an altar stained with blood

"So the churches throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace, being built up and going on in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it continued to increase. Now as Peter was traveling through all those regions...Peter went up on a housetop to pray...and fell into a trance...while peter was reflecting on the vision, the Spirit said to him: "Behold three men are looking for you...-Acts 9:31-32 & 10:9,10 & 19

It is often when we have just grown comfortable, begun to enjoy the blessings of prosperity, peace and comfort that are the very results of our faithful service and God's gracious blessings and work among us that we run into the call of the Spirit.

Peter was confronted by a disturbing dream on a rooftop overlooking the area. In this dream he was commanded to eat a host of unclean animals. Something that was unthinkable to a good Jew. Something that was outside "his comfort zone". A call to do something that others would abhor, that others would questions, that others would resist. It was against all they had grown up knowing. It was not religiously appropriate. It was wrong. Peter could lose all the wonderful perks that a traveling apostle might get if he engaged in such barbarian like behavior. What would the good leaders think, if they saw Peter feasting on forbidden food?

What a quandary he was in...of course he resisted, refused and repelled.
Don't we all...when God's call comes to us and disturbs our religious nests of comfort and goodness. We are quick to proclaim how mysterious God's ways are until He speaks in such raw and unconventional ways.

In order for Peter to move to the next level of outreach and ministry...God called him to kill something.
Something always has to die in order to move. Something has to be killed in order to see the next field of harvest. Someone has to rise up and take the knife to their traditions, their thinking, their plans, their own way of thinking and kill it.

Mission almost always requires an altar stained with blood.

The only person that should or can go...should be the one who will obey the call to die.
To let go of the past, no matter how wonderful it has been. let go of the known in order to embrace those who are unknown.

God had three men arriving to meet Peter but God had to meet him first in the butcher block called the prayer closet. Where God slays our limitations that keep the gospel from continually moving forward, out and beyond. Too many prayer closets become locked and the people in them end up suffocating on the fumes of their own words. God wants to unleash a missionary force of men and women who have rose up and killed whatever God says to slay and emerge ready to go...ready to embrace the unclean animals that the Lord has destined to fill with His life transforming Spirit. The church will be born in the stables of our filthy streets again and again...if Peter will come to the rooftop and pray. If Peter will dare to pick up the knife again...and if Peter will choose to eat what before...he would have rejected.

Daring days indeed...