I was a freshman in high school. Theresa Beauvais was a a little older. Theresa was pretty much the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my young life and I loved to just stare at her. Beautiful face, beautiful skin, long, dark hair. I had a couple of classes with her. Evidently she must have not been too smart if she was taking classes with freshmen, but whatever. I didn’t want to debate politics with her. I just wanted to look at her.
I knew her schedule and knew where to sit in the lunchroom so I could see her walk in every day and be able to see her eat lunch. I wasn’t stalking her, technically, but I did like to look at her. And that’s all I did was look. I didn’t dare talk to her or anything as crazy as that. She didn’t know I was alive…until one day.
I was sitting at the lunch table with some of my buddies and sure enough she walked in and evidently whatever I was thinking must have been muttered loud enough for some of them to hear. I remember clearly that Jody Waggoner was sitting across the table from me and he asked if I thought she was good-looking. I said, “Oh, yea.” So, he just calls her over. I’m muttering, “No, no, no, don’t you do it.” But he does it.
He motions for her to come closer and he just whispers something in her ear. I can’t hear what he says but she just looks at me and smiles and says, “I’m sorry. I have a date for prom already.” And then she walks off. True story. Horribly, horribly true. My therapist says I’m making real progress in getting over that embarrassment too, so that’s good.
I’m quite sure I am not the first young man to have a crush on a pretty face. And I’m quite sure I’m not the first to have that crush come back to bite him. You hear all the time about something crazy a guy does because of a woman. That pretty face can make a guy do things he wouldn’t normally do.
Isaac lied because Rebekah was so beautiful. Jacob worked for 14 years just to marry beautiful Rachel. And David…well, David had serious problems after a look at Bathsheba. So, David knew of what he wrote in Psalm 105:4 to seek God’s face. David knew that looking for, seeking after and finding God was not something that would come back to bite you. He knew the benefits of seeking God’s face. He knew and was thankful for what seeking God’s face would bring.
We continue our look at this psalm of gratitude and we have seen that true gratitude will be obvious in verse 1. From verse 3, we see that true gratitude will be bring joy. And today we see in verse 4 that in our gratitude to God we see His strength.
Let’s read that passage again. Our focus will be on verse 4 but we’ll read 1-5 of Psalm 105to keep it in context.
Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done. 2Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts. 3 Glory in his holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. 4 Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always. 5 Remember the wonders he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced.
“Look to the Lord and His strength; seek His face always.” I’m telling ya. That David is gonna be a writer someday. He just has a way of putting things that is just beautiful. The problem is that my ear says that’s beautiful but my little mind says, “What?” I want to know what that means to seek His face and His strength. What does it look like to actually do that?
I hate to in a way but let’s go back to my crush on Theresa. Some of you know what that feels like. Maybe it’s been a long time for some of us but you remember when you had a crush on that person you wound up dating and then marrying. When I was in school we called it “going together”. You may never actually go anywhere with that person but you still called it that.
Some of you called it “going steady”. You old folks called it courting or sparking. “I got my cap set for her.” I think my parents just “met in the parlor”. Whatever you called it, you remember the feeling you got when you were around that person. It was a feeling that didn’t stop when you left that person. It changed you when you were with them and away from them. It affected how you felt, how you dressed, how you smelled. It affected your attitude and outlook on life. Things were just better in this world when you had them to think about and you were grateful that you had them in your life.
Do you know that, unlike Theresa Beauvais, God wants to have a relationship with me? He does. And He wants to have a relationship with you too. In Genesis, it says that we are created in His image. In 1 John, it says that He loved us first. And all through here it talks of how God will never leave us. And what happens when you have a relationship with someone? It changes everything about you.
Think about the relationship that Danielhad with God. You remember the story. Daniel knew God so well that when the king made a law that nobody could pray to anybody but him, the first thing that Daniel did was to go home and pray to God about that. He wasn’t looking for trouble or trying to prove a point in protest. He just did what he always did because he had a relationship with God.
Nehemiah heard that the walls of Jerusalem had been burned and the very first thing he did was to pray about it. He fasted and wept and it stayed on his mind even while he was working and finally the king asked him what was wrong and again Nehemiah prayed even before answering. It was just his habit. It was what he did and it came natural to him.
Of course, then there is Job. Job takes it to a whole ’nuther level. When his whole world crashed down around him in just a matter of minutes, the very first words out of his mouth included the phrase, “May the name of the Lord be praised.” Job lost everything and his first natural reaction was to worship. He sought the face of God and found God’s strength there.
All three of these men could testify to the truthfulness of David’s words to “Look to the Lord and His strength; seek His face always”. Daniel said in chapter 9 verse 18, “We do not make requests of You because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy.”
Nehemiah got the wall rebuilt and said, “The joy of the Lord is your strength”. Job said in chapter 42, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” Did Job actually see God’s physical face? No, of course not, but He saw God in a new and real way; a way that brought gratitude to God for all that He had done, in spite of and through the horrible times in Job’s life. That’s how we seek God’s face. That’s what it looks like.
Now let’s see why we should seek God’s face. David says to “look to the Lord and His strength.” In terms of physical strength, Samson is the champion of the Bible. At the end of his life, though, even he knew from Whom his strength came and he prayed, “Oh God, please strengthen me just once more.”
But I think the grand champion of every other kind of strength had to be Paul. In Philippianshe said, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” And when he says, “all things” that was a lot of stuff that God gave him the strength to do. He wrote most of the New Testament, he started churches all over the world, he healed, he brought peace, he preached the Gospel and in his spare time he made tents! All of that took a lot of strength.
And yet, for some reason, God never removed the thorn in Paul’s flesh, as he called it. And we don’t know what that thorn was and that is probably the #1 question he is asked when people get to Heaven. Paul probably walks around Heaven with a t-shirt that says, “It was my eyes” or “It was my back” or “It was this mesquite thorn” or whatever it was. But whatever it was God never gave him relief from it.
And I don’t know why God chose not to but I can tell you that the vast majority of time that God heals or gives strength to do anything, it is the strength a person needs to do service for God. God knew that whatever was troubling Paul, it did not keep him from doing what God called him to do.
In Psalm chapter 3, David says, “I lie down and sleep and wake again because the Lord sustains me.” And God sustained him and gave him strength because he was running from his son Absalom and God wanted David on the throne and not Absalom.
In 1 Kings 19, Elijah is done. He’s finished and he wants to die. He is tired, mentally and physically and spiritually. But God sends an angel to minister to him and give him strength, not so he could make it home to watch TV and enjoy his retirement or to be able to travel the countryside on a whirlwind public speaking tour. (Get it? Whirlwind? Elijah?)
God gave him strength so that Elijah could continue in service for the Lord. He gave him what he needed to continue doing what he was supposed to do. And maybe if God is not giving you the strength you think you need, it is because He has given you the strength He knows you need to do what He wants you to do.
Yes, we all know that God is merciful and will often give strength and healing to people just because of His great mercy, and we are to pray for that. There’s nothing wrong with praying for strength or healing based on that but maybe God wants you to do something and if He doesn’t give you Samson strength then maybe He is giving you Paul strength. Maybe He is giving you the exact amount of strength you need to do exactly what you are supposed to do right where you are.
I’ve given you a lot of biblical examples. Now let me give you an example that is from our church. We often pray for someone right here to have healing and strength and relief from pain. That could be any one of you, in fact. And I hesitate to single out just one because so many of you are in some sort of pain and yet do what God has asked you to do in spite of and through your pain.
And if I were God I would heal your pain. I would swoop down my omnipotent hand and erase your pain and increase your strength to where it used to be. But if I did that, who knows but what you would have so much strength that you might skip right past that lady’s house down the street where that lady needs you so badly.
I know that right now you have just enough strength to get to her house and back and no more. I know you show her friendship when she needs it and you pray for her when I would imagine there is nobody else on the planet praying for her. I know you take her Bible verses and you encourage her even when you need someone to encourage you and in spite of and through your pain.
And so maybe when David says to seek God’s face and His strength, sometimes God gives you your strength and sometimes He gives you His strength which is the perfect amount of strength to do what you are supposed to do in service for Him. And maybe that strength is Samson strength and maybe it is “just” Paul strength. But when you see God at work through you it makes you grateful. It makes you want to seek His face even more so He can work through you even more.
So, we have seen how we are to seek God’s face and we have seen why we are to seek God’s face. The obvious last one is when are we to seek His face? The answer is the last word of the verse – always. We are to look to the Lord and His strength when times are good and we just need to say “thank you” like we did a couple of Sunday nights ago.
See, Satan hates for you to feel grateful to God. He hates it because it means you know God a little better than you used to and he doesn’t want that. He hates for you to be grateful because he knows it means that your faith is a little stronger than it used to be and he sure can’t have that. Satan hates for you to be grateful because he knows it means that God is at work in your life in such a way that it is too obvious to ignore and that just means trouble for the prince of this world and the father of lies. So he doesn’t want you to seek God’s face in the good times so he tries to bring bad times.
But we have bad news for Satan and we have worse news for Satan. The bad news is that we will look for God in the good times and the worse news is that we will look for God in the bad times. Not only will we seek His face but we will gain His strength and that will allow us to even be thankful in the bad times.
We should seek God’s face and His strength when times are good or when they are bad. We should seek the Lord when we are at work or school or driving down the road. You know, somebody told me the other day that they feel guilty sometimes when they are playing Solitaire because as they are playing they ask God for help and they felt bad for wasting God’s time like that. But that is exactly what is meant by always seeking His face. That is exactly what is meant by praying without ceasing. You do that when you have a relationship with Him.
When you were dating your soon-to-be spouse, you wanted to be with them in the good times so they could enjoy it with you. You wanted to be with them in the bad times so you could have them to cry on and give you guidance. But you also just wanted to be with them when nothing was going on; just watching TV or driving down the road. You just wanted their company.
That person is not trying to cheat at Solitaire by asking God for help. It’s just a habit to ask God to be with you no matter what you are going through, good, bad or otherwise. We should seek His face always.
We have seen how and why and when we are to seek the face of the Lord but did you know that God seeks us first? 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because He first loved us.” Luke 19:10 says, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”
That’s hard to take in sometimes. God sought you out. The One Who created you and knows you best still wants to have a relationship with you and all you have to do is accept Him. Proverbs 8:17 says, “Those who seek Me find Me.” If you don’t know Him today; if you don’t have a relationship with Him, then today is the day of salvation. Today is the day you can shed the guilt and gain all the good things Heaven has to offer. Don’t wait another day. Seek His face.
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