There’s a troubling pattern in our churches today—a ritual we’ve perfected, a performance we’ve mastered. Week after week, we watch people walk forward. Tears stream. Hands raise. Knees bend at altars worn smooth by ten thousand footsteps.
And then Monday comes.
The same anger. The same addiction. The same cold indifference toward the things of God. The same life, untouched, unaltered, unmoved.
We’ve become experts at visiting altars without ever encountering the One who dwells there.
The Difference Between Religion and Encounter
Here’s what we’ve forgotten: the altar was never meant to be a destination. It was meant to be a collision point—the place where human frailty crashes into holy fire, where our fake facades shatter against the reality of the living God.
When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, he didn’t walk away unchanged. He was undone. Seraphim had to touch his lips with burning coals. He was marked by that encounter. Altered. The man who left the temple was not the same man who entered it.
When Jacob wrestled with God at Peniel, he walked away limping. Limping. God literally changed his body, changed his name, changed his destiny. He bore the physical mark of having been in the presence of the Almighty.
When Moses came down from the mountain after forty days in God’s presence, his face shone so brightly people couldn’t look at him. He had to veil himself. You cannot stand that close to glory and remain unchanged.
When Paul met Jesus on the Damascus road, he was struck blind, thrown to the ground, and so transformed that the murderer of Christians became Christianity’s greatest evangelist. Three days later, when his sight returned, he was seeing with entirely new eyes.
This is what real encounter does. It alters you.
The Altar Without the Alteration
But we’ve learned to have altars without alteration. We’ve mastered the art of the emotional moment without the life transformation. We know how to weep without repenting, how to worship without surrendering, how to pray without changing.
We treat the altar like a spiritual vending machine—insert emotion, receive temporary relief, return to life as usual. We want the comfort of God’s presence without the disruption of His power. We want to be touched but not transformed. Moved but not marked.
And God will not be mocked.
You cannot stand in the presence of the Holy One and remain who you were. You cannot encounter the living God and walk away with your sin intact, your pride untouched, your will unbroken. Fire does not warm—it consumes.
What True Encounter Looks Like
When you truly encounter God, something in you dies. It has to. The old self, the false self, the self that was cobbled together from wounds and lies and self-protection—that self cannot survive in the presence of perfect Love.
When you truly encounter God, you stop managing your image and start mourning your sin. You stop defending yourself and start dying to yourself. You stop trying to negotiate with God and start surrendering to Him.
When you truly encounter God, your life becomes evidence. Not perfect—Peter still struggled, Paul still had his thorn, the disciples still argued about greatness—but marked. Changed. Fundamentally altered in ways that cannot be hidden and will not be reversed.
People who encounter God carry something. There’s an authority that comes not from position but from presence. A peace that defies circumstances. A joy that has nothing to do with happiness. A love that costs everything. A boldness that intimidates demons and confounds religious people.
The Question That Haunts
So here’s the question that should haunt every one of us who calls ourselves a Christian: If nothing in our lives has changed, have we truly encountered Him at all?
If we’re still enslaved to the same sins, still driven by the same fears, still defined by the same wounds, still living for the same worthless things we lived for before we “met Jesus”—did we really meet Him? Or did we just meet a version of Him we created, safe and small enough to fit into our lives without disrupting them?
The altar is not the problem. God is still there, still holy, still powerful, still willing to meet anyone who comes with a genuine heart. The problem is us. We want the experience without the death. We want the encounter without the alteration. We want to say we met God without letting God rearrange everything about who we are.
Come to Be Changed
If you’re going to come to the altar, come to be wrecked. Come to be undone. Come willing to have every false thing burned away, every hiding place exposed, every idol dethroned. Come knowing that the you who approaches may not be the you who walks away.
Come like Jacob, ready to wrestle until you’re broken and blessed.
Come like Isaiah, ready to confess “I am undone.”
Come like Moses, ready to remove your shoes because you’re standing on holy ground.
Come like Paul, ready to count everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ.
Come like the woman with the alabaster jar, ready to waste everything you have on the One who is worth it all.
The Living God Is Not Safe
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not tame. The God who walked out of the tomb having conquered death is not controllable. The God whose voice spoke galaxies into existence is not containable. The Holy Spirit who fell at Pentecost like fire is not safe.
He will alter you. He will mark you. He will change you from the inside out, from glory to glory, until you bear the image of His Son. And it will cost you everything—your pride, your plans, your pretending, your playing it safe.
But here’s the staggering truth: it’s worth it. A thousand times worth it. Because what He takes away was always killing you anyway, and what He gives in return is life—real, abundant, overflowing, eternal life.
Stop coming to altars that don’t alter you. Stop settling for emotional experiences that evaporate by Tuesday. Stop pretending that crying during a worship song is the same thing as surrender.
The living God is waiting. Not to make you comfortable, but to make you new. Not to affirm who you are, but to transform you into who you were always meant to be.
Come to the altar. But come ready to be changed.
Because when you encounter the living God—truly encounter Him—you will never be the same.
And thank God for that.