Behold His Face!
“The more I seek You, the more I find You. The more I find You, the more I love You” sings in the background.
David cries out in Psalm 24:2-6,
Christians often say “seek His face, not His hand.” When people refer to seeking the face of God they are typically talking about seeking Him personally(1) and not anything that he offers them.
About a year ago, I was sitting in a prayer room praying I felt God ask me, “What is it that you want from me?” I began crying and I told God, “I want to see You face to face.” I know I deeply long for this. But what is it that I am really asking from Him and how do I get it?
“God in my waking, God in my sleeping, God in my resting, there in my working ... Be my everything, be my everything, be my everything, be my everything, be my everything, be my everything, be my everything.”
David says in Psalm 11:7, “For the Lord is righteous, he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.” And in Psalm 17:15 David cries, “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.”
And in Matthew 5:8, Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Up to now, these verses would have motivated me to work all the harder. I thought, if I just worked hard enough and could somehow get it right, I would see God face to face.
“I know in my heart there must be a way to sing a greater song, a greater song to you on the earth” sings.
When I have encountered Him, somehow I thought, if I could just do whatever I must have did right again I could encounter Him the same way again. However, this has never worked. Probably because it was not the result of something 'I got right' in the first place that I encountered Him. Also, seeking an 'experience' is not seeking Him for Himself but seeking something from Him.
Standing on the Mount of Transfiguration every day would not have brought Peter, James, and John any closer to Jesus. While Jesus considered Peter, James, and John his most intimate friends, it was not doing something specifically 'right' or standing on the Mount of transfiguration that caused Jesus to reveal Himself to them in the first place. And seeing Him transfigured more than once would not help them to know Him. It was not meant to be something that was done over and over again.
“You gave everything for me, now I'll give everything for you... everything” sings.
God generously lavishes His love upon me and I know without a doubt that I am loved by Him. However, somewhere in the picture I have of God, when I think about His holiness, I see Him as unobtainable, out of my reach. I see Him as the top of a mountain that I can't reach. I see Him in view of my own righteousness.
As Steve Wiens noted in his sermon this last week, “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). He mentioned that it is as we know God and His love for us that we are stirred to please Him. In the past, knowing His love for me has stirred me to work harder to please Him and then I became discouraged when I couldn't get it right. Working hard to please Him is actually my greatest barrier to knowing Him. I am one of the people he coined a “go-getter.” Steve said in his message, “Don't try hard to please God. Get to know God.”
So how do I get to know God better?
“Love lead the way, lead the way to Kingdom come. Love show the way, show the way your will is done” sings in his background. God is love. To be loved and to love is to know God.
Love: The Relentless Love of Jesus
Steve mentioned in his sermon that if we want to know God, be filled up in knowing God's love and desire for you.
God woes us with His love. Steve used the verse in Hosea 2:14-15,
“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor (trouble) a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.”
Hosea 4:1-2 says, “There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.” Where there is lack of knowing God's passionate love, there is lack of passion and commitment towards God.
Love: The First Commandment
As Dave Johnson writes in his book, “Joy Comes in the Mourning,” the first and greatest commandment that is the setup for every other commandment is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” He writes that relating to God is in issue of the heart.
He goes on to write that both in the OT and NT, people, “Sensing an inability to love God with all of their hearts, they developed an alternative solution: They created laws for themselves they could keep.” He notes, they created ceremonies that look very spiritual, such as the washing of hands, but where the heart was not required. He wrote, “Inflexible obedience to the law became a cover-up for their lack of intimacy with God Himself.”
Instead, as we delight in the Lord, knowing His passionate love for us, “developing a heart-hot passion for the Lord, it will impact our desires. Jesus Christ will have a profound impact on what we want. The new heart will bring new appetites...And our Lord knows that when He has our hearts, He's got us. When we love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, everything else in the law will take care of itself.”3 He says that we may stumble, but our driving passion is to please, love, and serve God. '”My heart says of you, Seek His face!' Your face Lord, will I seek (Psalm 27:8).”4
Love: The Second Commandment
“Make us more to look like Jesus. Form us in His likeness, to be more like Him.”
One commentary notes that loving others is a choice. It says, “Popular culture often describes love in terms of passion, sexuality, or blind devotion. By this measure, love is little more than an uncontrollable attraction toward another person that ebbs and flows unconsciously. This sort of “love” looks only for its own gain and can walk away if its demands and needs go unmet or unsatisfied. By contrast, God called Hosea to pursue a radically different kind of love, one based on a conscious choice to be committed to someone else for her benefit, regardless of her response to that gift (Hos. 3:1–3).”5
Filled with the knowledge of the passionate love of Jesus and loving Him deeply in return, we are called to come to know Him through walking as He walked –i.e. loving others.
“We believe love can change the world. It's the only thing that has. It's the only thing will. 'Cause the greatest of these is Love that changed the world, Your the only One who can. Your the only One who will” sings in the background.
I come back to a scripture that I was meditating on and journaled on at the end of last month. 1 John 4:7-13 says,
While our hearts are transformed to love God as we experience His passionate love for us, it is not until His love flows through us to others who need it that His love is made complete in us and we are made complete in His love.
“There is so much more to You, so much I never knew... Jesus, You get more amazing to me, the more You let me see, reveal Yourself in all Your glory, You're better than a dream...” sings in the background.
As I wrote in my journal at the end of October, Dallas Willard wrote that when we are renovated on the inside, we won't have to try to love; unloving thoughts and actions will be replaced with loving ones. Like Jesus, we become ones through whom “justice [can] roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).6
“Make us more to look like Jesus, form us in His likeness, to be more like Him...” sings.
When we are filled with the passionate affection of Jesus, knowing who we are as His beloved and are passionately loving Him in return, loving others is still a choice but it is one we have a bent toward. It is not 'an ill fitting' teeth gritting choice, it is one we naturally and gladly make with joy. Our desires are one with His so we gladly choose to love even the unlovable.
“I'm following the One who showed the way.” Lord, lead on. I so long to behold Your face. I want to be with You where You are. Fill my heart with Your love for others. “Let Your Kingdom come and Your will be done, right here, on earth as it is in heaven!”
“As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness”!!! (Psalm 17:15)
1. Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., & White, W. (1996). Vine's complete expository dictionary of Old and New Testament words (1:61). Nashville: T. Nelson.
2. Radmacher, E. D., Allen, R. B., & House, H. W. (1999). Nelson's new illustrated Bible commentary (Ho 2:19-20). Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.
3. Johnson, David with Allen, Tom. Joy Comes In the Mourning ...and other blessing in disguise. “Pure in Heart” pages 141-167. Christian Publications, Inc. Camp Hill, PA. 1998.
4. Johnson, David with Allen, Tom. Joy Comes In the Mourning ...and other blessing in disguise. “Pure in Heart” pages 141-167. Christian Publications, Inc. Camp Hill, PA. 1998.
5. Radmacher, E. D., Allen, R. B., & House, H. W. (1999). Nelson's new illustrated Bible commentary (Ho 2:21-23). Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.
6. Willard, Dallas and Johnson, Jan. Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice. NavPress. 2006
David cries out in Psalm 24:2-6,
“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.
He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.”
Christians often say “seek His face, not His hand.” When people refer to seeking the face of God they are typically talking about seeking Him personally(1) and not anything that he offers them.
About a year ago, I was sitting in a prayer room praying I felt God ask me, “What is it that you want from me?” I began crying and I told God, “I want to see You face to face.” I know I deeply long for this. But what is it that I am really asking from Him and how do I get it?
“God in my waking, God in my sleeping, God in my resting, there in my working ... Be my everything, be my everything, be my everything, be my everything, be my everything, be my everything, be my everything.”
David says in Psalm 11:7, “For the Lord is righteous, he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.” And in Psalm 17:15 David cries, “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.”
And in Matthew 5:8, Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Up to now, these verses would have motivated me to work all the harder. I thought, if I just worked hard enough and could somehow get it right, I would see God face to face.
“I know in my heart there must be a way to sing a greater song, a greater song to you on the earth” sings.
When I have encountered Him, somehow I thought, if I could just do whatever I must have did right again I could encounter Him the same way again. However, this has never worked. Probably because it was not the result of something 'I got right' in the first place that I encountered Him. Also, seeking an 'experience' is not seeking Him for Himself but seeking something from Him.
Standing on the Mount of Transfiguration every day would not have brought Peter, James, and John any closer to Jesus. While Jesus considered Peter, James, and John his most intimate friends, it was not doing something specifically 'right' or standing on the Mount of transfiguration that caused Jesus to reveal Himself to them in the first place. And seeing Him transfigured more than once would not help them to know Him. It was not meant to be something that was done over and over again.
“You gave everything for me, now I'll give everything for you... everything” sings.
God generously lavishes His love upon me and I know without a doubt that I am loved by Him. However, somewhere in the picture I have of God, when I think about His holiness, I see Him as unobtainable, out of my reach. I see Him as the top of a mountain that I can't reach. I see Him in view of my own righteousness.
As Steve Wiens noted in his sermon this last week, “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). He mentioned that it is as we know God and His love for us that we are stirred to please Him. In the past, knowing His love for me has stirred me to work harder to please Him and then I became discouraged when I couldn't get it right. Working hard to please Him is actually my greatest barrier to knowing Him. I am one of the people he coined a “go-getter.” Steve said in his message, “Don't try hard to please God. Get to know God.”
So how do I get to know God better?
“Love lead the way, lead the way to Kingdom come. Love show the way, show the way your will is done” sings in his background. God is love. To be loved and to love is to know God.
Love: The Relentless Love of Jesus
Steve mentioned in his sermon that if we want to know God, be filled up in knowing God's love and desire for you.
God woes us with His love. Steve used the verse in Hosea 2:14-15,
“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor (trouble) a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.”
Hosea 4:1-2 says, “There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.” Where there is lack of knowing God's passionate love, there is lack of passion and commitment towards God.
Love: The First Commandment
As Dave Johnson writes in his book, “Joy Comes in the Mourning,” the first and greatest commandment that is the setup for every other commandment is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” He writes that relating to God is in issue of the heart.
He goes on to write that both in the OT and NT, people, “Sensing an inability to love God with all of their hearts, they developed an alternative solution: They created laws for themselves they could keep.” He notes, they created ceremonies that look very spiritual, such as the washing of hands, but where the heart was not required. He wrote, “Inflexible obedience to the law became a cover-up for their lack of intimacy with God Himself.”
Instead, as we delight in the Lord, knowing His passionate love for us, “developing a heart-hot passion for the Lord, it will impact our desires. Jesus Christ will have a profound impact on what we want. The new heart will bring new appetites...And our Lord knows that when He has our hearts, He's got us. When we love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, everything else in the law will take care of itself.”3 He says that we may stumble, but our driving passion is to please, love, and serve God. '”My heart says of you, Seek His face!' Your face Lord, will I seek (Psalm 27:8).”4
Love: The Second Commandment
“Make us more to look like Jesus. Form us in His likeness, to be more like Him.”
One commentary notes that loving others is a choice. It says, “Popular culture often describes love in terms of passion, sexuality, or blind devotion. By this measure, love is little more than an uncontrollable attraction toward another person that ebbs and flows unconsciously. This sort of “love” looks only for its own gain and can walk away if its demands and needs go unmet or unsatisfied. By contrast, God called Hosea to pursue a radically different kind of love, one based on a conscious choice to be committed to someone else for her benefit, regardless of her response to that gift (Hos. 3:1–3).”5
Filled with the knowledge of the passionate love of Jesus and loving Him deeply in return, we are called to come to know Him through walking as He walked –i.e. loving others.
“We believe love can change the world. It's the only thing that has. It's the only thing will. 'Cause the greatest of these is Love that changed the world, Your the only One who can. Your the only One who will” sings in the background.
I come back to a scripture that I was meditating on and journaled on at the end of last month. 1 John 4:7-13 says,
“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”
While our hearts are transformed to love God as we experience His passionate love for us, it is not until His love flows through us to others who need it that His love is made complete in us and we are made complete in His love.
“There is so much more to You, so much I never knew... Jesus, You get more amazing to me, the more You let me see, reveal Yourself in all Your glory, You're better than a dream...” sings in the background.
As I wrote in my journal at the end of October, Dallas Willard wrote that when we are renovated on the inside, we won't have to try to love; unloving thoughts and actions will be replaced with loving ones. Like Jesus, we become ones through whom “justice [can] roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).6
“Make us more to look like Jesus, form us in His likeness, to be more like Him...” sings.
When we are filled with the passionate affection of Jesus, knowing who we are as His beloved and are passionately loving Him in return, loving others is still a choice but it is one we have a bent toward. It is not 'an ill fitting' teeth gritting choice, it is one we naturally and gladly make with joy. Our desires are one with His so we gladly choose to love even the unlovable.
“I'm following the One who showed the way.” Lord, lead on. I so long to behold Your face. I want to be with You where You are. Fill my heart with Your love for others. “Let Your Kingdom come and Your will be done, right here, on earth as it is in heaven!”
“As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness”!!! (Psalm 17:15)
1. Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., & White, W. (1996). Vine's complete expository dictionary of Old and New Testament words (1:61). Nashville: T. Nelson.
“To pay something to someone’s “face” is to pay it to him personally (Deut. 7:10); in such contexts, the word connotes the person himself.”
2. Radmacher, E. D., Allen, R. B., & House, H. W. (1999). Nelson's new illustrated Bible commentary (Ho 2:19-20). Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.
3. Johnson, David with Allen, Tom. Joy Comes In the Mourning ...and other blessing in disguise. “Pure in Heart” pages 141-167. Christian Publications, Inc. Camp Hill, PA. 1998.
4. Johnson, David with Allen, Tom. Joy Comes In the Mourning ...and other blessing in disguise. “Pure in Heart” pages 141-167. Christian Publications, Inc. Camp Hill, PA. 1998.
5. Radmacher, E. D., Allen, R. B., & House, H. W. (1999). Nelson's new illustrated Bible commentary (Ho 2:21-23). Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.
6. Willard, Dallas and Johnson, Jan. Renovation of the Heart in Daily Practice. NavPress. 2006
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