What an amazing time we had building the altar on 10th February. It was so special to see everyone joining in. It was a very significant time – so important that we decided that the altar became a memorial stone! It became a significant marker for us on our journey: a prophetic sign of a point we had reached as a church family, where we were setting our hearts in purity and devotion to the Lord and to one another. This includes the genuine reconciliation of any broken relationships, in preparation for what God wants to do among us. Remember that it is from the heart that everything else flows (Proverbs 4:23). There may be some heart to heart conversations to be had still, but something has been established in the heavenly places that we do well to align ourselves with.
Prophetically, we feel that we are now beginning to move from building the altar towards rebuilding the foundations – see Ezra 3 (and remember that the altar is an ongoing reminder of the need to keep our hearts right before God and one another). The apostle Paul reminds us that we are ‘rooted and founded in love’ (Ephesians 3:17) and roots and foundations are a good way of talking about the organic building that we are being built into together – a temple made of living stones. So when we begin to relook at our foundational beliefs as a church from the beginning of April onwards, we are not just looking at ‘blocks of teaching’ to try to put in place. We are looking at living revelation and experience of God’s truth and God’s ways that we want to be sure our lives, hearts and minds are deeply rooted in, and that keep us connected to the head of the Body, Jesus. It is this way of looking at foundations that explain why Paul is so passionate in stressing their importance and vitality (Ephesians 2:19-22; 4:11-16; 1 Cor.3:10-12).
And so – as we move forward, let’s keep our hearts pure, clean, wholehearted, responsive, open (the fruit of the altar working in us); and let’s attend to the roots and foundations of our personal and corporate lives. When they are secure and strong, rooted and founded in the love that is in Christ, then we will be amazed at all that God does with us and through us, far more than we could have ever asked or imagined!