Seeking God’s Face

“Seek the LORD and his strength,

seek his presence continually.”

~1 Chronicles 16:11 (NRSV).

Quiet times.

There are times when boredom is allowed to set in. We normally seek to fill the void in situations like this; our focus becomes: next task, next discussion, next plan.

Instead, these moments are primes for seeking God’s face — through prayer. That is, we just enfold our spirits with the Holy Spirit — to sense and experience the Presence of the Lord, God Almighty.

Seeking God’s Face – The Goodness and Greatness of God

Verse 12 helps us focus on something that takes us to him: “Remember the wonderful works he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he has uttered...”

This is the goodness of God; the faithfulness of the Divine nature to redeem and restore.

But just as easily we seek God’s face because of his greatness.

The Lord has created the very lives we have and the vastness of creation, not to mention, eternity.

Seeking God’s face is started in the instant-of-reflection upon the goodness and greatness of the Almighty.

Arriving at the Presence

This is the most magnificent experience; to sense and maintain — even for a solitary minute — that feeling of anointing that bubbles from within, through, and over our bodies, bristling the hairs on our skin.

It’s certainly felt at the nexus of emotion, but there’s more to it than a gushy gooey flutter of feeling. A cognitive space is, with necessity, found when intentionality takes us to the centre of God’s endeared will.

Seeking God’s face is the culmination of both mental and emotional foci, both, together, engorging the spiritual, as the whole of our being has serious want for the Lord. It highlights the mood of the psalmist (viz. Psalms 42 and 63) whose intent toward God verges on anxious desperation.

The Ultimate Healing – Healed as an Established Fact

Oh, the healing that is “healed as an established fact.”

The wonderful story of Jesus being anointed by a sinful woman in Luke 7:36-50 highlights a marvellous truth, that, until only recently I had forgotten, as a matter of personal experience.

This is Jesus’ Word of healing; the power of the Holy Spirit to make healing a past-tense issue. That is, in an instant, healed.

The Holy Spirit ushers through our souls — as we seek God’s face, especially in the distress of our sin — a horrible habit we just can’t shake — the forgiveness and healing we’ve always sought. All it took was a prayer; to ask!

In verse 50, Jesus heals, and in effect says to the woman, “Go and sin no more”:

“Your faith has healed you; go in peace.”

Fundamentally, seeking God’s face is a matter, first, of prayer. To ask for healing, especially from sins, is to be healed — if we have the faith to believe it is so.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.