And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. — Genesis 22:2
I will never forget the moment God called me to start Another Well Ministries. I was sitting in a church service near Greenville, South Carolina, and God was speaking clearly to my heart. The pastor read from Genesis 26, the story of Isaac returning to redig the wells that his father Abraham had dug. Wells that had been stopped up, silenced, filled in by those who did not want the water to flow. And Isaac went back and opened them again.
Something in that story would not let me go.
But the idea of starting a ministry was the furthest thing from my plans. I wanted to follow God. I wanted to do His will. But a ministry? That was not on my list. I had questions I could not answer and doubts I could not quiet. Who was I to start something like this? There were countless other ministries already doing similar work, with more resources and more experience and more of everything.
And yet the call would not leave.
Surrender is rarely comfortable. It is the moment we release what we have been holding, our plans, our preferences, our carefully constructed ideas about what our life is supposed to look like, and place them on the altar before God. It is the acknowledgment that His design for our lives is better than our own, even when we cannot yet see how.
Abraham understood the altar of surrender better than almost anyone.
God asked him to take Isaac, the son of promise, the son he had waited decades for, the son through whom every hope for the future ran, and place him on the altar. It was the most unreasonable request God could have made. And yet Abraham obeyed. He built the altar. He laid Isaac upon it. And in that act of radical surrender he demonstrated a trust in God that went beyond everything he could understand.
God did not ultimately require Isaac. But He did require Abraham’s willingness.
That is the nature of the altar of surrender. God is not asking us to lose everything we love. He is asking whether we love Him more than everything we love. He is asking whether our plans are open to His revision. Whether our grip on our own future is loose enough for Him to redirect it toward something we could not have planned for ourselves.
Surrender is not the end of something. It is the beginning of everything God had in mind. What are you holding today that needs to be placed on the altar? What plan, what preference, what carefully protected piece of your future is God asking you to release?
The altar of surrender is not a place of loss. It is a place where God’s best begins.
Sometimes the most meaningful encouragement comes from hearing how God is meeting people in ordinary moments.
If you would like to share your story or ask for prayer, we would love to hear from you at anotherwell.org.
These devotionals are written to encourage, challenge, and support you in your walk with God. If they are meaningful to you, you can subscribe and receive them by email.
About Another Well Ministries
Another Well Ministries exists to help people slow down, listen deeply, and encounter God in the ordinary places of life. Through devotionals, reflections, and spiritual resources, we seek to create space for faith to be formed with honesty, grace, and hope.
To learn more about the heart of the ministry or explore additional resources, visit anotherwell.org.
