For this article, I am sharing an excerpt from my book “Carriers of the Ark". The book is about what it takes to carry the Presence of God on your life. This particular excerpt chapter is all about worship.

I believe there is much more that God wants to do during our worship services. We’ve settled for singing a few songs and moving on, but God wants to manifest Himself! In Elijah’s day, the altar of the Lord was broken down because of idolatry. He repaired it, then called on the Lord, and fire fell. Many people want the fire to fall, however, repairing the altar preceded the fire. The altar represents worship. It’s time to repair our impaired worship, bring it back to the biblical standard, and watch as God responds in power!

Chapter 4

REPAIRING THE ALTAR

“Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.”
—Elvina M. Hall

I was in the Philippines not too long ago leading worship at a great church in Quezon City. I’m always excited when I get to lead there because the church is full of people who are hungry and passionate for God. At the end of the set, we sang about the God of the Breakthrough and I just felt that we needed to pray for people with metal in their bodies.

I called them forward and we began to pray. Within moments I heard shouts from the front and they brought a young man up to testify. He had been in a motorcycle accident where his skull had been crushed. Doctors placed a metal plate in his skull to help where the bone was broken. Through it all, the young man’s right eye became blind. But in those few moments God restored his sight and the young man came up to show how he could now see! He covered his left eye and as I held up numbers with my hand, he followed me perfectly!

Another woman who was in a wheelchair also came forward. She didn’t have metal in her body that I knew of, but apparently she had faith to be healed. I learned that she had a spinal injury that caused her to lose feeling in her legs and she couldn’t walk anymore. Some people helped her up and began to walk her around the church. They brought her up to testify on the platform but I wanted to see her walk without help. They let go of her and I had her walk to me. She did it with no help! Jesus totally healed her!

God wants to break out in our worship services with miracles, healing, prophecy, intercession and a whole host of other kingdom things! True worship is a key component to having a supernatural atmosphere.

In 1 Kings 18, we find the renowned story of the prophet Elijah calling fire down from heaven. A great victory is won, God demonstrated His power, and the false prophets of Baal were executed. It was the demonstration of His power that was the turning point. However, there was one thing Elijah did that I believe is key: he repaired the altar of the Lord.

“Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come near to me.” So all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down.” (1 Kings 18:30)

The altar represents worship and the word in Hebrew for “repaired” is “rapha.” It’s the same word where we get the name of God, Jehovah-Rapha which means, “The Lord Our Healer.” When we see Elijah repairing the altar, it could also be translated that he healed the altar of the Lord. It’s a picture of healing our worship unto the Lord.

If something needs healing, that means it’s not functioning correctly, or not at its full potential. This is where I believe the worship of the church (in general) is: not at its full potential, and in some cases, completely broken down. There’s so much more God wants to do in our worship times.

It was breakthrough praise that preceded God releasing those miracles in the Philippines. In Elijah’s day, it was the repairing of the altar that led to the demonstration of God’s power. If we want the fire to fall in our times of worship, we must take the time to heal the altar.

This chapter focuses on what areas I believe need to be healed, or called to full potential, in regards to our praise and worship. Carriers of the Ark prioritize worshiping the Lord because they know that true worship is the key to sustaining the Presence of God.

The Frequency of a Broken Alabaster Jar

The reason the altar of the Lord was broken down in Elijah’s day was because idolatry had been rampant in the people of God. I’ll focus more on destroying idolatry in a later chapter, but for simplicity’s sake, the key to breaking the power of idolatry is full surrender to Jesus. It’s giving Him His rightful place in our lives as Lord. When Jesus is Lord in every area of your life, you reap the benefits of His Lordship in every area of your life.

God is looking for a sound that carries the frequency of a broken alabaster jar. It’s the sound of sacrifice, the sound of surrender, the sound of a life laid down. That’s the sound of worship. David said it like this: “…I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing…” (2 Samuel 24:24 NIV).

A woman came to Jesus and poured out an extravagant offering on Him:

“While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.” (Mark 14:3 NIV)

This offering she gave was costly, pure, and unreserved.

The disciples, with Judas probably taking the lead, complained and called it a waste. They said that it could be sold for more than three hundred denarii, which comes to almost a year’s worth of wages (one denarius being a day’s wages). That is a costly offering. It’s costly to bring a gift that expensive. It’s costly to give offerings into godly ministries. It’s costly to worship God in the midst of pain. It’s costly to worship through inconvenience. It’s costly to consistently give of your time, talent and treasure. But nothing is ever wasted when it’s poured out on Jesus. He’s worth more than anything we could ever give Him. The reality is, all that we offer Him came from His hand in the first place; so we’re really just giving Him back what already belonged to Him. It’s a privilege.

The perfume was made of pure nard. In the Greek language, the word for pure means genuine and unadulterated. According to Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, nard was often adulterated. Adulterated by definition means “to debase or make impure by adding inferior materials or elements; use cheaper, inferior, or less desirable goods in the production of (any professedly genuine article).”

If we want to repair the altar in our day, we need to purify our worship! We’ve added the inferior elements of complacency, irreverence, and boredom. We’ve become so concerned with what man thinks of us that we’ve lost the fear of the Lord. We end up watering down our worship and limiting the Holy Spirit because we’re afraid of freaking out the new people. Our motives have been mixed with wanting to impress people and gain more “likes” on social media. We need pure hearts who’ve come in contact with their deep-seated need to know God. We need to rediscover the majesty of Christ and fix our eyes on Him.

Interesting to note, when Jesus cleared out the temple because they had turned His Father’s house into a den of robbers, it was then that the blind and lame came to Him and were healed. Purity came to the temple and the miraculous broke out (Matt. 21:12-14).

This woman’s worship was pure. She wasn’t bringing watered-down worship. It was genuine and unadulterated; pure and fully devoted to Jesus. It’s also important to note that the fragrant oil was kept in the alabaster jar. According to Blue Letter Bible, the ancients considered alabaster to be the best material in which to preserve their ointments. When she broke it open, she wasn’t preserving it anymore. She was giving Jesus everything. She brought unreserved worship. In a room of naysayers, she poured out an extravagant offering. She finally found someone worthy to pour out her best offering on. It’s the ultimate reason to worship: He is worthy.

The scripture says that as she did so, the fragrance of the perfume filled the house (John 12:3). The whole house was affected by her costly, pure and unadulterated worship. Just like the fragrance filled the house, let the frequency fill our sound - the frequency of a broken alabaster jar - that everywhere we’d go, our sound will call people to lay their lives down before the King in true worship.

I hope this excerpt encouraged and challenged you. The chapter continues with repairing our worship sharing on the expressions of praise, the fear of the Lord, prophetic worship, and more. If you’d like to get the rest of the chapter, you can grab a copy of the book, “Carriers of the Ark”, here or on Amazon (affiliate link).

Questions:
What does ‘repairing the altar’ look like in your own life? Are there areas of your worship that need healing or restoration? How is God leading you to rebuild a place of pure devotion to Him?"d

"How can we as a church move beyond ‘watered-down worship’ and cultivate a deeper, more authentic sound before God? What do you think needs to change in our approach to worship?

Comment below!