Seeing the Unseen Face of God

SEEING THE UNSEEN FACE OF GOD

This morning's devotional is written by my good friend, Dr. Woodrow Kroll. Dr. Kroll will be with us Labor Day weekend. We still have some rooms available, so why not join us for this final weekend of our 2010 summer season.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

In an article in the Evangelical Beacon, Robert Bakke wrote, “God’s presence must abide so heavily in our churches that they are distinctive from every other competitor in the religious supermarket. God’s presence must dwell so powerfully in our churches that even people who don’t believe in words any more are overcome by the living Word. God’s presence must rest so tangibly on our churches that the refugees from the postmodern battlefield will sense Him even when they don’t have a category to understand Him.”

When you attend church today, do you feel the swell of God’s presence? Or is it just another hymnsing, just another performance, entertainment like the world but with a spiritual twist? How do we see the face of God when we attend church?

No one could ever see the face of God directly and live. When Moses asked God for a glimpse of His face, Jehovah replied, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). To protect mere humanity God always clouded His face with smoke, the cloud, the pillar of fire, etc. When Israel refused to enter the Promised Land, God wanted to disinherit them, but Moses reminded God that other nations “have already heard that you, O Lord, are with these people and that you, O Lord, have been seen face and face, that your cloud stays over them” (Numbers 14:14).

Still, God has made it possible for us to see Him personally, to know Him intimately. “. . . the Word was God . . . The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. And we have seen his glory . . .” (John 1:1, 14).

So how do we see the unseen face of God? We look into the face of God the Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). If you look by faith into the face of Jesus, you see by faith the face of God. You can know God more intimately, love Him more personally, and serve Him more faithfully if everyday you look at Him more closely. Find the face of Jesus in the pages of the Bible and you see the unseen face of God.
Dr. Woodrow Kroll is the President of Back to the Bible

Digging Deeper: Proverbs 24; Psalm 116-118; 1 Corinthians 7:1-19

Dig This Quote: When the author walks onto the stage, the play is over. God is going to invade, all right; but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else comes crashing in? This time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. That will not be the time for choosing; It will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. C. S. Lewis

Determined Digging: Level One: Jeremiah 29:11; Level Two: Psalm 127

Determined Praying: To pray effectively we must want what God wants -- that and that only is to pray in the will of God. A. W. Tozer