Putting Our Gifts on the Altar

Like Abraham, who put his promised son Isaac on the altar, we need to put the gifts, talents, hopes and dreams God has given us on the altar. It keeps them from becoming an idol in our lives and keeps our focus on Jesus.

God's gifts and calling are irrevocable (Romans 11:29, NIV). The King James version says “without repentance.” This verse means that God never repents of giving us our gifts and talents. He never takes them away and never regrets giving them to us. That's why you see some people living really ungodly life styles but still functioning in tremendous giftings and talents.

Just like Abraham, we need to put our spiritual giftings, natural talents, hopes and dreams on the altar by being willing to sacrifice them for a season. God gave them all to us, and they're all His anyway.

You see, sin messes up our relationship to, well, pretty much everything. So the giftings, talents, hopes and dreams God gave us can become idols to us – an end in themselves. But being willing to sacrifice them, to “fast” them, if you will, gets our perspective back on God. It forces us to trust God instead of the gift. And the degree of difficulty we face in doing this shows us how much that thing has already become an idol in our life.

The point is this. To heal our sinful relationship to our own calling, we have to die to it for a season. The sticky wicket is that God determines the duration – not us – and we usually don't know the duration up front. So we have to be prepared for forever. Our attitude needs to be, “Lord, you can give this back to me when you choose, if ever.”

When God gives it back to us, and He always will, just like Abraham got Isaac back, it will be sanctified and holy. We ourselves will be in a more mature place and able to handle it with more grace and wisdom. And our focus will be on God and building His Kingdom with our gifting and talent, not on building our personal empire.