So many things came together in my time alone with God in his word and prayer. Here’s the background story along with a few treasures I found in the quarry.
For our home church, this summer has been
quite active, but with a number of weekends we were not together for our usual
Sunday morning church fellowships. Because of that, I had extended
opportunities to meditate on the next Scriptures we were coming to in our journey
through Hebrews 11. Our series on, “By Faith”, has been so illuminating.
This has also meant that I have had
opportunity to explore many other Scriptures that helped me personally with my
own journey of faith, always in direct association with things I was going
through, and things God was doing in me.
In the first six verses of Hebrews 11, we
have the introduction to what it means to live “by faith”. For the rest
of our journey through this chapter, I am going to use the summary of vs 6 that
I shared yesterday in my home church message, and consider how it is expressed
by everyone that exemplifies faith (including me!).
Summary: “Faith draws near to God,
believing him and seeking him.”[1]
Noah is the next example of faith we are
coming to, and one expression stands out already: “reverent fear”.[2] We know what it is like to be so afraid of people that we will not do
the will of God. I want to see how Noah’s faith in God gave him such a reverent
fear of the Creator that he was not afraid of people.
As I continued meditating on God’s word,
this Scripture stood out:
You have said, “Seek my face.”
My heart says to you,
“Your face, Yahweh, do I seek.”[3]
I often find myself talking to people about
attachment stuff, and how children are always referencing to us to see if we
are watching them. Children who reference and keep seeing no response, or a
negative-emotion response, either turn off their attachment-light because it
hurts too much, or they keep it on in the hope
that one day they will look up and see someone smiling at them.[4]
However, as I have seen proven
time-and-again in our daycare, when children reference to us and consistently
see us smiling at them in return, their attachments become very healthy in a
people-focused way. For them, referencing becomes a good thing, and so they
continue to relate that way.
Now, look at what God says to his children:
“seek my face”. Where do children look when they are referencing? At our
faces. Which part of our faces do they focus on? Our eyes. What do they want to
see in our eyes? The joyful sparkle of love.
Why do we need to have a faith that
believes God rewards those who seek him?[5]
Because, if we believe that looking at God’s
face will prove we are unlovable, will prove we are worthless, will prove there
is never any hope of seeing a smile on his face, we will stop referencing to
him and will go reference to BEEPS that make us feel something good.[6]
On the other hand, when we are convinced of
God’s love for us and our incredible worth to him, we love to be in his word
and prayer to reference to him. We know that whatever is on his mind is for our
good, whatever he has to say is for our good, whatever he is doing is for the
fullness of our joy, and that is why we want to keep being in his presence.
What is the “reward” for seeking God’s
face?[7]
Answer: the experience of the joyful sparkle of love in his eyes. As the
psalmist wrote, “Make your face shine on your servant; save me in your
steadfast love!”[8]
In Hebrew parallelism, a shining face equated with steadfast love, and making
God’s face shine upon his servant was equated with God saving the servant he
loved.[9]
Even when God’s people rebelled, replaced him with other gods, and flaunted their adulterous idolatry in his face, when God sent them into his discipline, the hope he set before them was, “’In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,’ says Yahweh, your Redeemer.”[10]
In other words, God hiding his face from his children in discipline is the worst
attachment-pain we can experience, but he keeps promising that his everlasting
love will again express compassion because his intention always is to have his
joy in us and our joy filled to the full.[11]
Here is one further evidence that God wants
us looking into his face to see the blessing of his love and joy shining down
on us. When God instructed Aaron and his sons to speak blessing over the people
of God, this is what he told them to say:
Yahweh bless you and keep you;
Yahweh make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
Yahweh lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.[12]
God wants us to reference to him and see
the only true God who is eager to bless us and sustain us. He wants us to
reference to him and see his face shining upon us in outpourings of grace and
mercy. He wants us referencing to him so that his countenance would be lifted
up above everything we are going through, and we would experience his peace
that surpasses all understanding guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.[13]
It is a fitting application of the “by
faith” journey of Hebrews 11 that we would acknowledge God’s invitation to, “Seek my face,” with us giving the affirmative response, “My heart says to you, ‘Your face, Yahweh, do I seek.’”
And this
is how God encourages us to continue taking this to heart:
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.[14]
And,
with that in mind,
“My heart says to you, our Father in heaven, ‘Your face, O God, in the face of Jesus Christ your Son, do I seek!’”
© 2020 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K
1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles,
a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
[1] See Hebrews 11:6
[2] Hebrews 11:7
[3] Psalm 27:8
[4] I am indebted to Jim
Wilder for teaching me the metaphor of an attachment-light. It illustrates how
our referencing to one another is like turning on an attachment-light that is
looking to see how others are responding. In healthy relationships, we turn on
our attachment-light whenever someone comes into our space. We want them to see
that we are glad to see them (remember, I said “healthy” relationships!). When
children learn early on that people are not happy to see them, some turn off
their attachment-light in the hopelessness that attachment will never happen.
Others (like me) leave their attachment-lights on every waking moment in the
hope that, one day, their attachment-radar will actually see someone happy to
see us.
[5] Again referring to
Hebrews 11:6
[6] Jim Wilder is the one who
introduced me to the anacronym, BEEPS, which stands for Behaviors, Experiences,
Events, People and Substances we turn to for our happiness because we have not
yet learned how to attach to God for our joy. If you do not attach to God as your
source of good news of great joy, be assured that you do have BEEPS to address.
Thankfully, God’s attachment light is on still inviting us to look into his
face and see the love and acceptance we are looking for elsewhere.
[7] Based on Hebrews 11:6
identifying the necessity of believing that God rewards those who seek him.
[8] Psalm 31:16
[9] Hebrew poetry is often
characterized with “rhyming thoughts” rather than rhyming words. All through
the Psalms and Proverbs there are expressions of this where one thing is stated
in two synonymous ways, or, sometimes, in opposite ways that also say the same
thing.
[10] Isaiah 54:8
(replacing, “the LORD”, with “Yahweh,” since the original refers to God’s name,
not his title).
[11] Jesus says this in
John 15:11, but it is all through Scriptures that God made us for the same joyful
love-relationships the Triune share among themselves.
[12] Numbers 6:24-26 (again,
using the personal name “Yahweh” instead of the title, “the LORD” since God was
deliberately putting his name over his people in opposition to the names of the
gods they would be tempted to idolize)
[13] The blessing of
Numbers 6:24-26 weaves together with the encouragement of Philippians 4:4-9 very
well.
[14] II Corinthians 4:6
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