Abraham’s Altars and Ours

By Grant C Brown

Abraham’s
Altars and Ours is a great theological treatise and personal
devotional, and was written for several reasons. First, Grant Brown believes we
need to be reminded that the altars Abraham erected during his lifetime were to
commemorate Abraham’s many experiences of God, and using Abraham’s example, we
should also preserve the remembrance of God’s interventions in our own life and
the life of our loved ones. Secondly, as you read this book you will be inspired
and encouraged to see how the Lord personally and constantly involves himself
in our life in many wonderful ways, even when we find ourselves in the midst of
trials and tribulations of one kind or another. Finally, as you continue to
read, the Lord will help you to choose which altars to build, and also will
help you tear down any ungodly ones you wish removed from your life. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Castle Quay Books
• Release date: Mar 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781988928753

Grant C Brown

Grant Brown was born in St. Thomas, Ontario, and grew up in that city and in London. He is a graduate of four Ontario universities –Western University in London, Ontario, the University of Toronto (Emmanuel College), the University of Guelph and McMaster University in Hamilton. He pastored several churches in Ontario (White River, Sarnia, Fruitland, King City and Burlington). He is also the author of Changed Lives and two unpublished historical studies of King Arthur (King Arthur’s Navy and The Legacy of King Arthur). His wife Barbara and he are the parents of five adult children and an ever-growing number of grandchildren.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Abraham’s Altars and Ours

One of the twentieth century’s greatest men of science and medicine was the Canadian neurologist and neurosurgeon Dr. Wilder Penfield. Penfield achieved worldwide recognition in the particular branch of medicine dealing with the human brain. He has been called the father of modern neurosurgery,¹ and it has been said of him that he was reputed to know more about the human brain than any other living man.²

Dr. Penfield was knowledgeable not only about neurosurgery, however. His philosophical views on the interrelationship between the brain and the mind were quoted in numerous books by scientists and philosophers. I actually remember reading about him in a major philosophy textbook I studied at university.

In one of the books Penfield wrote, he discussed many topics that are still very relevant for our world today. One of those topics he titled Science and Religion, and in speaking of God and God’s nature he declared: To my way of thinking, belief in God is the most reasonable of all the assumptions open to me, and I believe that the spiritual essence of man, being similar to that of God, is somehow in communication with God.³

With these words, Dr. Wilder Penfield was saying almost exactly the same thing the Bible tells us in Genesis 1:27—God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Both Penfield and the Bible assure us that God is our Creator, that he made us in his image, that we are primarily spiritual beings whose essence is such that we can enter into fellowship and communion with God and thereby have a personal relationship with him.

Dr. Penfield and Abraham

One reason I have referred to Dr. Penfield is because in his spare time he wrote a historical novel entitled No Other Gods, a novel about Abraham and his faith in the one true God. He portrays Abraham’s rejection of the idols of his day, and his rejection of belief in the divinity of the moon. The moon was the major god of the great Middle Eastern city of Ur, where Abraham resided when we first hear of him in the Bible. It was also the major god of Haran to which he moved after he left Ur.⁴ However, Abraham’s belief was centred in One who was greater than the moon or any other god. And in No Other Gods, Penfield puts the following words into the mouth of Abraham, thereby expressing his own faith through the words of the great forefather of the Jews:

God is the great spirit of the world …

All men … since time began, have sought God.

I considered the heavens,

the sun and the moon and the stars,

which move in their regular courses;

the land, the waters, the rainfall

and the multitude of living things large and small.

Considering the ordered movement of all things

I knew that there could be but one God behind it all,

not many striving spirits …

Penfield’s Abraham concludes:

I stood long hours … I listened.

At last He seemed to speak to me.

He revealed Himself to me and gave me counsel.

I have walked with God.

I know [now] that there is but one God.

To fear Him [to respect Him] is understanding.

To obey Him is the beginning of wisdom.⁵

Thus Dr. Penfield expresses both his own and Abraham’s sense of the majesty of God, and the belief that human beings can have a personal relationship with God.

Abraham, like Penfield, definitely had a real sense of the majesty of God. He did not worship the moon or the idols of his day, because they were false gods unworthy of his worship, which only the true God deserved. And the words the spiritual father of the Jews used to describe the true God express the majestic nature of that God. In a passage we will examine more closely in chapter 3, Abraham refers to God as the Lord, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth (Genesis 14:22).

Abraham had a real sense not only of the majesty of God, but also of the presence of God. Three verses after we are told that Abraham arrived in the land of Canaan, we are informed that he called on the name of the Lord (Genesis 12:8). He definitely had a personal relationship with the Lord. In fact, several times in the Bible he is referred to as God’s friend.⁶

A word now about the title of my book, Abraham’s Altars and Ours.

Abraham’s Altars

The first part of the title, Abraham’s Altars, came to mind while reading a book by Jack Hayford entitled A Man’s Walk with God. Jack Hayford was the founding pastor of The Church on the Way located in Van Nuys, California. He authored (or co-authored) more than fifty books and composed over 500 hymns and choruses, including the internationally known Majesty. In A Man’s Walk with God, he writes:

If we look at godly men of old and observe their encounters with the Most High God, and observe those places where God intersected their lives … one thing stands out. Altars. At the point of their encounter [with God], it’s there that you’ll find an altar—a clear milestone [of remembrance] erected in one form or another.⁷

Hayford goes on to speak about the altars Abraham erected during his lifetime, pointing out that the basic purpose of those altars was to commemorate Abraham’s many experiences of God. As classics professor E. M. Blaiklock informs us in The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, The patriarchs [notably Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob] seem to have set up altars as symbols of some notable encounter with God and memorials of spiritual experience.⁸

Our Altars

The second part of the title of my book, And Ours (that is to say, Our Altars), reminds us that like Abraham, countless other people have encountered God. As Hayford writes:

They’ve met the Living God … Coming into the presence of the Lord … from which point you go away never the same again … is an indispensable practice. His presence is the place our hearts are "altared"—i.e., put on the altar, and as a result our whole lives will be altered. (Note the spelling difference: we are altared to be altered!)⁹

We could say we are surrendered to be changed! In other words, we surrender our heart, our life, our problems to God at the altar, so God can change us.

So it is that many people have encountered God. They have had experiences similar to those of Abraham. And when these occur, they are our altar experiences, which can bring praise to God and which should be remembered and commemorated.

How This Book Came to Be Written

While I was serving as a pastor in King City, once a year we Protestant ministers were invited to dine at the Mary Lake Augustinian Monastery just outside the town. On that evening every year, there was always a friendly exchange of ideas involving the pastors of King City and our Roman Catholic counterparts—priests (those living at Mary Lake as well as those serving the King City Roman Catholic Church), students (studying for the priesthood), monks (who had chosen a solitary life of prayer, study, and service to one another at the monastery), brothers (who worked on the farm, cared for the disabled, etc.), and a priest-professor, Father Cyril, who taught at York University. It would be hard to find a more interesting and varied group of Roman Catholics together in one place at one time.

All of them were genuinely friendly; in fact, we pastors were told that we could come to the monastery for a few days whenever we wished, for a retreat, or to study, or to fish in Mary Lake.

So it was that I began to visit the monastery twice a year—once for the annual dinner, and once for a few days of retreat. And when our family left King City for ministry in Burlington, I continued to go to Mary Lake once a year for a retreat. Each time I went, I would take with me a devotional book and a Bible to serve as a basis for prayer.

It was in 2002 that the devotional book I chose was A Man’s Walk with God. When I semi-retired two years later and visited Mary Lake for my 2004 retreat, I took Jack Hayford’s book with me once again.

As I reread A Man’s Walk with God, I began to remember and meditate on the many occasions when the Lord definitely had involved himself in my life. As I remembered those occasions, I formulated my own outline not only of altars of remembrance erected by Abraham but also of altars of remembrance erected by many other people (in their mind and memory) as they travelled through life. Eventually I made the decision to write about Abraham and some of those other people, and to record my remembrances of the Lord’s intervention in my life also. As Jack Hayford points out, too many believers do not

tack down their experiences in meeting God by building altars. Consequently, the revelation and memory of that moment where God intersected their lives, in a way they should never forget, dissipates … Just as with words drawn in thin air by a skywriting plane, as time passes and the winds of adversity blow, the clarity of the message fades away.¹⁰

Hayford challenges us to make sure that we build our own unique altars of remembrance. However, as he says,

Rather than stones, take up pen and paper … I would urge every disciple of Jesus Christ to benefit from keeping a spiritual journal … Words from the Lord to your own heart [or inspiring religious experiences] as edifying as they may be, can easily lose their power and sustaining grace in your life if they are not set in place—written down. It’s like placing the stones of an altar [as Abraham did].¹¹

So I began to write about the altars erected in my mind and memory.

The Purpose of My Book

Abraham’s Altars and Ours was written for several reasons. One reason was to preserve for myself the remembrance of God’s interventions in my life. Also, it was written to preserve the remembrance of those interventions for my loved ones. I wanted them to draw inspiration and encouragement from my conviction (gained through reading the Bible and through personal experience) that the Lord involves himself in our life in many wonderful ways, even when we find ourselves in the midst of trials and tribulations of one kind or another. Finally, I wrote this book hoping it might uplift anyone who happens to come into possession of a copy of it.

I realize that because of the personal nature of Abraham’s Altars and Ours, some readers will be more interested in the book than others. However, even if some are not interested in my particular personal experiences of the Lord, I am sure all will be interested in reading about the altars Abraham built throughout his life. Also, I know you will be uplifted and inspired by the extraordinary Christian experiences of the many great Christians whose lives are detailed in this book—great Christians like St. Patrick (the world-renowned missionary bishop), Eric Liddell (winner of an Olympic gold medal, whose story was told in the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire), Florence Nightingale (the founder of modern nursing, and the greatly beloved heroine of soldiers she nursed in the Crimean War involving Great Britain and Russia), and Mitsuo Fuchida (lead pilot of the Japanese planes that attacked Pearl Harbor before he converted to the Christian faith). All of these Christians, and the others you will read about, were truly dedicated individuals whose experiences of God and Christ will inspire you to get closer to the Lord yourself.

I praise God for his guidance and help during every period of my own life, and I encourage my loved ones (and any other readers of this book) with the assurance that the Lord is able to guide and help you likewise, no matter how difficult the circumstances of your life may be now or in the future.

It was this assurance that enabled the great North African bishop and philosopher, St. Augustine, to lift his voice to God in the following prayer:¹²

O Lord our God …

protect us and bear us up.

You will bear us up, yes,

from our infancy until our grey hairs

You will bear us up.

Chapter 2

The Altar of Purpose

Abraham

Patrick: A Courageous Saint

A Thirteen-Year-Old Boy Called by God

The first altar built by God’s friend Abraham was built to commemorate God’s purpose for his life. That purpose and Abraham’s response to it are found in Genesis 12:1–7. The actual purpose itself is summed up in the first three verses of the chapter:

The Lord had said to Abram, Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

Note especially these words: I will bless you … and you will be a blessing … and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

In other words, the purpose of God for Abraham was to follow the will of God for his life so that he would be a blessing for all peoples on earth.

To a New Land for the Blessing of Others

The particular way God wanted Abraham to fulfill his purpose of blessing others was to leave the lands in which his father had lived and worked, and go to a new land to which God would lead him—a land that eventually God would give to his offspring. This meant leaving great civilizations (centred primarily around the ancient cities of an area occupied today by the people of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey) and becoming a pioneer in the less developed land of Canaan (occupied today primarily by Israelis, Palestinians, and the people of Lebanon).¹

In his book entitled Living in the Gap Between Promise and Reality: The Gospel According to Abraham, Iain Duguid refers to the self-sacrifice involved in Abraham’s move away from the major centres of ancient Middle Eastern civilization to take up residence in Canaan:

Abram embarked on the way of greatness by following the path of self-sacrifice. The man through whom the promised salvation of the world was to come, had first of all to be isolated from all that he held dear. He had to leave his home … his friends and his relatives [like many missionaries have had to do down through the centuries]. In addition, he had to leave the centres of power in the world. Ur and Haran were two of the three greatest centres of trade in Mesopotamia at that time. They were the New York and Los Angeles of the ancient world, the places where the movers and shakers lived. He had to leave all that behind and go … to take possession of a backward land with the dubious distinction of being regularly overrun and fought over by invading armies. But God spoke, and Abram went.²

Yes, Abraham believed God was directing him to a new land, and he was obedient to God. Already he had accompanied his father Terah from Ur to Haran (sometimes spelled Harran): Together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there [and] Terah … died in Harran (Genesis 11:31–32). Then after Terah died, Abraham continued on to Canaan. As we read in Genesis 12:4–7:

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him … He took his wife Sarai [as Sarah was called at that time], his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. Abram travelled through the land as far as … Shechem [in central Canaan] … The Lord appeared to Abram and said, To your offspring I will give this land. So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

So it was that God gave Abraham a purpose in life, Abraham accepted that purpose, and then built an altar to acknowledge both God’s purpose for him and his acceptance of it. He was definitely willing to be a blessing for others—for Sarah and Lot, for his servants, for his immediate offspring, for his later descendants, for the Jews (through his son Isaac), for the Arabs (through his son Ishmael), and for us Gentiles (through his descendant Jesus, the Messiah).

To accomplish the purpose God had given him, Abraham had been willing to leave the familiarity, comfort, and security of life in Mesopotamia, where the great Tigris and Euphrates Rivers made the land fertile and rich.

A few words about Abraham’s original homeland (Mesopotamia and the cities of Ur and Haran) would be helpful at this point. (1) First of all, concerning Mesopotamia, I will quote from the Zondervan Atlas of the Bible in which Professor Carl Rasmussen informs us, Most of … ‘Mesopotamia,’ lies in what today is Iraq, while the rest is located in Syria, Turkey, and Iran. The name Mesopotamia is derived from the Greek and means ‘land between the rivers’ [the Tigris and the Euphrates]. Today the name is used by extension to refer to the land between and beside these two great rivers.³ (2) Secondly, concerning the cities of Ur and Haran—the great city of Haran was located in northern Mesopotamia (in modern-day Turkey, near the border of Syria), and the ancient city of Ur where Abraham first lived is generally depicted on maps as being located in southern Mesopotamia (in Iraq) but may have been located further north.⁴ (See endnote 4 if you are interested in a much more detailed discussion of the locations of Ur and Haran.)

As stated earlier, Abraham was willing to leave the familiarity, comfort, and security of life in Mesopotamia. He was willing to move to a less civilized and less prosperous land, Canaan. He was willing to be a pioneer there, and to help establish the worship of the one true God. He was willing to serve the Lord as leader of a minority group, but a minority group whose concept of God one day would be accepted by millions upon millions of the world’s inhabitants. So he built what we could call his Altar of Purpose, to signify his willingness to be used by the Lord in fulfilling the Lord’s purpose for his life.

Just as the Lord God had a purpose for Abraham’s life, he has a purpose for every person’s life. Some people don’t discover his purpose for their life, but others do. Here is an example of someone who did.

Saint Patrick

If you were to ask people on the street in a kind of Gallup poll, What saint of the Christian church do you associate with Ireland?, or simply Who is Ireland’s most famous saint?, most people would reply St. Patrick. But many of those people would not realize (and I didn’t for many years) that although St. Patrick is Ireland’s most famous saint, he was not Irish! Originally, he was a citizen of Roman Britain and as such would have lived in what today is Scotland, England, or Wales, because Ireland was not part of the Roman Empire. Patrick definitely wasn’t Irish.

However, when he was sixteen years old, Irish raiders (ancient pirates they were, and slave traders) carried him off from Britain to Ireland, where he was sold as a slave to an Irish chieftain. The chieftain sent him to the fields to look after pigs, sheep, and cows. As he experienced the solitude and privation of that kind of life, Patrick came to know the Lord whom he had failed to find in his former ease and luxury in Britain. As he wrote later in his Confession:

I was taken captive. I was then about sixteen years of age. I did not know the true God … [Like many others of my day] we turned away from God, and did not keep his commandments, and did not obey our priests, who used to remind us of our salvation … [But in Ireland] the Lord opened the sense of my unbelief that I might at last remember my sins and be converted with all my heart to the Lord my God … In the land of my captivity I earnestly sought Him, and there I found Him, and He saved me.⁵

Thus Patrick came to know and love the Lord. And note—the result of his conversion was continual prayer, an increasing love for God, and a conviction that one day by God’s grace he would be enabled to return to Britain.

When he finally did escape from Ireland after six years of slavery, he endured a brief period as a slave in Gaul (France), but eventually returned to his own land where he studied to be a priest so that he could care and labour for the salvation of others.⁶

God’s Purpose for Patrick

It was at this point that Patrick discovered the specific purpose God had for his life. Yes, he was to care and labour for the salvation of others, but he was not to do so in Britain where the Christian faith already had been planted; he was to do it in Ireland, where people did not know about Jesus. Concerning two remarkable dreams he had, he tells us:

I saw in the night a vision of a man whose name was Victoricus, coming as it were from Ireland, with countless letters. And he gave me one of them, and I read the opening words of the letter, which were, ‘The Voice of the Irish’; and as I read the beginning of the letter I thought that at the same moment I heard their voice … [from] near the Western Sea, and thus did they cry out as with one mouth: We ask you, son, come and walk among us once more. And I was quite broken in heart, and could read no further, so I woke up …

And another night—whether within me, or beside me, I know not, God knows—they called me most unmistakably with words which I heard but could not understand, except that at the end of the prayer He [the Lord] spoke thus: He that has laid down His life for you, it is He that speaks in you; and so I awoke full of joy.⁷

One could say that the spot where Patrick on two occasions heard the call of the Irish was the location of his own particular Altar of Purpose. And he accepted the purpose God had for his life, to serve the Irish for the duration of my life, humbly and sincerely. He obeyed the Lord and went as a missionary to Ireland, where he laboured until he was over seventy years old. His birth date is uncertain, but we know that his missionary work occurred between A.D. 400 and 500.

A Violent Age

Patrick proclaimed the gospel in one of the most violent ages in the history of the world—the Dark Ages, which began when the Western Roman Empire was falling apart. The situation in Britain was bad because the Roman troops (except for a few garrisons) had left the island in A.D. 409 in order to defend the Roman Empire from barbarian raids on the continent. This meant that Britain was to a great extent undefended from pirate raids by the Irish, from the wild Picts who lived in northern Scotland, and from the Anglo-Saxons who raided from bases in nations we know today as Germany, Denmark, and Holland.

As mentioned earlier, Patrick had been captured in Britain by Irish raiders who took him to Ireland as a slave. When he escaped to Gaul (France), apparently his boat was destroyed, and he wandered for some time without food because the land had been made barren by barbarian Goths and by the Vandals (from whom we get the English word vandalism). The Goths and Vandals had swept through Roman Gaul with fire and sword, even as other barbarians were devastating Roman Britain. In fact, Goths and Vandals had so decimated the land that no food was to be found in the once fertile area.⁸

The violence of the age is seen also in the fact that when Patrick eventually returned to Ireland as a missionary, he was met on shore by an Irish chieftain with warriors ready to kill him. Fortunately, that particular chieftain was influenced by Patrick’s proclamation of the gospel, became a Christian, and gave Patrick land and a barn to use as a church.

Later, because he was hated by the Druids (the religious leaders of the Irish Celts), he sought and received protection from other Irish chiefs and kings, even from Loegaire the High King of Ireland.

Although the High King didn’t become a Christian himself, he nonetheless gave the missionary from Britain permission to preach and baptize. And because of the freedom King Loegaire gave his people to become Christians if they desired, many accepted the faith—including several members of the royal family.⁹

However, that was by no means the end of Patrick’s troubles. There were many more encounters with raiders and pirates during the courageous saint’s numerous journeys throughout the wilds of Ireland. On one occasion his brave charioteer received a spear-thrust meant for Patrick. But in spite of the fact that Patrick faced much opposition, daily expecting to be murdered or enslaved, he declared:

Regardless of danger I must make known the gift of God and everlasting consolation, without fear … I must accept with equanimity whatever befalls me, be it good or evil, and always give thanks to God, who taught me to trust in Him always without hesitation … and, should I be worthy, I am prepared to give even my life without hesitation and most gladly for his name.¹⁰

Accomplishments

Thankfully, St. Patrick avoided martyrdom, and before he died, he and his helpers were able to establish 200 to 300 churches, ordain hundreds of priests, organize monastic communities with libraries as well as schools, and baptize many thousands of Irish converts.¹¹ Patrick was able to do this because he was willing, if necessary, to be slain by the Irish in his attempt to bring them to Christ. He laboured incessantly at his task for thirty years, probably almost every moment of his waking life, because he had no family responsibilities and because he was a man obsessed with a mission. Not only did he recruit priests and other religious personnel from Britain and France to be missionaries and pastors for the churches he had founded, but he also imparted his own zeal for Christ to his converts, many of whom became his fellow missionaries. Therefore, Patrick could write in his Confession:

[Thus it came to pass] in Ireland that those who never had a knowledge of God, but until now had always worshipped idols and things impure, have now been made a people of the Lord, and are called sons of God … [And it came to pass] that the sons and daughters of the kings of the Irish are seen to be monks and virgins of Christ.¹²

One 21st century reference book sums up the impact of Patrick’s life in the following words: "It was the man called Patrick, the author of the Confession … who carried out the massive work of implanting the Christian faith so widely and deeply in Ireland that the Irish became the second Christian nation outside the ambit [the bounds] of ancient Rome."¹³

God gave St. Patrick a purpose for his life (even as he had given Abraham a purpose). His purpose was to convert the Irish to Christ. Patrick joyfully accepted that purpose, and it was fulfilled.

God’s Purpose For My Life

I am eternally grateful to God that he gave me a purpose for my life. The purpose of which I speak was revealed to me when I was thirteen years old.

However, there was something very important that happened in my life four years before I turned thirteen—something that undoubtedly played a part in my discovery of God’s purpose for my life.

When I was nine years old, I received a Gideon New Testament while attending Balaclava Public School in the city of St. Thomas. The New Testament was presented to students by the Gideons, a Christian organization which began basically as a group of travelling businessmen who placed Bibles in hotel rooms. Since its official formation date in 1908, whenever allowed to do so, it has placed free Bibles in hotels, prisons, hospitals, schools, and elsewhere. Today Gideons International is an association of Christian business and professional men and their wives, and continues to distribute free Bibles, New Testaments, and portions of Scripture. In fact, in April 2015, its two billionth scripture publication was made available to the world.

The New Testament I received from the Gideons had two special pages at the end of the book. On the second-last page was printed an outline of the steps leading to faith. On the last page, along with a few more scripture verses, there was a section entitled My Decision to Receive Christ as My Saviour. Underneath that title were these words: Confessing to God that I am a sinner, and believing that the Lord Jesus Christ died for my sins on the cross and was raised for my justification, I do now receive and confess Him as my personal Saviour. Below that statement was a place to sign my name and a date—if I decided to accept Jesus as my Saviour.

I did not easily make the decision to sign my name in that New Testament. To do so would indicate that I was giving my life to the Lord, but I was not ready to do that yet. I received the New Testament in 1948 but I did not sign my name until 1952, when I really meant what I was signing. At that point, after nearly four years of considering what was involved, I finally took the steps necessary to become a Christian and committed my life to the Lord. As I look at my Gideon New Testament this very moment, on the last page I see my name written on one line and the date of signing written on the next line, Tuesday, February 19, 1952. That was when I became a Christian.

In my particular case it didn’t take long for me to discover God’s purpose for me as a Christian—it took less than a year. Of course, it wasn’t a purpose with such major significance as the purposes God had for St. Patrick and for Abraham! His purpose for me was simply that I should become a pastor. There is nothing of which I am more certain than this—the Lord wanted my life’s work to be that of serving as a minister of the gospel.

I don’t remember the exact day when this realization occurred for the very first time. However, I know it occurred at the small farmhouse my father and mother bought between St. Thomas, Ontario (where I had been born), and Aylmer, Ontario (where my grandparents lived). There on my bed in that house, God spoke to my heart and conscience in such a way that I knew without a doubt he was calling me to become a pastor. So it happened that my bed in my parents’ farmhouse was the location of my Altar of Purpose.

Resisting God’s Purpose and Call

One other thing I knew, besides the fact that God wanted me to become a pastor, was that I did not want to become a pastor! Although at the time I didn’t know exactly what a pastor had to do, I did know he was expected to preach sermons, and I did not want to write a sermon every week. It would be like writing a major essay every week, and I didn’t like the thought of writing essays—even short ones!

Also, as I later came to realize, I would probably be expected to visit the members of the church congregation, and I didn’t like the thought of doing that either. I had been an only child, and like many other only children I tended to be somewhat of a loner. Probably that tendency was greater in my case because not only did I lack brothers and sisters, but I had no cousins my own age. Additionally, the people my parents usually visited had no young children, so while the adults talked, I had to entertain myself. I would play alone with my toy soldiers, or read a book, or rock in a rocking chair that most of the older people had in their homes. Therefore, because of my tendency to keep to myself—which tendency probably contributed to my shyness—the thought of having to be an outgoing talker and visitor in the homes of church people was too hard to bear!

In my heart I was protesting like Moses, who also resisted God’s call, and who said to him: "I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I