September 30, 2023
Dear Friend,
Today is going to be a great day! I am so excited about today’s insight, so let’s dive right into our verse.
2 Chronicles 7:14: "If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land."
I want to thank you for being here. Even as we talk about praying humbly, I understand what it’s like to pray alone for a very long time, but now we are praying together.
2 Chronicles 7:14
“If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
Prayer – A Three-in-One Move
Praying the prayer that God desires involves three moves in one: humbling, seeking, and turning.
Humbling – praying according to what God wants and Who He is (LORD)).
Seeking and Turning are hinged together.
First, let’s look at what it means to seek God’s face.
Good things come in Threes.
At face value, Biblical words like eye, face, head, heart, hand, and feet define parts of the body. If that’s true, verses like Matthew 5:29 are a genuine cause for concern. But no one needs to lose an eye.
Each of those words, in Hebrew, often has three meanings from three different words. These three descriptions go from greatest to smallest and from far away to close and personal.
Seek My Face
Look at the three Hebrew words for face:
- Paniym – (a face that can turn toward, away from, or look back). Face-to-face friendship with free will.
- Aph – (nostril, nose, face, anger, heavy breathing). Nose to the ground tyrant relationship.
- Ayin– (eye, spring, fountain) and Ghayin – (cloud, twisted, darkness). No relationship, blindness.
The word aph is used in Genesis 2:7. God breathed life (chayah – revive, sustain, restore) into man’s nostrils (aph) and he became a living soul.
The letter ayin (used to be ghayin) is used for the plague of locusts that created darkness over the ayin (face) of the land and the darkness in Genesis 1.
Putting all those together, God created man inside of the darkness of no relationship with Life, and breathed the ability “to be restored from a tyrant relationship” to a face-to-face friendship with free will.
God designed us for restoration from the beginning! How beautiful is that?
Face to Face
God created us for friendship. Our verse used paniym – a face-to-face friendship based on free will.
The ancient misconception was that no man could physically see God and live. But men did see God face to face (paniym), and they lived to tell about it.
Jacob wrestled with God face to face (paniym) in the darkness of night – (Genesis 32:30).
Moses talked to God face to face (paniym) as a friend, but hidden in a cloud – (Exodus 33:11).
Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Daniel talked to God in dreams and visions and wrote about it.
That means God made the relationship restorable not by seeing but believing.
Seeing by Faith
Here is the humility of the God who calls us to be humble. By bowing down and breathing His Spirit into Adam’s nostrils, God gave mankind the ability to one day see God without eyes.
Then:
- Even if we were born blind, we would see.
- Even if we were born deaf, we would hear.
- Even if we died, we would live because our connection to God is not by seeing but by believing Him.
Believing without seeing is called faith. Faith is activated by hearing God’s Word (Romans 10:17). And, God did not leave it to chance. He became the Word in human form – Jesus – and spoke directly to us.
When we believe Jesus, we have Life by faith.
When we pray by faith through Jesus, God hears us.
My friend, I hope these mini messages convey how much you are loved, wanted, and pursued. You need to see Him and believe Him because He has been faithful from the beginning.
You are Loved.
Believing Him,
Monisha.
