What if the phrases we've used our entire church lives carry deeper meaning than we ever realized? This exploration of 'coming to the altar' takes us on a journey from the Garden of Eden through the Old Testament sacrificial system to the ultimate sacrifice of Christ on the cross. We discover that altars were never just physical structures—they were meeting points between a holy God and broken humanity, places where life was exchanged for death, and ultimately where death was conquered by life. The beauty of this discussion lies in recognizing that every altar throughout scripture pointed forward to Jesus, who became both our sacrifice and our altar. Today, when we hear the call to 'lay it at the altar,' we're being invited into something profoundly transformative: a moment of surrender where we acknowledge that God is God and we are not. It's about bringing our burdens, our guilt, our trials, and our need for control to that place of exchange, saying 'God, I put the outcome in Your hands.' What makes this so relevant for our daily lives is understanding that altar moments aren't confined to Sunday services—they happen in our cars, in our kitchens, in the quiet moments when the Holy Spirit whispers for us to surrender something we've been clutching too tightly. The challenge for us is to move beyond empty ritual and engage our hearts, creating a lifestyle of worship where we continually return to that posture of surrender, remembering that we are living sacrifices offered daily to the One who gave everything for us.