Yesterday we concluded that God designed us for blessing—Him, blessing our lives, and us, blessing His. We also found that God is devoted to us, seeking our face as His vital necessity. Hard to fathom, isn’t it; that our God would choose to need us in His life? Before pressing to the next “Seek My face” passage, the scripture covered yesterday in 2 Chronicles 7:14 led me to a prayer prayed by Solomon in 6:36-40, as they dedicated the temple to God for His use. In it, I find another “seek My face” principle.

“When they sin against You (for there is no man who does not sin) and You are angry with them and deliver them to an enemy, so that they take them away captive to a land far off or near, if they take thought in the land where they are taken captive, and repent and make supplication to You in the land of their captivity, saying, ‘We have sinned, we have committed iniquity and have acted wickedly’; if they return to You with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their captivity, where they have been taken captive, and pray toward their land which You have given to their fathers and the city which You have chosen, and toward the house which I have built for Your name, then hear from heaven, from Your dwelling place, their prayer and supplications, and maintain their cause and forgive Your people who have sinned against You. Now, O my God, I pray, let Your eyes be open and Your ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place” (2 Chronicles 6:36-40).

Realizing as I read this passage that God’s call in 2 Chronicles 7:14, following the instruction of which places us in a position of blessing, is answer to Solomon’s prayer; I note the requirement for that blessing to come to us being our return to God – “with all their heart and with all their soul.” We are to be wholehearted toward God, giving our all to the relationship.

There is a portion of scripture that I meditate upon often which deepens our understanding here: “For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus—the leaning of your ENTIRE human PERSONALITY on Him in ABSOLUTE trust and confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness” (Colossians 1:4, AMP). Our entire human personality—all that descriptively reveals our essence as a person, rested fully and absolutely with utmost confidence in Him.

You realize, right, that God never does anything half heartedly? That means that His devotion toward us has the full force of His entire being behind it. He seeks our face with all that is within Himself, longing for us from the depths of His being. What a great longing that must be, as our God is incomprehensible to our finite thought and understanding; and what better proof of His wholehearted pursuit of us than Jesus Christ?

“But,” you may say, “He can’t lean on us like we lean on Him.” O, beloved, I believe that He has provided a way for Him to be able to lean on, rely on, be confident in us in this relationship.

“Such confidence we have through Christ toward God.  Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”  (2 Corinthians 3:4-6)

God provides His Spirit to dwell within, making us all we need to be for vital relationship with Himself, and when He looks at us, He sees His completed work in the power of that Spirit and leans Himself on His own Spirit at work in us.

Other proofs of His ability to be confident in us: Scripture teaches that He is able to make His servant stand strong and firm (Romans 14:4). And the Father jealously desires this Spirit in us to prevail, working in us a drawing to Himself that He can respond to in like kind (James 4:1-10).

All that God is longs for us, desiring you and desiring me with a longing we cannot begin to fathom. No matter how close we get to touching His face in fellowship this side of eternity, we will never know the depths of His desire for us in this life. Stand in awe! And get ready, for tomorrow we will press forward to try to understand still more