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Sunday 11/02/25
Title: Face to face
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Face to face
Last week I introduced or suggested a connection between loving God, fearing God, seeking God and being about the work of the kingdom.
Each of these can play off of and in fact encourage the other.
The initial idea however was that seeking God springs out of our reverence for Him. But the same could be said in reverse, that our fear of God is increased when we seek Him.
The same can be said about love for God. Those who seek Him, will discover His love for us and we know our love for Him began when we first came to know of His love for us. But love for God will also drive us to seek Him.
Furthermore, both love for God and respect for Him will manifest in our obedience to Him and our passion for what He loves.
All of these things, seeking God, loving God, revering Him, obeying Him and being about the work of His kingdom are ALL interrelated.
I singled out both the love and respect we have for God in last week’s teaching and how they work together and are in fact products of our seeking Him.
To illustrate this I pointed to how the neurochemicals of dopamine and oxytocin work together to produce a drawing effect for relationship and a reward based encouragement towards attachment, trust and cooperation.
- Dopamine is more focused on reward, motivation, and pleasure. What draws me to a person.
- While oxytocin is primarily responsible for attachment, trust, and cooperation. What keeps us in relationship with a person.
I suggested that if God so outfitted our bodies with these neurochemicals to facilitate lasting, loyal human relationships that He did so only to teach us how a relationship with Him works.
That these two neurochemicals work together much like love for God works together with our reverence for Him to draw us towards seeking His face!
That time face-to-face with God, in turn deepens both our love and devotional reverence for Him and this all manifests in active obedience to Him and encourages us towards kingdom work.
[consider the parable of the heart Soils and what we value]
Now as I was going back over last week’s notes and those which remained untaught from last week, I began to wonder if these examples had just been too convenient and if I had fallen into a trap of forcing an issue that wasn’t really specifically pressed in the early church.
So rather than wonder, I proactively decided to conduct a search for the words witnesses, testify, testimony and seeking God (words which are involved with kingdom work) to see where the New Testament placed emphasis on these things.
In other words, was witnessing presented as a task to accomplish, or as an organic, natural result of growth in our intimacy with Christ.
This gave the following results:
Our testimony is a derived testimony:
John 15:26, “But when the Comforter is come, Whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, Who proceeds from the Father, He shall testify of Me:”
Meaning the Holy Spirit will testify to US about Jesus. So the source of our testimony is that which we received from the Spirit of God our Helper
Acts 1:8,“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”
Meaning the Holy Spirit will be the power behind our testimony of Christ. Both through lives that have changed and by Jesus being proclaimed through us.
Peter on the day of Pentecost
Acts 2:40, “And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this perverse generation.”
Peter had already said,
“This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.” – Acts 2:32
Peter went sent to Cornelius
Acts 10:42-43,“He commanded us to preach to the people and to warn them that He is the One appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead. (43) About Him all the prophets testify, that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Peter preaches from Solomon’s portico
Acts 3:15, “And killed the Prince of life, Whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses.”
Our work is in cooperation with the Holy Spirit the witness from Heaven
Acts 5:32,“And we are His witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, Whom God hath given to them that obey Him.”
Jesus told His followers that their testimony of Him will be a testimony AGAINST those who do not believe:
Matthew 10:18, “And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for My sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.” [also in Mark 13:9]
…Luke’s is a little different-
Luke 21:10-13, “Then He said to them, “Nation will rise up in arms against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. (11) There will be great earthquakes, and famines and plagues in various places, and there will be terrifying sights and great signs from heaven. (12) But before all this, they will seize you and persecute you, handing you over to the synagogues and prisons. You will be brought before kings and governors because of My name. (13) This will be a time for you to serve as witnesses.”
Mark 6:11, “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.” [Also in Luke 9:5]
Testimony as a life lived
Heb. 3:5 “And Moses verily was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after;”
Heb. 11:5 “By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.”
And this next passage gives I now see in a new light in Revelation –
Rev. 12:11, “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”
Overcame him, in that they did not deny Jesus.
Another example of testifying is testifying of the truths of the gospel:
Gal. 5:3,4, “For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. You who are trying to be declared righteous by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace!”
Eph. 4:17 “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,”
1 Tim. 6:12, “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.”
2 Tim. 2:2, “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”
That’s it – those are the primary examples of the words testimony or witness in the New Testament.
This all collaborated to paint a picture that was far more organic and natural than many of the witnessing “efforts” conducted by churches today which typically result in sinners being invited into our sacred gatherings.
After looking all of this up I thought,
“I’m certain that the letters to the churches and those to Titus and Timothy which instructed them regarding what to teach and encourage in the churches, was almost exclusively focused upon Christ IN us, rather than the work of witnessing.”
But I didn’t want to just rely upon my mental overview of the New Testament, so just to be certain I used AI to offer me results from this specific question,
“Were the New Testament letters more about living a life conformed to Christ or being His witnesses”
After this I reworded the question only this time shifting the suggested emphasis in the opposite direction to see if it affected the outcome. It did not!
The following was the answer!
The New Testament letters encompass both themes, viewing them as two inseparable parts of the Christian life. However, the letters are fundamentally about being conformed to Christ’s image, which is as an outcome the primary means of bearing testimony to Christ.
The epistles serve as a vital link between the theological understanding of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, and its practical application in the daily lives of believers.
The letters address practical challenges and offer ethical guidance to new and established church communities, focusing on the following:
- Internal Transformation and Conductis seen in conformity to His Image: A core message is that God’s ultimate purpose is for believers to be “conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29). This involves a process of spiritual growth and sanctification, where believers’ lives increasingly reflect Christ’s character, love, humility, and justice. The letters provide detailed ethical and practical guidance for living a holy life and resisting the surrounding pagan world, as a natural outflow of their faith and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and their communion with the saints.
- External Witness through Lifestyle: Living a life that reflects Christ’s character is presented as a powerful form of witness to the surrounding world. The letters teach that by holding tightly to the “word of life” and shining as “lights in the dark world” through their conduct, believers offer a compelling testimony to others. The quality of their lives serves as a “living letter” of recommendation for Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18).
- Mission as an Outflow of Discipleship: While the Gospels focus more on the narrative of Jesus‘ life and the initial call to be witnesses (Acts 1:8), the letters focus on nurturing believers to maturity so that they can effectively participate in the broader mission of the church. Discipleship equips believers to share their faith with confidence and clarity, making evangelism an organic outcome of a transformed life. By living lives that are increasingly Christ-like, believers effectively become a living testimony to the power of the Gospel to transform lives, allowing others to “see Jesus through them”.
In short, the New Testament letters present a holistic vision:
In essence, the letters reveal the truth about Jesus (testimony) so that believers can put that truth into practice (conformity), and thereby the church as a whole can be a compelling witness to the world.
The two concepts are mutually reinforcing and central to the overall message of the New Testament epistles.
So today I am going to continue in my notes from last week, but I thought you would benefit from this self-evaluation.
I wanted you to see that I am not just pulling these things out of nowhere, and that I often scrutinize what I teach and the motives which might be driving those teachings. I do this to make sure I am not just soap boxing.
I need to make sure I am majoring on what the scriptures major on while still mentioning, though less ardently, those things the scriptures only present as secondary issues.
You recall that I offered a montaged video which illustrated the roles of the two formerly mentioned neurochemicals as well as a controlled experiment which put these to the test.
This experiment consisted of several people divided into groups of two, from all walks of life and varying degrees of familiarity from perfect strangers to a couple married for 57 years.
They were to sit and gaze into each other’s eyes for 5 minutes (though so groups did 2 or 4 minutes). The results were undeniably similar across all participants and it was repeatable.
Gazing into the eyes of another person is very vulnerable, initially unsettling and very, very intimate.
At the end, every person felt closer to the other, even those who had never before met.
I suggested that this face-to-face time illustrates what God means when He calls on us to seek Him.
Seeking God is also referred to in scripture as seeking His face. When the involvement is bi-direcitonal as it is with God, it is a relation that is best known as “face-to-face”.
2 Cor. 4:6, “For God, Who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of JesusChrist.”
Some of the most intimate statements regarding God’s relationship with people are directly connected with seeking His face or God speaking to them face-to-face.
I offered David and Moses as key note examples.
David acknowledged God as directing Him to seek His face when he said in Psalm 27:8-9,
“You have said, “Seek My face.”
My heart says to you,
“Your face, LORD, do I seek.”
(9) Hide not Your face from me. Turn not Your servant away in anger, O You Who have been my help. Cast me not off; forsake me not, O God of my salvation!”
Remember also how following the prophet Nathan’s confrontation of David in his sin of murder and adultery, David cried out to God…
“(7) Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. (8) Make me hear joy and gladness, That the bones You have broken may rejoice. (9) Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.”
This was another way of saying turn not your face from me and blot not out my name from Your book.
He went on to say,
“ (10) Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. (11) Do not cast me away from Your presence, And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. (12) Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, And uphold me by Your generous Spirit.”
I took this moment to say quite plainly that it was my opinion that if God were to turn His face from His church, many would never notice.
But also that even many of those who would notice, they often do not live with a hunger that requires His face and seeks it with fervency.
I suggested that Intimacy with God often begins with times like these, where we seek His face.
Teri mentioned the passage, “Be still and know that I am God.” but I would like to read that entire Psalm because it does in fact enforce what I am saying.
Psalm 46:1-11, “(1) God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. (2) Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, (3) though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah
(4) There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.
(5) God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns.
(6) The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; He utters His voice, the earth melts. (7) The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah
(8) Come, behold the works of the LORD, how He has brought desolations on the earth.
(9) He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; He burns the chariots with fire.
(10) “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”
(11) The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah”
In conducting a Bible wide search on the topic of seeking God this was the result:
- It is held in contrast with forsaking Him
- Seek = 1245 to seek, to require; to try to obtain. It denotes seeking someone’s presence, especially the Lord’s
- Forsake = H5800 to leave, to abandon, to forsake, to loose.
- If done with all your heart you will find Him (Deut. 4:23-31 & Heb. 11:6)
- It should go before all efforts to serve Him – 1 Chron. 22:17-19 and if so you will prosper
- God promises to provide your needs
This passage in Psalms captures it –
“(1) The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is none who does good. (2) The LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. (3) They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one. (4) Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the LORD? (5) There they are in great terror, for God is with the generation of the righteous.”– Psalm 14:1-5 (Repeated in Psalm 53)
Seeking God’s face reveals one of two things to us. Either His love or His majestic worthiness of reverent fear. And just like those neurochemicals which draw, reward, inspire closeness, trust and cooperation – even so love and reverence for God work together.
There is no replacement for the full blossom of love. There is no substitution. Nothing else can make the grade. Nothing else can produce the real and sustained effect of a heart that is passionate and in love with God and which deeply, penetratingly respects Him and reveres Him in the type of awe that inspires both silence and rejoicing, both stillness and dancing.
For the child of God, intimacy with Him is an unending and ever escalating circle moving from Love to Fear to Love to Fear.
Our love for God produces a respect for Him and our respect for Him produces a greater ardor for Him.
Both of these command our obedience to the God we both love and respect and THAT makes our lives burn as bright lights before the world in testimony of Who Jesus is as Lord, Savior and King!
You cannot maintain love without fear, nor fear without love. If ever we become slack in either of these, lack in the other is soon to follow.
Both must be stirred up and responded to.
Again, returning to our neurochemical examples.
- Dopamine offers reward, motivation, and pleasure in our seeking. It keeps the embers of passion going. Dopamine results from anticipation – from what is possible, not what is expected due to familiarity.
- Oxytocin is primarily responsible for attachment, trust, and cooperation. These are the long term results and benefits of relational intimacy.
Now it is too much an oversimplification of the truth, but in many ways our love for God, which is a response to our knowledge and belief of His love for us – draws us nearer to Him. While our reverence for Him, which comes from our times of intimacy with Him, sends us out into kingdom work.
But it is “true enough” to be set before us for consideration.
Now, when at the beginning of our time together this morning I referenced the role that Christ-likeness played in the early church towards being living witnesses, we need to keep in mind the differences which exist between their society and ours.
First off, their society was far more close knit.
What impact might that have on the transmission of the gospel and the work of the kingdom?
Well, one thing is that in all probability, no real outreach was most likely needed or even considered. To live Christ WAS to be a city wide witness.
For example, both Jerusalem and Ephesus were large cities in that day with the population of Ephesus being near 250,000 people and Jerusalem about 35,000. Yet their actual size in terms of real estate was between 5-10 square miles.
For scale, Bradenton is over 26 square miles and currently only boasts 58,000 people. Compare that to Ephesus which had 250,000 people in less than half that space!
What difference does this make? Well, you would have a far greater direct connection with the people of the city just by going to work, attending general gatherings and going to market. Comparatively, I can go to the store and run into less than 100 people.
Also worthy of consideration is that in their time, there was far more interaction. People did not live in a state of hurry. Life was comparatively slower. People talked to each other.
Marketplaces were bustling places of activity which often encouraged open dialogue. By comparison, today, one can make a trip to the grocery store, see about 100 people and talk to almost none of them. If we attempt to engage others it is often met with suspicion or annoyance and is most often avoided.
So how does the gospel get disseminated in an environment like ours?
Well I think we have to be more purposeful!
By this I do not mean setting up “prove me wrong” tables at our local strip malls, but I do believe we need to be decisively more proactive and seek out opportunities.
This is one of the things I want you doing in your times of seeking God’s face. Require it of Him to give you commissions and ideas – strategies for engagement.
This engagement needs to be both within the greater body of Christ first and secondarily towards those OUTSIDE.
The driving force behind these engagements is our love and fear of God which spring out of our “face-to-face” times with Him.
To bring this full circle and help capture or “flesh out” this face-to-face intimacy we are to enjoy with God, let us consider one of the expressions of this God gifted us with in this creation.
That of Romantic love
The times of romance we have with our mate or fiance is fanned into a blaze by its reciprocation.
It is a love feast, so to speak, in which our passions deepen, our enjoyment and joy is doubled and our excitement overflows through the free, vulnerable and lovingly accepting exchange we enjoy… in each other’s presence. Face-to-face!
When there are long periods of looking into each other’s eyes, which in other situations and with other people would feel awkward and uncomfortable, it stirs an intimacy and knowing of the other person as well as an excitement within that relationship.
With a person who is our lover, engaging in times like this can be difficult to pull yourself away from. That is what face-to-face or seeking God’s face or being in His presence is about and really means.
I was listening to a video clip the other day where this advice of gazing into each other’s eyes was suggested for married couples who had fallen into the settled trap of complacent familiarity – maybe even a pre-divorce contempt of what their union had become.
They were to do this everyday. This is because it can reignite feelings of attraction, connection, and warmth.
In long-term relationships, it serves as a tool to overcome disconnection and feel seen.
Practicing eye contact can be a powerful way to reconnect and break through a sense of disconnection or “routine”. Ans since routine is a dopamine killer, this re-instigates the reward mechanism!
It activates bonding mechanisms by the release of oxytocin, the “bonding hormone,”. It promotes feelings of attachment and reduces feelings of alienation.
These are not random or unintentional – God designed us like this. What does that suggest about our relationship to and with God?
What is the result?
When we reluctantly pull ourselves away from these times of intimacy there is an afterglow that goes with us. A warming aura reminiscent of the time we spent together.
When we interact with others after these times of intimacy our speech is softer, life itself does not seem so cruel or disorganized and mean. People are viewed with a little more mercy and those parts of our personality which tend towards harshness, our “rough edges” if you will, are smoothed out at least for a time.
Part of this is the influence that these times of intimacy have upon us and part of it is simply not wanting anything to disturb or rob us from the afterglow of joy we are carrying with us.
Anyone who engages us in conversation will find it difficult to get us fully engaged on anything that doesn’t include the one we love. Every example will point back to that relationship. Every topic will somehow reference a memory connected with them, which will bring them to mind and our conversation will always flow back around to talk of them. And it is in this way, I believe, the ebb and flow of our relationship with God and work for the kingdom synergistically drive one another and feed off of one another.
It isn’t something you can fudge. You either have it or you don’t.
Those who don’t may seek to do witnessing out of a religious respect for God and for the fact that He saved them, but it will ultimately be something that is not natural, organic and does not flow off the lips but is more obligatory than exuberant. Like the opening words of the woman in the video from last week, it will not “register as a source of aliveness.”
This is the fine line between the work OF the Kingdom and working FOR the kingdom.
This relationship requires a continual stirring both personally and interactively through contact with other believers.
It requires placing yourself before the grace gift of others and placing yourself before others through whom Grace can flow through you to them.
Said another way, it requires both being a disciple and making them.
I think that may be part of where things often break down. It’s what makes one person a healthy conduit and the other an example of the Dead Sea. With things flowing in and not flowing out or things flowing out and not flowing in. In either of these, there is a breakdown of the natural flow of relationship and life in Christ. These create a greater opportunity for stagnation.
I’m not saying that being a disciple and actively making disciples will alone sidestep the deadliness of complacency but they are part of the greater picture and cannot be ignored or neglected in a healthy Christian heart.
In the end however, nothing will replace the need for personal investment.
Seeking God on your own. Crying out to Him for more intimacy, for knowing Him and for having Christ revealed more clearly than ever before. For understanding the vastness of His majesty that you might respect Him with greater awe. Finally a more complete understanding of the involvement of your Helper so as to never act in such a way as to grieve that most noble and precious of Spirits.
To seek for these things…
To long for them…
To require them… is more important than all the things I’ve said so far. And in times when our soul feels more like a desert road than a walk through Eden in the cool of the day, these are the times when our devotion to Christ should drive us to worship because our deserts are often either sustained or made that way initially, because at some point we took our attention off of Him and placed them back on ourselves or this world.
Making our times of “soul drought” about His worthiness to be worshiped and adored takes the fear of the Lord as a concept and turns it into a practice. One could even call it an expression of practicing His presence. And such practices stir up gratitude, feelings of love, surrender and desire to serve.
Blessings!
Tri
