Thy Face Will I Seek Dear Father;

Prayers in Pursuit of GodPart 6 of a 11

When we say that our father is Omnipresence what are we saying? By definition we are saying that He is everywhere. If then our heavenly Father is everywhere ( and He is) how is it that we are seeking to be in his presence? In Psalm 139:7-8 David says “… where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there.” Because was able to profess the simplicity of this fact. Yet though we all know that we still say thing like God was in that place today. As if we are professing that he was not in some other place.

No we are not professing that there is a place where the Father is not, when we say that “God is in this place”. What we are saying is that there was a manifestation of God’s presence at some particular place that we were. Maybe you felt this manifestation in your gut; maybe you could sense it in your heart; maybe it was intellectual to you, or you just knew somehow that the heavenly Father was attempting to make Himself know to You.

My wording is not coincidental when I said that the Father was trying to make Himself know to you. This is the continual desire of our heavenly Father. In his book Systematic Theology Louis Berkoft begins his theology with the presupposition that left to his own devices man will never know God, much less choosing to be in His presence, that the only way for man to ever know God, and desire to be in his presence is that God must reveal Himself to man.

Armed with this knowledge we can perceive a God, a Father, a creator that is as hungry to be with us as we are with Him. Since the creation of man our Father has hungered to be in our presence. Before we knew Him, He was already trying to get us to realize we were in His presence.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could walk through the garden like Adam and talk to God? How wonderful it would be if we could stand in the clef of the mountain and see the hind part of God’s glory pass by like our Father did for Moses. Or if in our times of troubles God would send his angels to minister to us like he did Elijah? Since we are already in God’s presence how much of a leap would it be for the Father to reveal Himself to you and I as he did the saints of time gone past?

Well yes, we are in the presence of the Father continually, however being in the presence and the manifestation of the presence are not the same. Most of us will spend our whole life in His presence of the Father, but will never know the manifestation of His presence at any level. Yet God has not chosen some to manifest Himself to and all others He denied. God is no respecter of men; He does not care more for Moses than He did for Judas. Yet Moses was able to behold the back end of His glory (Exodus 33:23) and Judas betrayed His only begotten son. Judas walked as a man of character, while Moses fled Egypt as a murderer.

Just like Judas many of us today will do everything that appears right, read our bible, pray go to church yet with every passing minute we grown not closer but further from His presence. We become like the rest of the world insensitive toward the things of God while opening ourselves to the every perversion of this world.

Every moment that we spend watching TV will not just have to be replaced it will have to be lived. Many of the things of this world clog our receptiveness to the presence of God. We not only fail to pray and study our word when we are preoccupied with things of this world, but just like a muscle our receptiveness to God will go to waste if we do not exercise it often.

Yet we cannot make a mistake in thinking that prayer and studying the word will not bring us to God. These things are good, but they are not God, nor can they of themselves even point us to God. Remember that man can do nothing to make God reveal Himself any more profoundly than He already is. God is right now revealing Himself at the highest level that a man can comprehend.

But unless we have an inward longing to know Him, unless we develop the lifelong habit of spiritually seeking Him, unless we can lust after Him more than necessary food or drink, we will turn off our spiritual receptivity to know Him. We will unbeknownst to ourselves block the ears which hear the small silent voice of God, who is continually trying to get us to know Him

He wants us to get to know Him more personally; I know this because;He gave up the riches of heaven to walk in poverty with us on earth,

and though He was holy, He allowed himself to be ripped to pieces,
just so we would get to know Him.

And though he was the resurrection he died on the cross,
and was buried in a cave, then He rose from the dead
and walked again among us.
just so we would get to know him.

let us pray;

Oh heavenly Father;
my mind had been so pre-occupied with everything of this world that I did not have time to develop a quality relationship with You. Forgive me Father for allowing my life in this world come between us. I once thought that my many years of seeking You was a badge of Honor, proof of how much I loved You, but I was wrong. I now know that in order for a relationship to work both parties must give up something for the other. You have given up the heavens, to be with me, help me Father to give up the inconsequential things of this world to be with You. Now abba, I know that I will never love you as deeply as you love me, but help me to love you as deeply as I can.

T.Charves FireSpeaks

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Diligently Seek After God

Then the Yahweh answered Job from the whirlwind. He Said: “Who is this who obscures My counsel with ignorant words? Get ready to answer Me like a man; when I question you, you will inform Me. Where were you when I established the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding” (Job 38:1-4)

Prayers in Pursuit of God
Part 5 of !1

The above passage is how our heavenly Father spoke to Job when Job thought to question God’s counsel, the bible tells us that these were the words of God as He appeared to Job as a whirlwind, which could be translated as a tornado or hurricane. Now imagine yourself in Job’s position not just finding yourself in the midst of a tornado, but having the angry voice of God come from this tornado and reprimand for his disrespect. (Job 38:1-4) To say this is scary would be an understatement.

When Abraham met God the bible tells us He appeared as a smoking furnace that came between the cut pieces of his sacrifice. Now nowhere in the bible does it tell us the condition but we can infer from the book of Daniel that a furnace is a place of great heat and danger. (Genesis 15:17) So you can imagine how fear stricken Abraham must have been at this appearance of God.

When God appeared Moses and the children of Israel He was a pillar of Fire (Exodus 13:21), when He in entered into the temple that Solomon built the bible tells us that His Shekinah Glory cloud was so great that no one, not even the priest could enter to minister to the people.(1Kings 8:11). Every time that God has every shown his presence to man he was absolutely terrifying. Yet we say we want to be in His presence. What we’re saying when we say we want to be in the presence of God is that we want to know and experience His glory and goodness personally. This has been a desire of man since the days of ancient. The bible tells us that even Moses, whom God said He spoke to as a man speaks to his friend, wanted a more personal relationship with God. (Exodus 33:11) So when Moses asked to see God’s face, (a euphemism for having a more personal relationship) God said no, “I’ll put you into the clef of the rock so you can’t see My face it would kill you, but you can see My hind parts! (Exodus 33:21-23) And the bible tells us the when Moses saw God’s hind parts his face was so bright that he had to put a veil over his face until the glory went away. The people of Israel could not even look at Moses because of the radiance that Moses received just because he looked at God’s hind parts. (Exodus 34:29)

Up until the moment that Yehoshua show up, whenever God reveal Himself it was absolutely terrifying. Sin had not been dealt with; therefore, when man came into the presence of God he came guilty of his sins. Now the bible teaches that “…Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin” (Hebrews 9:22). yet though they sacrificed animals, the blood of these animals only showed of what was to come in Yehoshua HaMashiach (Jesus Christ). In fact Hebrews 10:4 tells us that it is impossible for animal sacrifice to remove sin. So once Yehoshua dealt with the issue of sin, the veils was ripped, that separation between man and his creator was done away with, and sin was legally able to be forgiven. The work of Yehoshua on the cross allowed us to be able to come into the presence of the Father without fear, knowing the cup (Matthew 26:42) which Yehoshua drank of at Golgotha was payment for our sins.

Can you imagine what Moses would say if he was here today, and he heard the message of the gospel, passages like John 1:14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Or John 1:17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
Or if he heard the message of the Apostle Paul in 2Corinthian3:13-14 Moses, who put a veil upon his face, that the children of Israel should not look stedfastly on the end of that which was passing away, but their minds were hardened: for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remaineth, it not being revealed to them that it is done away in Christ. Moses would say "This is the very thing I have been denied! Through Yehoshua HaMashiach you can know the Father personally; you can come into the majesty of His presence. Why is this not the driving force of you very life?"

When God revealed Himself in Jesus Christ He did not do so as a tornado, or pillar of fire he revealed himself as a child. Because cause a child is the most non-threatening of all we can know. But more so God did not reveal Himself as a child to all mankind, in Fact the priest and the scribes (devout church goers) and the lawyers (theologians) were not invited to this revelation. Those that were invited were those who were humble and low degree; shepherds outcast of society, and those who would endure to know Him; and magi, people completely without understanding of scripture. Is there any wonder that it was from these people that Jesus picked is twelve (12) disciples.

What the bible is telling us is that if we really want to be in the presence of God we must;

• Humble ourselves, in every walk of our lives and realize that there is nothing in us that makes us worthy of being in His presence, and only by the work of Yehoshua can we know Him personally.
• Diligently seek Him; not like Priest and Scribes who sought Him in books and theory; but as the Magi (wise men) who endeavored to travel for hundreds of miles to meet this King of Kings.
• We must make time for prayer, and for reading our bible and for worship daily. And if there is no time, we must make some time. Get up an hour early to be in His presence, or stay up an hour late. Diligently seek after God and He will reward you with a personal relationship with the creator of all there is.(Hebrews 11:6)

Let us pray;

• My God, my King and Creator, Hear the intent of my soul which cries out to You. As the deer panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. Guide me and direct me so that I may be in Your presence every day of my life. I desire to behold Your exceedingly great beauty and wisdom, to sit at Your feet in awesome wonder of Your majesty. In Jesus’ Name I pray Amen

by Soli Deo Gloria