During my holiday break in January I was sitting in a café enjoying a long black, as I like to do. This is a busy café in Sunbury, especially from mid-morning onwards. This particular morning a man came in with his little daughter to have some morning tea. He ordered a coffee for himself and a babyccino and cookie for his little daughter who sat next to him. She was about four years old. The man, waiting for the coffees and cookie to arrive, whipped out his smart phone and began surfing the internet and, occasionally, texting who knows who.
All the while the little girl was talking to her daddy and, if she was lucky, he would occasionally make some indistinct noise as if to indicate to her that he was supposedly engaged in the conversation. But he wasn’t. The whole time his gaze was on his smartphone screen and his brain fully engaged with what he was doing. Not once did he look up to the child and make eye contact with her. He had no idea what she was wanting to say.
The little girl kept talking to her dad, but I noticed that after a few minutes she had started raising her voice in order to break through the focused concentration of her dad on other, apparently more important, things. Dad remained studiously focused on his phone. The little girl, realising she was not getting through, stopped talking and, looking directly at him, she nearly shouted to him, “Daddy!”. But daddy remained glued to his phone.
She sat there disappointed. Then she gave it one last shot. She reached up and placing her hand on his chin, turned her daddy’s face towards hers with a whispered pleading, “Daddy …”
The father’s eyes met hers … and he saw. He melted. He put away his phone. Looked her in the eye and said, “Talk to me. I’m really listening now.”
In 2 Chronicles 7:14 God reminds king Solomon that times will come where His people forget Him and things will start going wrong and, when that happened, they would need to humble themselves and pray and seek His face and turn from their wicked ways, then He will hear from heaven and respond. But here’s the thing I have discovered. God is not like the distracted father in the café that morning. Our God is incredibly attentive. If we truly, genuinely, humbly seek His face, and pray, wanting to turn from our sins, He is immediately attentive. We don’t have to shout. We don’t have to pull His face towards ours to force eye contact. When we seek the face of God in this way, it is the beginning of consecrating ourselves – being fully and properly available to God. He does not make us wait in His waiting room, or do time before He condescends to listen to us.
God is immediately attentive to those who seek His face in consecration because He loves us so much and is incredibly interested in everything about us. We don’t have to do penance or anything like that when we seek the face of God in humility, repentance and consecration. The parable of the prodigal son teaches us that truth.
By the work of the shed blood of Jesus we have been made righteous and are brought into wonderful relationship with our heavenly Father. That’s God’s bit, if you like. Our bit is to consciously and ruthlessly throw off sin that so easily entangles and defiles us. That’s consecrating ourselves – and keeping ourselves consecrated. The beginning of the process of consecration is humbly seeking the face of God right where we are … and in His great mercy and love, He immediately turns His face towards us. And when He does that, His favour gets on us – forgiveness, cleansing, reassurance and so on – and His anointing is freshly imparted to us to help us in a hundred different ways. Grace …
The heavenly Father needs no coercion, no loud yelling for Him to turn His face toward us. The moment we begin to seek His face in humility and honesty – with a heart wanting to be holy … He is already turning His face toward us.
This is the God I know.
Numbers 6:26 (NIV)
“… the LORD turn His face toward you and give you peace."
You are loved
Ps Milton