you understand the true meaning of worship and how it requires work and how it requires sacrifice, it becomes something that you learn how to do every single day. And it's not enough to wait till Sunday because the majority of your problems come Monday through Saturday. You need to learn how to make your altar every single day and leave it here. I don't know what you're holding on to this morning, but this is a place where God is calling you to give something up. This is a place where you lay it down and you kill it. Abraham is getting ready. You still with me? Abraham is getting ready to present an offering to the Lord because God asked him for Isaac, and it's painful and it doesn't make sense. And if you know the story of Abraham, you know why this doesn't make sense. Because God made a promise to Abraham that through Isaac, his descendants were gonna be many. Abraham waited till he was in his hundreds to have Isaac, and now God is asking for it back. And verses four through five, it says, "On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes "and he saw the place from afar. "And then Abraham said to his young men, "'Stay here with the donkey, I and the boy will go over "'and worship and come again to you.'" This is another feature of the text that I think we often misrepresent in our church context, our culture context. When I was in youth, we would go to this youth camp in Kerrville, Texas, and they had this mountain, what was it a mountain, it was a hill, where you would hike up it, and there was a cross at the top, and it had really nice views of the hill country, and you could see the stars at night, it was beautiful. And we would do that every youth camp, we would have this little thing called worship on the mountain or worship on the hilltop. And everybody would take their guitars, and we'd take our Bibles, and we would take some pen and paper to write some notes for the devotional, and it was a beautiful thing. But when Abraham told his men, "We're gonna go up and worship," you think he took his guitar? You think he was ready to get a little cafecito and get all excited and cozy up against a fire to sing kumbaya, my Lord? No, this was a moment of true worship because it required a true sacrifice. Abraham was not just offering his son, he was having to offer his doubt, because in faith he knew that God was going to provide the sacrifice, and so any doubt that Abraham had, he had to lay it there at the altar as well to slay it. He had to sacrifice his no to God. Now, I would love to talk about that a little bit, because sometimes God asks for a yes, and everything you wanna give him is no, and maybe all you've ever given him is no. You've given him a cold shoulder, you've given him your back, no after no after no, and God might be asking you to give up that no right here at the altars and say yes to him. Abraham had to give God his no. I don't wanna give you my son, you just gave me my son, now you're asking for back, Indian giver, right? Like, he had to sacrifice, he had to sacrifice what he wanted. Abraham set the tone, he set the tone for all who would come after him of what it meant to worship God from the depths, from the depths of the soul, from the depths of the spirit. This is worship, church, this is worship, this is worship in spirit and in truth, this wasn't ritualistic, this was obedience, this was sacrifice, and Abraham was fully prepared to make his altar. Earlier I said that the altars, when you come up here, this is a place to give to God. This is where you present your offering to God. Presenting an offering that your flesh doesn't wanna give, but just because you present something to God doesn't mean that he doesn't give you something in return. God is good, God is merciful, God is kind, God is gracious, and so when you prepare an offering to the Lord, when you say God, have my fear, he will replace your fear with something else. You think I'm lying? I'm not lying. When you totally surrender your fears to the Lord, you are dropping fear and you're picking up faith. You are dropping your fear, you say God, I'm tired, I am tired of being fearful. I'm gonna have some faith, and God gives you that faith. Whenever you present something to the Lord, he gives you something better. When you say God, I'm done worrying, I'm sick, I'm always worrying. I'm gonna kill it at the altar. You drop worry and you pick up peace, and now you learn how to live in a little bit of peace, and you're not worrying all the time. Now, here's the thing, you might have to do it again tomorrow, but if you don't prepare your spirit for the day, you're gonna continue to lose your battles. Are you hearing me? Are you hearing me? Because I know that y'all struggle because I struggle, and it's kind of the same struggle. It's not like a new struggle, it's the same stuff every day. It's stuff that we should have conquered years ago, and we're still struggling with it. Why is it? Because we haven't prepared the day for our spirit, and when we don't prepare our spirit, we lose when the battles come. Look, this is why you feel so victorious, after leaving church, you feel like you did spiritual warfare and you took victory, and you probably did, but there's another battle tomorrow that you forgot about, and tomorrow we're not gonna be here at 11 o'clock singing Yahweh. We're not gonna be here with the brethren and with the sisters and the Christian folk and lifting up our hands to the Lord. You're gonna be with the worldly people. You're gonna be at school, you're gonna be at work, you're gonna be by yourself, and the battles are still gonna be there, but because you didn't prepare your spirit, you're gonna lose that battle that you won on a Sunday morning, and you walked out of church thinking, that was it, that was it, my chains are gone, baby. You picked them back up because you failed to prepare your altar Monday morning. The enemy doesn't sleep. The enemy doesn't sleep. He is persistent. See, the enemy knows that he's at war. You're not just in a battle. You're at war. Sunday morning, this is a battle. When you come to the altars, when you're looking for healing, when you're looking for freedom, when you're looking for deliverance, this is a battle, and you might have been victorious today, but the enemy is okay saying, all right, let him have Sunday, I'll get him Monday, because he knows that this is a war. He knows that this is a long game. So I'm telling you, man and woman of God, tomorrow morning, you gotta wake up a little bit earlier, and you gotta prepare your spirit for what is coming, because the enemy doesn't sleep. But if you make your altar ready to go, anytime there's a temptation, anytime there's a struggle, you can lay it right there at the altar, because it's already constructed. This is why I say this is the hardest part for a Christian man is waking up every single day and dying to self. But if you win it today, you can win it tomorrow, because the same God, the same God that you make offerings to at this altar is the same God you make offerings to when you're at home, when you're with the worldly crowd, when you're facing a temptation, when you're being tested by the Lord. Learn to make an altar. Ask the worship team to come up. Learn to make an altar so that when you want to give someone a piece of your flesh, like you know, like a few bad words or something, 'cause they cut you off or they're annoying you, give them a part of your spirit instead. When you present an offering to the Lord, he gives you something better. He gives you something better. I don't know if anybody's a testament of that, but I can tell you, when I've given up my worry, when I've given up my fears, the Lord has given me peace, the Lord has given me joy, the Lord has given me strength. When I have intentionally said, "God, take this from me," he has given me something better. When you kill the flesh, he gives you his spirit. When you kill the grumbling and the complaining, I don't know who I'm talking to. Some of y'all complain too much. Y'all grumble too much. Like, there's no, people look at you and they don't see a joyful person. They see somebody who's just angry and rough around the edges. When you kill your grumbling, he gives you joy. When you kill your doubt, because some of you are walking in doubt on a daily, he gives you trust. He gives you trust. When you kill your fear, he gives you faith. And when you do that enough times, you begin to conquer the things that used to conquer you. What I love about Abraham, and this is the last thing that I'll say, 'cause I really want you to get this, I want you to know that God doesn't just take, he replaces. So on his way up to the mountain to worship God, Abraham knew that the Lord would provide. On his way up to the mountain, he's troubled. He's definitely disturbed. He doesn't know how it's gonna play out. 'Cause when God calls us, we don't know the details. We just know the mission. We don't know what awaits us there. But when Isaac, his son, said, "Dad, we got the wood, "we got the fire, got all the materials for the altar, "ready to rock, but where's the sacrifice? "Where's the sacrifice?" Abraham's words here demonstrate why he is the father of the faith. Because he says God will provide. Jehovah-Jireh. God will provide. He doesn't say, "Son, God already provided the sacrifice, "and actually, son, we got some things to talk about." He doesn't say, "Son, you're the sacrifice." He doesn't say this as a way to calm him down and to make him not panic. Abraham, the man of faith, the man that God called into the land of the unknown, says, "I know my God will provide. "When I get up to the mountain, I don't know what's there. "I don't know who's living there, "but I know that God will provide, "because my God is a God of promise, "and he has made me a promise." This is a man that knows God is faithful. Are you a man or woman of God that knows God is faithful? Come on, do you know that God is faithful? Do you know that God is good? Do you know that God is merciful? Do you know that God has a plan for your life? If you do that, that would change everything that you do in your day, because you'll learn how to say, "God will provide." God will provide. I need you to know that this morning, that you don't serve a dead God. You serve a God who is living, you serve a God who listens, you serve a God who works, you serve a God who moves, who gives. This is why we say, when you worship, something happens in the atmosphere, right? When you worship, something is taking place around you. When you make your altar, and when you present your heart to the Lord, and you give him the pieces of your flesh, that moves the heart of God. And whatever you lay down at the altar, listen, some of y'all ain't listening. Whatever you lay down here at this altar, when you come and you kneel down before the presence of God, whatever you lay down, he replaces with something better. I don't know what you need to bring this morning. I don't know what you need to prepare this morning, but I wanna remind you that God will provide your peace. God will provide your strength. God will provide your wisdom. God will make a way when you think there is none. God will provide for you because that's what he does. That's in his name. But you have to make your altar. You have to make your altar. You have to prepare it so that God sees your faith. And I want you to stand with me this morning, and I wanna ask you this morning. We're gonna sing this song again. And this song is just a declaration of the manifestation of God in so many different ways. And some of you might need a healing this morning. Some of you might need strength this morning. Some of you might need to be rescued from a depressing moment this morning. And God is saying, if you lay it here, if you trust in me, if you give me your fear, if you give me your yes, if you give me the best and the weakest parts of yourself, I will replace it with something better. (gentle music) That's what worship is. That's what worship is. It's not just a song. It's not just a 25-minute set. It's not just a Sunday morning worship. Worship is dying to yourself. In the same way that my Jesus gave his life for our sake, because he loved us in an act of obedience, he laid down his life, something better came of it. Because with the death of Christ came the life for the church, came the life for me, came the life for you, and now I have life everlasting because whatever you give to God, he replaces with something better. And I'm gonna make this call one time, and I'm not gonna force your hand this morning. But if you have something to kill this morning, I want you to bring it before the altar of God and say, "Lord, take it. "Take it." What is God saying to you this morning? What is God saying to you this morning? What is God speaking into your marriage? What is God speaking into your children? What is he saying? What is he saying about that calling to ministry? What is he saying about that offering that you haven't wanted to give? This is the place this morning. To give to God. Altars are open as we sing that song. Thanks for listening. If you'd like some more information on Pneuma Church, visit us on our website at mypneumachurch.org. If you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe or share it with your friends on social media and tag us at My Pneuma Church. Thanks again and God bless. (gentle music) [MUSIC]