Psalms 27:8 – When You Said, “Seek My face,” my heart says to You, “Your face O Lord I shall seek.” We are prone to seek after things that we think we need or solutions to our problems. We desire that our unfavourable circumstances might be changed for the better. When the enemies confront us, we seek deliverance and victory. But the instruction from the Lord is that we seek after Him and His face first and foremost. Usually the eyes of the servants are focused on their masters for favor. But how many times do we deeply desire the Master rather than what the Master can give us or how the Master’s solutions to our problems? The earthly things that we get from the Master can only give us temporary relief because soon another situation of need would emerge. But if we seek the face of our Heavenly Master, we would first and foremost get the Master in His glorious majesty to fill our lives with His glory, and along with Him we would get His favor in all that we do and are. His glory will shift our focus from our situations and needs to Himself. We would thus be seriously involved with His service and worship and devalue our needs. Thus we get lost in His love and grace, and our focus becomes Him and not our cares and burdens anymore. Our anxieties will melt away in the magnificence of His person. We will then forget about ourselves and get lost in the wonder and awe of the Lord and abandon ourselves on Him. On the other hand it is possible to ask the Lord for certain things or solutions to meet our needs, and He will give it to us. But that will only be a need-based search for the Lord and not the seeking of the Lord out of our deep desire for Him. This deep desire to seek His face and not bother about our situations and needs is a higher level of relationship we should seek after. Today the Lord is asking us to seek His face and with it, all our mundane needs will also be looked after by Him.
Dear friend, what do you seek today from the Lord? Are you focusing so much after your situation and needs or is your heart longing for Him who alone can satisfy your life’s desires? Material needs emerge and re-emerge all through our lives and there is no end to it. Needs or situations will appear and recur all the time with different intensities. If we seek the Lord for these, we will be focusing on getting something from the Lord. Naturally there is a question as to whether we want our needs met from the Lord or whether we need the fullness of the glory of the Lord Himself in our lives. Our Lord desires that we seek after Him, His kingdom and righteousness rather than meeting certain temporal needs. He examines our hearts to see whether there are any among His children who truly seek after Him. He is the ultimate satisfaction for human minds. When He thus fills us with His glory and goodness, we would have diminishing desires for the earthly things. Such people who are filled with the Lord and His glory seek after Him to fill their lives in greater measure. This is the secret of knowing Him, the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His suffering. He wants His seekers to go after Him like the deer pants for streams of water in a dry land. When we grow in our knowledge of His person, our lives will be contented like parched grounds soaked with cool water. It is then that our lives will become breeding ground for trees which are planted by streams of water and yield fruits in season. When we get Him to fill our lives, we are actualized by His glory so as to shed it abroad. In His glory, all our desires and personal agenda become shadows and we will be filled with deeper thirst for Him.
Psalms 63:1 – O God, You are my God, earnestly I seek You; my soul thirsts for You, my body longs for You, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Thought for TodayThings or solutions to problems meet a temporary and recurring need, but the Lord fulfills all the desires of the depths our hearts.
