Exodus 20:24 ESV
An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep, and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you.
An Altar is a Structure used in worship as the place for presenting sacrifices to God or gods. Psalm 22:2 says that the Lord lives within the praise of His saints, that is within our temple made into an altar to offer His worship.
Our praise is a weapon, and we must learn to wield it in battles because our sacrifices offered on the altar is pleasing to the Lord as we saw with Noah in Genesis 8:20.
The psalmist encourages us to praise God simply because he is God. Let’s be determined to focus our praise on the majesty, splendour, and glory of God rather than on what we want God to do for us but on all He has done and will continue to do. It is in our praises that we magnify the Lord and not the problems we’re experiencing.
Genesis 35:3 says Jacob and his household rose to go up to Bethel, so that they may make there an altar to the God who answered them in the day of their distress and has been with them wherever they had gone. What Jacob did was to set up a family altar of praise in honour of what God had done for them in the past, for protecting them and for always answering their prayers.
Let’s learn to take the time to look back at all the memorial stones from our past and give a praiseworthy shout, dance, clap, song, or prayer to the Lord according to Psalm 47:1-2.
We must learn to sing new songs to the Lord as prescribed by Psalm 96:1 regardless of what we’re going through. If we have an altar of praise set up, we are assured of victory.
Let’s take time to praise God for his wondrous wonders in our lives, homes, families, ministries, churches, and nations and for how faithful He is to us all according to 1 Chronicles 16:12 which says to “remember” God’s wondrous works.
Praise must continue to rise from the inside of us and our altar consistently to completely overpower and overthrow the enemy.
It becomes an easy practice to set up public praise altars when we are consistent at our private altars. Psalm 109:30 says we will soon confidently give God praise for His greatness in public worship.
Let our praises rise from the inside of us to touch heaven and change things around us.
The call to set up an altar of praise is to all, according to Psalm 150. Praising God fully requires more than human voices. It also requires instruments as varied as trumpet, lute, harp, strings, pipe, hands, and various cymbals.
We mustn’t wait for only when we’re in a Christian gathering and been led by a worship leader before we offer God the kind of praise He requires and deserves, our altar of praise is not made of brick and mortar but on the tissues of our hearts and therefore is with us always.
According to psalm 42:1, our tongues should be like the ready pen scribbling beautiful, exotic, and praiseworthy anthems and songs from the fullness of our pleasing thoughts, and experiences of God.
Praise is what we should do daily, our altars should be consistently serviced with our sacrifice of praise because we have breath in us.
Shalom