What does it mean to look for the Lord? International Church of Philadelphia Obstacles to avoid

When a person begins to seek the faces of God, meeting him, he must know what he is looking for the faces of God for what purpose. Meeting with God always brings some changes. It is beautiful, and very responsible, since the meeting with it means the opening of his will to whom it meets.

What does it mean to "look for the faces of God"? For what? To just look at it? But he will never appear for us, but meeting with

It means a meeting with an angel or prophet, that is, a meeting with the envoy. And if there is a messenger, it means that there is a message from the face of the sent, that is, from God. Message is his will.

When Moses met with God through a burning bush, he met with the will of God. Noah, having met with God, found out his will - build ark, Abraham - to go to the ground, which God will indicate, etc. The Israeli people went to the prophets, looking for the will of God. And if the desire to meet with God is burning inside you, then you need to be prepared for what you will meet with sent from him and recognize His will. And before the meeting with God did not take place, and a person does not know his will, the demand from him is less, but after he learned his will, the court occurs.

Remember the words of Jesus: "If I didn't come and did not tell them, I would not have sin; And now they do not apologize in their sin "(In.15: 22)? Why? Yes, because you can now not say that they did not know. The next your act or justifies and raises you, because by having accepted the word from him, you accept His will and get more and better, or you will refuse and lose. But there can be no average. After meeting with the Lord, through whatever image he revealed himself, and after you recognize his will, we can not be in a neutral position. Therefore, it is necessary to be thoughtfully and seriously looking for the faces of God, knowing that the meeting will be followed with his will.

I want to spend such a parallel, comparing two characters from the Gospel, who were looking for the faces of God and meeting him. This is a rich young man who was looking for meetings with Jesus to find out his will and "... someone called Zak, the boss of the solar and a man rich, I was looking for seeing Jesus ..." (LK.19: 2,3). A rich young man performed his law all his life, he read the father and mother, honored God and I met with Jesus. But the meeting with God did not bring him joy: wicked, he went away when he learned his will. Why? Because the will of God did not coincide with his desires and his concepts. He would like God to tell him something that he would not disturb him and would not hurt him. Jesus said he did not get one - to follow him, and for this you need to get rid of my wealth. A rich man cannot go for Christ and be his follower. But the young man was rich not because he had a great estate, he was rich in his heart, he was tied to his wealth, and therefore he was a saddened. Whether he received the highest and best after meeting with the face of God when he was asked: "... if you want to be perfect, go ..." (MF19: 21)? No, he lost.

And what is Zakay? He is also a rich man, but all his life lived, not fulfilling the law, did not honor God, was a man sinner, to go into the house to whom was considered default. And so, having met with Jesus, not even having heard God's will, he himself gives half of his estate and rejoins the one who offended. It was an act of sinful shone, and he did not lose blessings, but acquired. You can have a lot and not be rich. If we read the whole history of King David, we will see that he was never rich, although he was king. His heart remained free from everything, and God was more expensive than all jewels. A person who values \u200b\u200bsomething more than closeness with God, be something in society, his concepts, its amenities, etc., in a word, what he is rich and what is unable to leave, never be able to follow Christ because, following Christ, everything you can take with you, this is your cross, as Jesus said to His disciples: "... if anyone wants to go behind me, reject myself, and take your cross, and follow me ..." (MF.16: 24).

Tais Kotova.

"My heart speaks from you:" ... Look for my face "; And I will look for your faces, Lord "(Ps.26: 8).

Finding God's face to be before Him - this call, which we many times find in the Bible. As soon as we found the world with God, he himself turns to our hearts so that we are looking for it. Without this, the life of a believer man becomes simply impossible. David writes: "I do not pick up your face from me; Do not deny in the anger of the slave of yours "(PS.26: 9). Righteous Job appealed to God: "Why do you hide your face and consider me the enemy you" (Job 13:24). When the Lord hides his face from you, when you do not find it, you have a serious danger to get under God's anger or become his enemy. That is why it is so important for us to look for the faces of the Lord. The same David said: "In your hand, my days ... Javi is a bright face to your slave; Save me mercy with you "(Ps.30: 16-17). That is why he abruptly promised to God: "My soul is eager to God strong, alive. And I will look for your faces, Lord "(Ps.26: 8).

I believe that the soul of each of us craves to the Lord, strong and living. That is why from the very beginning you need to understand: what does it mean to look for his faces. According to Jewish understanding and translation from Hebrew phrase "to seek the faces of God" means looking for the place, the point where God looks at the moment. And to prestose before God's face means - to be on the place that is in the center of attention of our Lord. Then the above passage from the 26th Psalm of David will sound like this: "My soul is eager to God strong and living. And I will pee up, I will delveue where your opinion is directed today, Lord. I want to be there the Lord, in the center of your attention. Let me see what your opinion is addressed today. "

To be the focus of God is to be in the center of his history, in the center of his plans, in the center of his vocation, in the center of his blessings. There, in front of his face, on the Divine Advanced, - the most blessed and safest place for us.

Our god is alive. He does not look at one point. Sometimes we can look every day to look at the same point, to do the same things, pray among the same prayers. And then our spiritual life seems like freezing. We are experiencing crises, we begin to seem to seem that everything was stopped in us that we were in a spiritual impasse. Just we stopped looking for the persons of the Lord. Exit from the situation - our desire to be at the very place where God looks at today.

"Who heard such? Who saw this similar? Was the country in one day? Did the people be born once like Zion, barely started to suffer, gave birth to his sons? " (IS.66: 8). On November 27, 1947, Zion was revived at the UN meeting in one day. And at once, the earth left, wonders suddenly began to occur, the Bible suddenly came to life before the whole world.

The lifeless desert becomes a flowering garden, destroyed cities are restored, the scattered people return to the land of fathers from all over the Earth, again sound on the streets of the song of the bride and groom. Go to Israel, and you will see all the biblical prophecies about Israel of the last days performer. We live in the amazing times that the prophets could only dream about!

On the Jewish calendar 5772 year. The sixth of God ends. Ahead of God's Shabbat. Jesus so close! He hurries to fulfill his word: "All Israel will be saved!" (ROM.11: 25) He did not forget about his firstborn. He has so much affairs: you need to bring the Jews home, you need to provide them with reliable protection, you need to prepare them for a meeting with the Messiah: "And I am a David's house and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, I am an Isol of Grace and Deal, and they are led by him who pierced, and They will cry about him, as sobbing about the only society, and grieve, how they grieve about the firstborn "(ZA.2: 10). Israel expects the Great Awakening!

Today, not only the church, but also the modern unbelieving world agrees that everything that happens in Israel is a real God's miracle. Only thanks to God won all the last war of Israel, only thanks to him, Israel became one of the most developed and strong countries of the world. The eyes of the Lord, overlooking the Earth, today are reappearing on a tiny strip of sushi, shy along the Mediterranean Sea, on those who live on it and those who pray about it.

And, of course, he wants His people to Israel and His People the Church now, as never before, were looking for his faces and, in spite of everything, did not leave His Divine Advanced.

"Let me allow you to read the quote from the catalog of your last exhibition in 1996," the young girl said. She was sitting on the edge of the chair, and an explicit tension was traced in her position, and a slim, dressed in a mourning dress, resembled a half-walled folding knife. Hope first saw this old chair with a faded blanket and oak armrests covered with reddish yellow varnish, on the glazed terrace of the house in the German quarter **. Even more ... Yes, more than more than seventy years ago, her grandfather loved to read the newspaper sitting in this chair, while he threw back his head to better see through thick bifocal glasses ***
As a child, Hope was often sitting in a chair, trying to understand what it was an adult; Her hands with small round lockers and estate fingers lay on wide elegantly curved armrests, which were fixed located in them, the wedge-shaped brazen fell around both ends **** is a kind of wooden coin with a pale stripe. The chair was wide, and therefore she could put only one hand. How much did she have then? - Five or six. Even then, somewhere in the 20s, when the chair was quite new, it was a rigorous, the subject of cottage furniture came out of the fashion, and served only by the addition of the interior. It stood on a glazed terrace, styled pots with phylogendron, next to a small curve of a bench under the legs, which, like a cake, was divided into long triangular pieces of different colors. When the 50th death of his grandmother broke the balance in the house, Hope wanted to pick up this chair, and her brother, who did not express any objections, delivered the chair at Long Island, where he put it on the second floor of her house, in the room serving She is a workshop. She later tried to read at the window of the window published north, but in the frame of howled the wind flew from block-aleld-sound, and at the bottom of Zack too loudly lost jazz records - Armstrong, Benny Gudman, hissing Baiderbek's grapplestine; Then, along with the Gay and children, the chair transported to the apartment on the 79th street of the eastern part of the city. He was put next to the radiator in a free room, the walls of which were painted in a brown-brown color, and while Hope tried to set his own rhythm dirty broom, the radiator was noisy, as if a distraught prisoner; Later, the chair was transported to Vermont, where they and Jerry were thoroughly equipped the place of their last stop in life. So the chair, moved in early April from crude and warm Pennsylvania to the colder area of \u200b\u200bAmerica, did not fit the simple, strict interior of the living room with a low ceiling; The front round legs of the armchairs stood on an oval rug, woven from the pillars, and square rear legs - on the lacquered parquet of the color of ripe cherries; Here, in the bluish light of the mountains, brown, green and red blanket plaid, and acquired a reddish brown. As surprising, I thought Hope that things follow us from one place to another, they are faithful to us more than people who, dying, leave us. In recent years, the grandmother's secluded life has launched a house in the German quarter, thick walls from sandstone were destroyed under the weight of the windowsill tired by pots with flowers, and under the influence of the blooming shrubs, hydrangea, holly, and the incense tree, whose branches were knocked down during storms and wet snow glass; The whitewashes sat down with long fragile pieces, leaving among the stems of peonies and the roots of holly. When Hope was small, she liked to live there, but with the move of her parents to Ardmore, this place began to seem to her alien: ominous Tsuga with curvators, the courtyard, a grave, from which heavily proceeded, and confused, as if in a greenhouse, calm, In the same place, on the bitch of the hazel, the forgotten swings with rotten ropes and the board were having fun, now they scared her, and in childhood they could smear her millet grandfather for her, the first who died during the life of Hope.
Young woman, a new narrow geeks in the thick old armchair trim, read with a noticeable New York accent, voice that caused Hope's alarm, memories of past life, and child love, "For a long time I lived like a navel, fearing the set of nonsense of nonsense God who is replete with peace. I gradually realized that the world is a devilish mixture, bright and not chaste. In our current works, I try to use as much gray shades as possible, they resemble a predestal hour when the light has not yet evacuated the distinct outlines of objects in the night darkness. Perhaps I'm trying to portray holiness. It seems to me that I will be flattered when someone from critics will call this stage of my creativity as the best - they write that I finally came out of the shadow of my first husband. It may seem strange, but I ceased to worry what they say and how I look in the eyes of others. End of quotes. It was five years ago. Now you also think?
Hope tried to reduce the pace of their conversation and stretched the words that something thinking. "Almost also, I would say, although it sounds as if I am dramatizing. Perhaps "fears" are too strong. Although more appropriate and accurately can be said so "the feeling of fear and hostility towards ...".

Hope felt from the nervous tension to the throat merged with a lump; On her face lay an imprint of an urban pallor, her long hands were painted with a dark varnish, she was dressed in a black shoe sweater with a high collar and a black leatherette jacket on a zipper, her dark hair, swollen over ears curved silver scallops, smoothly and freely in The form of a lure fell on the back; Highly launched army boots with stupid wide square noses looked frighteningly and resembled two small stairs leading to bright wide pants, stitched from a striped material without a name, which Hope never seen before. High heel shoes, wide front and narrow in the middle were not comfortable, although men's shoes were always comfortable in those times. This is a new century, and even more than the new millennium. For Hope, this millennary fact was only a big white door slammed and not producing her life, as if choking in an empty child refrigerator.

Translator Notes:

* "Look for my face" - a quote from Psalm from David 26: 8
** German quarter - District of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
*** Bifocal points - glasses, in which each lens combines parameters for two different recipes. The top half of the lenses for "Dali", and the bottom - for "close".
**** Agel is a wooden or metal cylindrical or other shape rod applied to bonding parts of wooden structures

And Skaxt Lord - It means to look for it presence. "Presence" - this is how the word "face" is translated from Hebrew. Those., Literally, we must look for his "face" - this is ancient Wearing way to gain access to God. Be face - So be in his presence.

But does his children are not always in his presence? Yes and no. "Yes" in two meanings. First, in the sense that God is omnipresent and therefore it is everywhere and next to each. It all exists. Its power is always and everything is supported and managed.

And secondly, he is always next to his children, in the sense of loyalty to his promise to always defend us, help us and pay us all for the benefit. "And this, I am with you all the days before the protrusion of the century" (Matthew 28:20).

When he is not with us

But in a sense, God is not always next to us. For this reason, the Bible repeatedly calls us "Finding the Lord ... to look for him always" (Ps. 104: 4). God's presence is not always obvious, significantly and consciously for us. There are times when we neglect God, cease to think about it, do not trust him, and we consider it "hidden," - that is, we do not see the eyes of our heart, as he is great, beautiful and precious.

His face is the radiance of his personality - hiding behind the veil of our carnal desires, which are always ready to subordinate us. That's why we are stated to search for his presence incessant. God calls us to rejoice, constantly aware of his unsurpassed greatness, beauty and value.

What does "search" mean

This happens through the "quest". Constant Search. But how is it in practice? And the Old, and the New Testament says it is a setting of mind and hearts on God. This conscious focusing of our mind and the attraction of the heart on God.

"So place your heart and soul your soul to recover the Lord God of your" (1 Paralypomenon 22:19).

"So, if you resurrected with Christ, then look for a mountain, where Christ sits ones from God; I think about the minor, and not about the earth "(Colossians 3: 1-2)

Conscious choice

This installation of thinking is the opposite of mental inertia movement. This is a conscious choice that guides the heart to God. Here's how Paul prayed for the church: "Let the Lord send your hearts to God's love and the resistance of Christ" (2 Thessalonians 3: 5, new Russian translation). For our part, we make a meaningful effort. But this desire to look for God is God's dear.

We do not initiate this mental and emotional desire to seek the lost God. We can search so coin or sheep. But God was not lost. Nevertheless, there is always something through that or by What we have to go through to consciously meet him. This transition through something or past something and is the essence of the search. God is often hidden, non-obvious. We must go through the "intermediaries" and bypass the obstacles on our path to it.

Heaven broadcasts God's glory. So we can look for it through them. He reveals himself in his word. So we can look for it thanks Word. He shows himself in evidence of grace, manifested in other people. So we can look for it and in this. Searches - this is a meaningful desire to wade through everything naturally directly to God himself, - constantly direct our souls to God in all our experiences, send our thoughts and hearts to him with the help of his revelations. This is what it means to look for God.

Obstacles to avoid

There is also a lot of obstacles that we must bypass to see it clearly and so that we can be in the light of his presence. We must avoid actions that blast us spiritually. We have to run from them and bypass them. They impede our movement.

We know what makes us particularly sensitive to God's presence in the world and in the word. And we know that it holds back and blinds, and even deprives us of the desire to look for it. We must remove from it and pass by, if you wish to see God. This is, without which the process of finding God cannot do.

And when we guide our thoughts and heart to God in all our experiences, we call him. It also refers to the search for God.

"Look for the Lord when you can find it; Call it when it is close "(Isaiah 55: 6).

"If you contribute to God and pray to the Almighty ..." (Job 8: 5).

Search includes call and praying. "Lord, open my eyes. Lord, take off the veil of my blindness. Lord, smile and show yourself. I thirst to see your face. "

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The importance of humility

The greatest obstacle to the search for the Lord is pride. "In the arrogance of his wickedly not looking for him, there is no place for God in his thoughts." (Psalm 9:25, New Russian translation). Therefore, humility is extremely important in finding the Lord.

Great promise given by the Lord seekers is the following - it will be found. "If you look for it, you will find it" (1 paralympomenon 28: 9). And that it will be found, there is a great reward. "Everyone who comes to Him must believe that he is and that he rewards those who are looking for it"(Jews 11: 6, new Russian translation). God himself is our greatest reward. And when he is with us, we have everything. "Look for the Lord and his strength, look for his face always."

Peace to you, Darius!

We can see the answer on the example of Psalm 26, where David uses these words:

2 Lord - My Light and Salvation My: Who should I be afraid of? Lord of the fortress of my life: who I feel like?
3 If the villains appealed on me, my opponents and enemies to sink my flesh, they themselves will be passed and fall.
4 If the regiment feels against me, my heart will not be crammed; If the war rises to me, and then I will hope.
5 of one I asked the Lord, he is just looking for to stay to me in the house of the Lord in all the days of my life, to contemplate the beauty of the Lord and attend the temple of His
6 For he would cover me in the tabernacle on his disaster on his day, I would hide me in the hidden place of my village, would ask me on the rock.
7 Then the head would be ascended above the enemies surrounding me; And I would bring in his tabernacle of the sacrifice of Sovildorm, began to sing and chanting before the Lord.
8 Hear, Lord, my voice, which I appeal, hind me and hurt me.
9 My heart speaks from you: "Look for my face"; And I will look for your faces, Lord.
10 Do not squeeze your face from me; Do not deny in the anger of your slave. You were my assistant; Do not reject me and do not leave me, God, my Savior!
11 For my father and my mother left me, but the Lord will accept me.
12 teach me, Lord, the way to your way and put me on the path of truth, for the sake of my enemies;
13 Do not betray me on the enemy enemies, for the witnesses were rebelled on me and breathe evil.
14 But I believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord on the ground of the living.
15 Nadeya for the Lord, launch, and your heart strengthens, and hope for the Lord.
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What is your psalm? David is not just a pastor for sermons or theologians with a book. This is a king over the state, almost all his life is the leader of the group of armed people (different), warrior who experienced different situations. Raised from the shepherd to the highest post in the country. What does he say about?

2-4 poems - confession of faith at fear, reinforced concentration on God. It switches from those who need to be afraid (humanly) - enemies, opponents (quite real people, and not alleged) - on the Lord.

5 verse - what does it want? Wants to get out of pressure and stay in God's presence.

6, 7 poems - what gives God's defense. What would David wanted. What he believed in the context of overcoming the surrounding situation.

9 - the moment of choice, switching from fear to a quiet voice in the heart, which even sounds in the most difficult situation - I want to look for God instead of diving into fears.

10 - fears that will not be heard that he will not find his face. As people say today - prayers do not rise above the ceiling. Molver to raise the complexity of the situation, its sinfulness and mistakes. Suddenly, God will not accept me because of mistakes, they suddenly are fatal. But God is the Savior - this is his character. David relies on the nature of God, and not on his situation.

11 is a gap of social connections, loneliness. But by faith, he confesses that God at this moment will still be near.

12, 13 - moment of insight - I do not know the path of God now, I do not see him. Therefore, I ask you to teach me, put me on the right way, because I do not understand how to go. Make it for my enemies so that they do not enthusiastically (because they are wrong in this situation - "witnesses false and breathe evil")

14 - confession of faith in prayer - I believe that I will see the kindness of God to me being alive (in those days, the enemies acted not only at the level of conversations, but also killed).

15 - Focus on faith - I look not on the enemies, but I hope for the Lord. I bring up feelings through faith "Your heart is strengthened."

If you make a result by several phrases: Looking for God's face when it is not visible. In stress, problems, etc. David professes faith, consciously ignores attention on circumstances and replaces the decision on God's decision. This confession of faith is to see the light through the MGLU. He asks God to specify his way, despite the difficulties of seeing God's choice - believing that God has this way, that God will not leave him that God is the Savior.

Bless you,

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