Seeking God's Face Series

I heard a pastor tell of his experience on a plane. The stewardess

was explaining that the parents were to be sure and put on their oxygen

mask before they put them on their children. This seemed so selfish,

and there was a natural resistance to the idea. It went against the

grain of a mother's instinct to keep her child in danger. The

stewardess explained that if the parent delays and passes out the child

will be helpless to come to their aid, but if the child passes out there is

no danger because the parents have protected themselves and will be

able to come to the rescue of the child. The point is, there are

situations where the most loving thing you can do for another is to take

care of yourself first.

If you haven't prepared yourself by learning to swim, you will not

be able to rescue someone who is drowning. If you haven't developed

self-esteem by learning to love yourself, you will have a hard time

loving others as you ought. There are many illustrations of how a

self-centered focus is the key to being prepared for meeting other

people's needs. The doctor, the lawyer, teacher, pastor, or any other

professional person who does not develop their own knowledge and

skills are not going to be very helpful to the people they serve. The

selfish person is not the person who devotes a great deal of their time

and energy to their own preparation. The selfish person is one who

does not bother to develop themselves and work toward self-excellence

because they don't care about other people enough to be prepared to

meet their needs.

It is people who care about others who strive for excellence that

they might be an instrument to be used for others. Jesus spent 30years

in preparation before He began His public ministry of serving

and teaching. God's requirements for us to be prepared for revival

are really quite self-centered. The first and last are clearly focused on

the self. Humble yourselves and turn from your sin. We would much

prefer to humble somebody else and crusade against their sin, but God

demands that we deal with ourselves first. Even when we pray, which

seems God-centered, we saw in our last message that a major part of

prayer is to struggle with the self to be prepared to receive what God

wants to give. Even answered prayer, when you are not ready, can be

a problem. Like the 5 year old boy who let out with a whistle while the

pastor was praying. His mother was so embarrassed, but the little guy

explained later that he had been praying that God would help him to

learn to whistle, and that's when God answered his prayer.

F. W. Robertson, the great English preacher, told of the time he

was taken with 9 other boys to be disciplined by the master of the

school. He prayed to escape the shame of it all, and to his surprise the

master excused him, and he was not flogged with the others. He says it

was the most harmful answer to prayer he ever had, for it lead him to

think of prayer as a magic charm. He fancied that he had a secret

weapon he could whip out to get him through any jam. It made him

proud and not humble. It did not change his behavior, for why sin less

when by prayer you can escape the consequences?

This illustrates the really self-centered use of prayer. But this does

not mean proper prayer, which is acceptable to God, is not also

focused on the self. Robertson came to see the folly of his ways, and he

learned to pray for himself to be an instrument prepared to be useful

for God's purpose. Prayer is not just asking God for what He can do

for us, but it is asking God to help us be prepared to do for Him what

He wills. Paul's first prayer to Christ was, "Lord, what will you have

me to do?" Prayer has a self focus, and so that leaves only one of the 4

requirements with what seems to be a totally God-focused perspective,

and that is the one we want to examine.

The third requirement, and the third big if is, "If my people will seek my face."

The first thing I want to observe about this is that it is also a

perpetual preparation. Psa. 105:4 says, "Look to the Lord and His

strength, seek His face always." David says in Psa. 27:8-9, "Your face,

Lord, I will seek. Do not hide your face from me." The implication is

that God's face is not always easy to find, for it is often hidden.

Numerous are the texts which described the frustration of God hiding