Seek His Face

 Psalm 105:4 says "Look to the Lord and His strength; seek His face always."

May we remember to not just seek the hand of the Lord (what He can do for us), but may we first and foremost seek the face of the Lord (who He is and with no agenda from us).

It's become too easy for us during our quiet times with the Father, to come with our agendas, our requests, our needs. We talk, we plead, we tell Him all that is going wrong and where He needs to help out and/or He needs to show us what to do. And this is not necessarily a bad thing! 

BUT if we do not first take the time to seek His face, to just BE in His presence, then we will be missing out on so much of what the Father is desiring for us - to know Him better! We also need to just be quiet (thus quiet time) and listen to what He is wanting to say to us each day.

I was reading Psalm 100 the other day, and the one thing that stood out to me this time (and maybe I had heard this before so that is why it stood out, I'm not sure but . . .) was in verse 4 it says to "enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise". My thoughts this time went to the temple where Father God had dwelled in the Most Holy of Holies. What's the order of entry when going into the temple? First you have to go through the gates and then you enter into the courts. So our first utterances in our quiet time with the Father should be thankfulness. Thank Him for all that He has done - for His plan for His children, for bringing us to this day, for loving us even in spite of ourselves. And then after we have come with thankful hearts, we can turn that into praise. The Bible is full of verses with praise! I was thinking there was a verse that says something like our praise is one of our weapons against the enemy, so I went to biblegateway.com and typed in praise. There are 363 results! There are also 100 results for the word thanks (thanksgiving)!

May we remember to not just seek the hand of the Lord, but may we seek His face always!