As we grow in our prayer lives, we develop a strong inward push for more of God. He becomes our obsession. The more we get to know Him, the more we want to be with Him, and the more we want to experience. To want more of God is natural for every believer. The Bible says, as a deer pants for water, so our souls long for God.
He is the destination we are always pursuing.
- Be in prayer. A way to know that you are following God's plan for your life is by being in prayer. ...
- Be actively reading in the Word. ...
- Follow the commands He puts on your heart. ...
- Seek a godly community. ...
- Obey the Truth.
With that in mind, I wanted to get very practical today. One of the most visited articles on this site is the Importance of Seeking God’s Face. As I was thinking about this, I thought it would be helpful to talk more on how to see God face to face.
1. Know that God Wants You to See His Face
The pursuit to see God’s face is pointless if He doesn’t want this for you. This is why I spent last week going over does God want us to see His face.
I encourage you to look back at the post if you doubt, but just know that not only does God want it, He longs for it. “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and seek my face… (2 Chronicles 7:14)”. God wants His people to pursue Him.
He longs for our intimacy. Jesus came to bring reconciliation between God and man, so that nothing would hinder us from being with Him.
2. Know that We Can See God’s Face
I think this is probably the greatest hindrance to seeing God’s face; we don’t think we can. We may see ourselves as unimportant or think God is too holy, but these are just lies from the enemy to keep God’s treasure away from Him.
Do you know what Jesus’ reward was for His suffering? It was to bring you and me into the presence of God (1 Peter 3:18). To deny your ability to see God’s face is to either state your lack of faith in Jesus’ atonement for you or to belittle the work of the cross on your alienation from God.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. – Hebrews 10:19-22
3. Seek His Face
We can theorize about whether God wants us to see His face or whether we have the ability, but it is most assuredly not going to happen if we don’t seek Him.
Let’s make a decisive effort to seek God’s face (Psalm 27:8). This will take time set aside from other things. It is actively being still and focusing your mind (Psalm 46:10). Here are a few other helpful tips:
3a. Journal Without Judging
Even if we agree we can see God’s face, we still often question whether what we see is from Him or not. We are fearful of being led astray or deceiving ourselves. I am not suggesting coming up with new doctrines or making life altering decisions, just trust God. It is impossible to please God without faith (Hebrews 11:6), so at some point in our lives we will need to take a risk into the unknown with Him.
Journaling is a great safety net. Ask God to lead your time, and then by faith just write what comes to your mind. Then you can write for as long as God give you something without stopping to think if it was from God or not.
Enjoy the experience, then you can go back later to pray through what you wrote to see if it was from God or not. You can ask, did what I write contradict Scripture, or did it move me away from love of God or others. If you answer yes to either, mark that part out. If you have too many parts marked out, jump to the next section.
3b. Pray With a Trusted Friend
Jesus said, “where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am with them” (Matthew 18:20). There really is something to this. The presence of another believer praying with you opens heaven’s door a little wider.
Share with this person what you are sensing without judging it. If it is someone you trust, they will not be judging you but wanting you to get the breakthrough for which you are looking.
Just tell this friend to listen and ask questions if you get stuck. Generally sticking points are tied to something that God wants to do that we don’t feel like He would do or something we feel is unimportant. Just go with it and then you can process it with your friend afterwards.
Oftentimes whenever my wife or I get stuck in our prayers, we will pray with each other and find the breakthrough we need. The interesting point of it is, the other person may not need to say anything. Their presence praying with us seems to give us the lift we need.
Just last week I was with a group of men and we were talking about areas in our lives that where causing frustration and seemingly keeping us from what God had called us toward.
After becoming fully aware of the pain of this frustration, we each prayed and asked Jesus to meet us face to face. Out of the 12 men, 11 saw Jesus and the other one felt Him. We didn’t take long to pray, God didn’t take away the situations leading to our frustrations, but Jesus showed up and peace came into our hearts.
We can have confidence to approach the throne of God. It is not because of anything we have done; there is still a need of humility in our approach, but the offer and access is available. God is the lifter of our countenance (Psalm 3:3).
This means He desires to lift our heads up. He wants us to look to Him. Let’s seek His face so that we may know His heart and have ours healed.
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