Today's Scripture: 1 Chronicles 16:8-15
"Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually!"
Have you ever had someone get "in your face"? Or maybe you've had to get in someone's face before?
When we use that phrase it's usually in an aggressive or confrontational way. One person gets upset with another for any number of reasons and confronts him or her, and quite often it turns ugly. Or sometimes it's just a conversation between two people, but even then it has a sense of intensity to it.
There are a very few times in Scripture that a similar phrase is used. Where our focal verse for today has "seek his presence continually," other translations might have "seek His face continually."
Seek the face of God. That has always resonated with me.
It's not the aggressive or confrontational sense of "in your face." Rather, it’s a dedicated drive to know God and learn of him. David's prayer is a prayer of thanksgiving. In it, he urges us to seek the face of God. To do it continually carries a sense of positive intensity.
In other words, to seek the face of God continually is to be compelled to know him. Everything else is secondary, as it should be, for we are to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, and strength.
And, there's one thing you can be assured of. The Lord will be found when you seek him. After all, Jesus himself came to seek you out. Doesn't it make sense that God will let you find him if you seek him?
So how do you seek the face of God? It's pretty straightforward. Aside from living a life of single-minded dedication and devotion, there is prayer. Remember, the whole idea of Reset: Talk It Over is to talk with God instead of just to God.
It is in that time of talking with God, that time of communion, that we can come face to face with God. That's when we know God more.
That's when we find the face of God.
Think about it …
- Spend time studying the entire prayer of thanksgiving in 1 Chronicles 16:7-36.
- In that prayer, what thanksgiving, if any, is expressed to God that you might not have considered before?
- If each day you seek the face of God more intently than the day before, how might that be manifested in your life?
