One night last summer, I “heard” it while going through the usual routine of checking doors, shutting off lights and loading up the coffee maker for the next morning before heading to bed. I wasn’t feeling particularly “spiritual.” I heard it not as a voice but as a strong impression in my mind while on my way from one task to another, accompanied by the quiet music I often play to wind down the day.
“Psalm 27.”
Really? This psalm was very familiar to me, or so I thought. The strong impression would have been easy to ignore. As a worship leader, I had hung onto this psalm often. In times of stress when the world is pressing in with its demands, I had rested in its calming assurance. And once while on a weekend retreat, it surpassed all the planned programs that were to come when I stood in a breezy forest alone and read it aloud: “The one thing I want from God, the thing I seek most of all, is the privilege of meditating in his Temple, living in his presence every day of my life, delighting in his incomparable perfections and glory. There I’ll be when troubles come. He will hide me. He will set me on a high rock …” (vs. 4-8, Living).
And it even helps me find my car in a crowded parking lot.
This year was a time for a new license plate. I had pretty much memorized the old one and so a wave of panic rushed over me when driving into a crowded parking lot for the first time: “Wait. How am I going to find my car?” But then I noticed that my new plate carried a familiar theme: P2749…how could I not forget Psalm 27:4-9? Coincidence, or God’s sense of humor for daily living? You decide.
But back to that summer night impression. After all of Psalm 27’s familiarity, what possible new insight amidst the very familiar was there to see? …But when you pick up your Bible and it just happens to open exactly to Psalm 27, you get a bit of a chill and you pay attention. You stop saying, “I know this already, I’ve got this, I’ve heard it all before.” Instead, you find yourself humbly asking for eyes to see and ears to hear. PS2749, as it turns out, was more than a license plate, because I found myself pausing at verse 8: “My heart says of You, ‘seek His face.’ Your face, Lord, will seek.”
While I always loved the thought of it, this verse had given me pause many times before, because we are told that no one can actually see God’s holy face and live to tell about it. What’s with that? I figured that maybe now was the time for a little digging, and one study translation jumped off the page:
“Seek My face—require My presence as Your greatest need.”
It turns out that ancient Israel often equated God’s face not with His actual face-face but as a type-and-shadow of His awesome presence that brings unmatched light and hope to every day, every place we go, in every situation we face.
Translation: God is much bigger than just an hour and a half on Sunday morning.
It happened again last night while getting ready for bed—a different psalm this time, Psalm 86, but as I reflected back on that summer night, it carried the same reinforcing message: “Teach me Your ways, O Lord, that I may live according to your truth! Grant me purity of heart, so that I may honor You.” (Psalm 86:11-12, NLT). The Living Bible version added living-this-Walk exclamation mark: “Tell me where You want me to go and I will go there. May every fiber of my being unite in reverence to Your name.”
Like that summer night in the midst of the seemingly familiar, here was God again dropping the same encouraging (and apparently very important) reminder that while He is always present, whenever I seek to be intentional in thinking about Him even when surrounded by distractions, I will see and hear Him through the noise and get His perspective for every situation, and in every conversation and in every opportunity to be salt and light to someone.
It was a reminder that my ideas of God and my faith and my worship are never to be confined to place or buildings or Sundays but to be grounded in this grand “whatever,” for whenever and wherever:
“Whatever is true, whatever is honorable and worthy of respect, whatever is right and confirmed by God’s word, whatever is pure and wholesome, whatever is lovely and brings peace, whatever is admirable and of good repute; if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think continually on these things—center your mind on them, and implant them in your heart.” (Philippians 4:8, Amplified)
Every day, to be His face-seeker. Every day, to “require My presence as Your greatest need.”
“God does not want us to merely believe in Him, He does not intend that we simply use our wits to get by, to barely survive until we are finally ushered in to Heaven. God wants to be actively involved in our lives each day.”—Henry Blackaby
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