His FACE

Perhaps this is something that is obvious to everyone else, but it is the thing that has been a huge paradigm shift for me this holiday. I was reading along in John and one of my footnotes said that the presence of God is a translation of the word face. There is no true word-for-word translation of his face, the best they could come up with was the presence of God. Then a Hebrew scholar I listen to mentioned in passing this same fact.

I was breathless. Speechless. In some ways stricken.

I have prayed for years for the presence of God to fill the room, fill me, come. What if we have it all wrong? Obviously, we have all been in meetings where the presence of God has been there in great measure. But what if this was grace instead of precedent? What if instead of Him coming to us we are supposed to be the ones seeking His face? Hmmmm... sounds a bit like a Bible verse I’ve heard about seeking. What if instead of spending our worship services asking Him to come to where we are, instead we get on our knees, our faces, and we seek to see His FACE. Seems like a subtle difference, but the Spirit within me says this may be the whole point. Maybe just raising our hands and singing songs isn’t how this works.

Let me dig a little deeper. When we ask someone to come to us, generally that puts us in a position of power, however little that power might be, we are still asking Him to come to us. However, when we dig down deep into the Spirit within us and ask to see His FACE, suddenly the equation changes. Now instead of going into worship with our buddy Jesus, we are suddenly deeply aware that this is GOD. All of His majesty, glory, honor, is in His FACE...

Now I begin, only begin, to understand what the fear of the Lord is all about. Have mercy on me Holy One.

Do I know how to do this. No. But I begin to understand that my job is to seek the FACE of Him who my heart loves.