Since the very beginning of time, humanity’s ultimate struggle has been to be like God. In the garden, when Satan tempted Eve to eat the fruit God said not to eat, he told her she wouldn’t surely die. Her eyes would be opened. She would know good and evil. She would be like God (Genesis 3:4).

Pride is our greatest downfall!

Here in Genesis 11, the people gather together to build a tower that will reach to the heavens.

Why?

To make a name for themselves.

Ah, and that’s exactly where we get into trouble—whenever we try to make a name for ourselves.

We are all tempted to build our own Towers of Babel. We want to exalt our names.

Where?

At our jobs.

Among our family and friends.

In our hobbies or ministries.

Wait! Our ministries?

Can I make a confession?

That’s where I tend to build my Towers of Babel. 😦

It’s true. We can even build a Tower of Babel right smack dab in the middle of our ministries. A tower is erected whenever our focus is to promote our name instead of God’s name.

A while back I was praying that the Lord would open a door for me in some type of ministry. Several months went by and nothing had really opened up. In frustration one night I poured my heart out to God asking Him why He hadn’t opened any doors. I felt Him speak so clearly to my heart.

He said, “Rachel, you work on building an altar before Me, and Let Me build your platform of ministry.”

I realized then that my responsibility was simple—spend time with Him, seek His face, read and soak up His Word. Then He would open the doors in His timing for a platform of ministry. See, I’d lost my focus. I had forgotten that what I needed most was Him!

He is the key ingredient of ministry. If we don’t have an altar, we will never have a platform of any value.

Our platforms better be anchored to an altar.

Anything we ever do that will have any eternal worth will always come out of our alone time with God.

So may I ask a question?

How are we alone with God?

There’s only one person we need to make a name for, and that’s Jesus Christ! Anything we build better have His name on it!

Proverbs 16:18 says that pride comes before the fall. And fall that Tower of Babel sure did! God brought it down.

God will always bring down “self-made” and “self-named” towers. And He will certainly scatter prideful people. Towers fall! But altars stand tall!

So don’t build a tower.

Build an altar.