Seeking the Presence (Face) of God
When You said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, O Lord, I shall seek.’ - Psalm 27:8
For God who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the
Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. - 2 Corinthians 4:6
Introduction
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We desire God’s presence in our lives. Consenting to the truth of Christianity and
knowing the Bible are good things, but we want to know God intimately and be aware of His
constant presence in our lives. But what is God’s presence? And what about times when we
don’t sense His presence in our lives?
Presence = Face ≠ Persona
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The Hebrew word pānîm, sometimes translated presence, literally means face. To be
present with someone is for my face to be with them - listening to their words and inflections,
reading their body language and facial expressions, giving them my full attention. For us to be
present with each other means the masks (persona) are removed. We are face-to-face, not
managing and manipulating our appearances, but who-I-really-am with who-you-really-are.
The Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas says, “The person with whom I am in relation I call
being, but in so calling him, I call to him. I do not only think that he is, I speak to him…I have
spoken to him, that is to say, I have neglected the universal being that he incarnates in order to
remain with the particular being he is.” He goes on to conclude, “A being is a human being and
it is as a neighbor that a human being is accessible - as a face.” In other words, even though
we’re human, we are not just a part of a faceless mass called humanity. So when I approach you,
I am not approaching just another human - I’m approaching you. You are only accessible to me
as a face (pānîm). But I have no access to you if you wear a mask (persona) when we’re together.
You’re not present.
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The same is true of God. I can only know God if He reveals Himself to me, not as a
persona but as a face. If I am seeking my idea of God (persona), I’ll never know His presence. If
I’m seeking Him (His face), then I’m faced with who He really is. And who He really is may be
drastically different from my ideas of who He is or who He should be.
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The face is personal, and the ancient Hebrews worshipped a personal God. Therefore,
they desired that His face be turned toward them in good favor (or “shine upon” them):
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When You said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, O Lord, I shall seek.’ Do not hide
Your face from me… (Psalm 27:8, 9)
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Make Your face to shine upon Your servant; Save me in Your lovingkindness. (Psalm 31:16)
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As for me, You uphold me in my integrity, and You set me in Your presence [before Your " f a c e ]
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forever. (Psalm 41:12)
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God be gracious to us and bless, us, and cause His face to shine upon us - that Your way " may be
known on the earth, Your salvation among all the nations. (Psalm 67:1-2)
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O Lord God of hosts, restore us; cause Your face to shine upon us, and we will be saved.
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(Psalm 80:19)
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Make Your face shine upon Your servant, and teach me Your statutes. (Psalm 119:135)
The desire for God’s presence is the desire to be face to face with God - for His face to shine
upon us.!
Exodus 33:7-15, 18-23
Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, a good distance
from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought
the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting which was outside the camp. And it
came about, whenever Moses went out to the tent, that all the people would arise
and stand, each at the entrance of his tent, and gaze after Moses until he entered
the tent. Whenever Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend
and stand at the entrance of the tent; and the Lord would speak with Moses.
When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent,
all the people would arise and worship, each at the entrance of his tent. Thus the
Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When
Moses returned to the camp, his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man,
would not depart from the tent. (Exodus 33:7-15)
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God created and sustains the universe. It’s estimated that our Milky Way galaxy has
somewhere between 300-400 billion stars. Being an average-sized galaxy, it’s 120,000 light-years 1
across. That’s 705,600 trillion miles - one galaxy. And there are over 170 billion galaxies in the
universe. We live in an unimaginably large universe, and we worship an unbelievably large
God. And yet there He is, in the middle of nowhere, meeting with Israel and talking face to face
with Moses.
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1 light year = 5.88 trillion miles
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“Now therefore, I pray You, if I’ve found favor in Your sight, let me know Your
ways that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your sight. Consider too,
that this nation is Your people.” And He said, “My presence (pānîm) shall go with
you, and I’ll give you rest.” [Moses] said to Him, “If Your presence (pānîm)
doesn’t go with us, don’t lead us up from here…” Then Moses said, “I pray You,
show me Your glory!” And He said, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass
before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be
gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will
show compassion.” But He said, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me
and live!” Then the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by Me, and you’ll stand
there on the rock; and it’ll come about, while My glory is passing by, that I’ll put
you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by.
Then I’ll take My hand away and you’ll see My back, but My face shall not be
seen.” (Exodus 33:18-23)
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The word presence literally means face. “My face shall go with you.” “If Your face doesn’t
go with us, don’t lead us from here…” In seeking the presence of God, Moses seeks God’s face.
He is not permitted to see it, yet God interacts with him “face to face.” Why? Because Moses
desired to know God’s way in order to know Him - “let me know Your ways that I may know
You.” That’s what seeking God’s presence (His face) is all about - knowing Him.
The Face of Jesus
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God spoke to Moses face to face, and yet Moses wasn’t permitted to see God’s face. But
then the Word became flesh and dwelt with us. The Creator and Sustainer of over 170 billion
galaxies became a man. And so the apostle John says, “We saw His glory, glory as of the only
begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth…For the Law was given through Moses; grace
and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time; the only
begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:14, 17-18). Or,
in the words of Paul, “For God who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has
shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). Jesus Christ reveals God to us in a way that no other prophet could.
In Jesus, God reveals Himself to us as a face - as a neighbor. He did not just proclaim God’s
word - He is the Word, the Logos. That’s why Jesus told Philip, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen
the Father” (John 14:8, paraphrase). We know the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit. In
other words, we can know God because the Holy Spirit enables us to see Jesus clearly, and if we
see Jesus we see the Father. We know God only in interactive relationship with Him - no
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relationship mean no knowledge of God and His presence. I’m thankful that God revealed
Himself to us as a face in Jesus Christ. Knowing God’s presence means knowing Jesus.
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Knowing Jesus and learning from Him is the best opportunity in life. Like any
relationship, a relationship with Jesus should be face to face - who-I-really-am with who-Hereally is. I have to be open and honest before Him, and I have to trust Him. Relationships
without trust aren’t friendships. And I know that I can trust God because when I come to the
Bible, specifically the gospels, I love and trust Jesus.
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If you want to know Jesus, a good place to start is a prayerful reading of one of the
gospels. And use your imagination - picture the expressions on His face, His body language,
His tone of voice. He was the smartest and most loving person who’s ever lived. We can know
the ascended Jesus today through the work of the Holy Spirit as we read and encounter Him in
the gospels and throughout the Bible.
Seeking God’s Face in Community
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But knowing Jesus is not something we do in isolation. If we are seeking the face of God,
we are seeking Jesus Christ, and, like any friendship, we know Him more fully in community.
In his book The Prodigal God, Tim Keller talks about this idea and uses C.S. Lewis as an
illustration:
You can’t live the Christian life without a band of Christian friends, without a
family of believers in which you find a place. C.S. Lewis was a part of a famous
circle of friends called the Inklings, which included J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of
The Lord of the Rings, and also the author Charles Williams, who died
unexpectedly after World War II. In his book The Four Loves, Lewis wrote a
striking meditation on his death in an essay entitled “Friendship.”
In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully
bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I
want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles
[Williams] is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s [Tolkien’s] reaction to a
specifically Charles joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to
myself” now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald…In this, Friendship
exhibits a glorious “nearness by resemblance” to heaven itself where the very
multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which
each of has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless
communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why
the Seraphim in Isaiah’s vision are crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy” to one another
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(Isaiah 6:3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more
we shall have.
Lewis is saying that it took a community to know an individual. How much
more would this be true of Jesus Christ?…You must be deeply involved in the
church, in Christian community, with strong relationships of love and
accountability. Only if you are part of a community of believers seeking to
resemble, serve, and love Jesus will you ever get to know him and grow into his
likeness.
It takes a community to know Jesus. The Christian community seeks the face of God.
“The Dark Night of the Soul”
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But what about those times when we don’t sense God’s presence? We spend time in
prayer. We read the Word. Like the Psalmist, we desire God’s face to shine upon us. Like Moses,
we want to know God’s ways so we can know Him. But God is silent and absent. We get
nothing. What about those times?
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If you’re going through a time like that, take comfort in the Psalms. The Psalms often
express the honesty of feeling like God isn’t present. Psalm 13 is a good example. One of the
opening questions is, “How long will You hide Your face from me?” David begs the Lord in
Psalm 69:17, “Do not hide Your face from Your servant, for I am in distress; answer me quickly.”
Psalm 88:14, a psalm of the sons of Korah, asks, “O Lord, why do You reject my soul? Why do
You hide Your face from me?” If you’re discouraged by a lack of sensing God’s presence in your
life, take comfort in the Psalms.
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Take comfort too in Isaiah 50:10 - “Who is among you that fears the Lord, that obeys the
voice of His servant, that walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord
and rely on his God.” It’s possible to do the right things with the right motivations and still
experience a lack of God’s presence. St. John of the Cross refers to this as a “dark night of the
soul.” Here’s how Richard Foster describes that dark night:
We may have a sense of dryness, aloneness, even lostness. Any overdependence
on the emotional life is stripped away…During such a time Bible reading,
sermons, intellectual debate - all fail to move or excite us…The preacher is such a
bore. The hymn singing is too weak. The worship service is so dull…I am not
referring here to the dullness to spiritual things that comes as a result of sin or
disobedience, but I am speaking of the person who is seeking hard after God and
who harbors no know sin in his heart…We are living in obedience but we have
entered a dark night of the soul.
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To some, that might sound overly dramatic. But I suspect that many of us have experienced this
or are experiencing something similar. If that’s you, take comfort. You’re not the only one, and
you’re not failing. It’s possible that God has placed you there to strip you of yourself. He’s not
punishing you - He’s doing a deep work that requires you to be depleted of yourself. John of the
Cross says, “Oh, then, spiritual soul, when you see your appetites darkened, your inclinations
dry and constrained, your faculties incapacitated for any interior exercise, do not be afflicted;
think of this as a grace, since God is freeing you from yourself and taking from you your own
activity.” In other words, if you’re pursuing God and you’re not experiencing His presence, it
may be that God is very much at work in your life and ordaining this season for your growth.
Ironically, in a situation like that, lacking a sense of His presence might be a sign of His
presence. Watchman Nee says, “God must bring us to a point - I cannot tell you how it will be,
but he will do it - where, through a deep and dark experience, our natural power is touched and
fundamentally weakened, so that we no longer dare trust ourselves. He has had to deal with
some of us very strangely, and take us through difficult and painful ways, in order to get us
there.”
Who is among you that fears the Lord, that obeys the voice of His servant, that
walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and
rely on his God. (Isaiah 50:10)
Benediction (Numbers 6:24-26)
The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine on you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance on you,
And give you peace.!
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