Seeking God Successfully (Part Two)

Psalm 27:8

You have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, Lord, do I seek” (ESV).

We have heard God’s call to seek him. Next, let’s think about our response to God’s invitation.

Above all, let us realize that this is a personal invitation to a personal relationship. Seek my face. The living, Holy One wants to meet us up close. He doesn’t hold us at arm’s length. I have an injured shoulder that hinders me occasionally in giving or receiving hugs. Once, someone told me that my hug seemed awkward or reluctant, but that wasn’t the case at all. It simply felt physically uncomfortable at that moment. God has no such limitations. He, through his grace and love in Christ, is always able to invite us to draw very near. Seek my face.

God invites us to seek him, not the rituals of religion. This is where so many go astray from personal contact with God himself. Here is one way this happens. In the law or old covenant, God commanded Israel the way in which they could live in the presence of God and worship him at the tabernacle/temple. God set up laws of ritual cleanliness, prescribed sacrifices, which were administered through priests, as necessary to approach him. The religions of the ungodly in their worship of false gods also had religious rituals. But the true God ended all such things in Christ at his cross. Now true worship is to approach God the Father through the Son on the basis of his once for all finished sacrifice by the Spirit. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit (Ephesians 2:18 NIV). Jesus made it clear that the new covenant era was different from the age of the law covenant. Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth” (John 4:21-24 CSB).

It is important to draw near to God through Christ and his finished work alone. We do not have prescribed rituals, because the Lord Jesus himself is our access to the Father. We do need the works of the law, because we live in the power of the Spirit. When we read the word, we hear the written voice of God in our personal nearness with him. Reading the Scriptures is not the means to gain God’s acceptance for a personal relationship. Instead, when we read, we simply listen to him in a state of nearness. The same is true of prayer, which is the believer’s communication with God. We speak with the living God as his dearly loved children, because he has brought us near in Christ (1 Peter 3:18). We meditate on God’s written word, because we have heard his voice and delight to ponder his word to us, as a husband or wife reflects on the words of their beloved. We eat and drink at the Lord’s Supper, not to receive grace, but because we remember the Lord in whom we already have grace. We sing in services, not as a means to gain God’s ear, but because he delights in the united voices of his children, as we declare his greatness to each other.

Therefore, live joyfully in your nearness to the God of glory. When you meet with your brothers and sisters in the Father’s family, delight in the blessing of shared grace. “We are here together with God the Father—set free, adopted, accepted, and eternally loved!”

Grace and peace, David