Facing the Face That We Seek — David Bryant

Hello, this is David Bryant. I've spent many years working with the prayer movement in this nation and around the world. God is doing phenomenal things as he raises up literally millions of his people to pray for kingdom issues, to seek God's face.

That's how we often say it. In fact, that's how it's often phrased in the scriptures, that prayer is seeking God's face. But recently I was asked to speak to a national convention of an organization known as the National Association of Local Church Prayer Leaders.

These were pastors and congregational leaders from all kinds of denominations, from one coast to the other, who gathered together this time in Colorado Springs at the World Prayer Center Auditorium in order to spend a week to be trained as prayer leaders and prayer mobilizers.

They asked me to bring the opening plenary address and they asked me to address a topic that I'd never really spoken on before. It wasn't seek God's face, but rather it was more the topic facing the face that we seek.

The Face of Christ as the Answer to Prayer

The point being, are we really serious about God revealing himself in Jesus Christ for all that he is, in all of his power and authority and glory, in a way that could be called true revival, in a way that could bring spiritual awakening to a whole nation?

Is this really what we want? Is this really the face we want to see? Have we faced the face we say we're seeking? This is a message then, not so much about prayer, but this is a message about the answer to our prayers and that answer is a person.

Jesus Christ, who he is, is really the answer to every prayer we could ever pray. So I invite you now to listen in and to think with me, am I really ready to face the face I seek? At the close of the message, you may want to contact me by going to my website, DavidBryantDirect .com.

That's DavidBryantDirect .com. You'll find there many icons that will lead you to many different kinds of resources that can help you as you face the face that you seek. But now Father, I pray for whoever's listening to this message right now, that you will open their hearts in a new way to the fullness of who your son is as the answer to all of our prayers.

And I ask it in his name, Amen. One of my favorite stories, and some of you have heard this before, because I know I've shared it at other times, but one of my favorite stories about Abraham Lincoln was during the Lincoln-Douglas debates in Illinois when he was running for Congress.

And there was one time in one of the debates when Stephen Douglas criticized Lincoln for being two-faced on a particular issue. When Lincoln got up to give his rebuttal, he said this. He said, my good friend here, Stephen Douglas, has accused me of being two-faced.

But I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, and then he pointed to his countenance, if I had another face, would I be showing you the face you're looking at right now? And in light of the topic that I was assigned to speak about tonight, I thought in a sense if the Lord Jesus was physically standing here tonight, he might say the very same thing to us.

He might say to us, if I had another face to show you, would I be showing you the face you're looking at right now? But the fact of the matter is, this is the only face I have, and it's the only face I will ever show you.

You see, the climax of history, that moment when God brings all of creation to consummation under his Son, the climax of history, when all things have been made right and everything in heaven and earth has been reconciled back to God, in that hour and in that moment and from that point on for the rest of eternity, we read these words in the book of Revelation and it tells me that the face of Christ is the center and the heart of it all.

When I read, and the angels showed me a river of the water of life as clear as crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, and it flowed down the very center of the great street of that city, and on either side of that river was a tree of life bearing its fruit every month of the year, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations.

And there will be no curse there, for the throne of God and of the Lamb are there, and his servants will serve him, for they will see his face, and his name will be written on their foreheads, and there will be no night there.

There will be no need for the light of the lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light, and they shall reign forever and ever. And at the heart of that, which is our destiny, in the midst of all of the rivers and all of the healing and all of the light and the glory, in the midst and in the center of it all are those words.

And we will see his face, and he will see our face. He'll see his name written on our foreheads, and there we are, face to face, forever. What a wonderful contrast that is compared to what the words might say if we were left in Isaiah 59, where God says that our sins caused him to turn his face away from us, or if our destiny was what we read in Revelation chapter 6, where it says that the kings of the earth asked the mountains to fall on them and to cover them from the face of the Lamb and from his wrath.

No, instead, we have the words of 2 Corinthians chapter 4, that the God who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shone into our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, where?

In the face of Jesus Christ. And he only has one face. The face we'll see at the end is the face we're seeking even now, and that face is being declared in the gospel to the very ends of the earth. And it's in that face that God will give us the light of the knowledge of his glory, so that when we read in Habakkuk chapter 2, that there's coming a day when the whole earth will be covered with the knowledge of his glory, like the waters of the sea.

That tells me there's coming a day when every person who is populating planet earth in that hour will share in the same experience. We will all see the same face in the face of Jesus and in that face know what God's glory is really.

Faces are important. I mean, there's some fellow that spent 60 years carving just four faces into a mountain. It's called Mount Rushmore. Now people come from all over the world to look at those four faces.

Faces are important. There's a movie with Jim Carrey called The Mass where when he puts on another face he can suddenly be the person he always wanted to be. And there's a musical called Phantom of the Opera, the turning point of which comes when the phantom removes his mask and shows his face for what it really looks like.

Faces can be pretty important. Think about Acts chapter 20 when Luke says that the elders wept over Paul because he was leaving them. Luke says that the main reason they wept was because they would not see his face anymore.

They'd have his writings. They'd have all the wonderful discipling he had left behind. They'd have the church that he had founded. But there was something else that was so precious to them that the thought that they would never ever see his face again left these grown men in tears.

Faces are important. I mean what about this recent fad of Botox where people want to get rid of the wrinkles in their face and they're shooting their faces full of botulism so they can remove the wrinkles for about three or four months at a stretch and it costs $2 ,000 a crack.

And women particularly are doing this all over the country. Obviously faces are important. Why did God give us faces? Why do you have a face? Why does the person beside you have a face? Would you just look at someone sitting beside you for a minute?

Just look at each other right now. Turn and look at each other. Just look at that person while I ask why does that person have a face? What good is that person's face? Well the answer to that question is already being answered by your reaction.

We feel sort of self-conscious because the primary reason God gave us a face was for revelation in a whole lot of different ways. In fact I meditate. This is all sort of new thinking for me. I meditated on this.

I mean to seek the face of the Lord. What's a face about? Why does God give us a face? And it finally came to me two or three weeks ago why it's our primary means of revelation. And I thought about it in at least seven ways.

Number one, a face is the way of getting attention. That's why everybody who's anybody wants to be in People Magazine and if you're not in People Magazine you want to read it to see whose face is in it because to get your face in People Magazine is to get special attention.

So faces are there just to get your attention, which is what happened just a moment ago. Faces are there to describe your uniqueness. You know if you have a police lineup and you line up six or seven people and the person looks through the one-way glass and can see and picks out the individual that they saw stealing something from the store, the reason a lineup can be so effective is everybody's face is unique and different.

And if the person can identify who stole the goods it's pretty sure that that's a good conclusion because every face is unique. It reveals our uniquenesses at least to some degree. Third thing is face reveals character.

I mean you think about Ebenezer Scrooge, how he's described in his face in the opening chapter of A Christmas Carol that all those years of greed and avarice and bitterness is written all over his face.

Faces can reveal your mood. Think of the faces of your children on Christmas Day or even two weeks before Christmas. Boy the excitement, the anticipation and we celebrate what it looks like on a child's face.

Face can reveal your intention. If I frown at you that means I'm not pleased with you. If I raise one eyebrow that means what you're saying to me may not, I need a little more proof. Give me some more proof.

My intention is for you to prove it to me. If I go like this my intention is get out of here. I'm done with you. If all of you sitting out there would suddenly look up at the ceiling I know that your intention is that I should stop and sit down.

The face reveals intentionalities. The face reveals favor. You know a lawyer says that when the jury comes in after they've reached the verdict as they're filing in a good lawyer can look at the jury and tell you right away before the verdict's even read whether it was guilty or innocent just by looking at their faces because if it's innocent then many of the jurors will actually look at the defendant and smile and nod.

But if it's guilty they're all with steely looks just look straight ahead as they sit in the jury box. The face can reveal if that person has favor. You know when you laughed at each other what you're saying is I like you, please like me here.

We're sort of looking at faces here. Don't jump to any conclusions. Let's be friends. Face a good smile. A good smile says I welcome you. I favor you. And I suppose the ultimate revelation of the face and in a sense it sort of wraps all the others together is a face is the way of revealing that you are present.

It's your presence. You know a couple weeks ago I took a walk through a Greek Orthodox cemetery. I don't know if you've ever done that but one of the unique things about a Greek Orthodox cemetery is that on every tombstone they have embedded a picture of the face of the person who's buried, an actual photograph of the person who's buried there.

Now why do they do that? Well if you know anything about Greek Orthodox theology and how they celebrate the resurrection and how there's a sense to a Greek Orthodox that the communion of the saints in heaven with the saints on earth is very, very real then what they're really saying even in the graveyard is that I still have a real sense of the presence of that person, that we're still in union with one another in Christ and I put their face on that tombstone because the face reminds me of how real and present that person is in the communion of the saints.

And so when the Bible talks so much about the face of God I think that's what it's saying. God gave us a face so we'd understand what he meant when he started talking about his face. To summarize, his face is his way of getting our attention to start with.

His face is how he shows us the uniquenesses of who he is. He reveals his character. He shows us his mood. Hide us from the face of the lamb and his wrath. He gives us his intention. He guides us with his eye upon us, his face shining, his countenance upon us.

That's all about his favor. But ultimately to seek the face of God, to seek all of those things, to seek all of those things but above everything else. So the psalmist says in Psalm 27, my heart says, seek God's face.

And then he says, and then I say, oh Lord, your face I will seek. And it's in that same psalm that the psalmist says how wonderful it is to dwell in the temple and to behold the beauty of the Lord. Now it may be character, it may be mood, it may be intentionality, it may be favor, but above everything else is the beauty of who he is, his presence.

Pleading God's Face for Revival

Zechariah chapter 8, that wonderful text on the great international prayer movement. The text that begins, and then one city will go to another and say, come, let us go at once. And then it says this, and seek the Lord and entreat after him, I myself am going.

Now to seek the Lord is one thing, but the phrase in the Hebrew, to entreat after him, literally in the Hebrew says, to entreat his face. Now the word entreat is the word travail, like a woman giving birth, which is to say this prayer movement that begins with one prayer leader going to somebody else and then one city to another and saying, come, this prayer movement has as its primary agenda a travailing after God for this one thing above all things, that he would show us his face, and to see his face would be almost like starting life all over again, like giving birth to a newborn baby.

And then the passage goes on and says, and then great nations and mighty peoples will come to Jerusalem, and then it switches the order, and will entreat after the face of the Lord and seek him. And then it goes on and says, for in those days ten men from every language and nation will take firm hold of the robe of one of the Jews, that is one of the praying people, and say to them, take us with you, because now we can see that God is with you.

Do you understand what's happened in that prayer movement that begins with just one prayer leader going to another? Eventually God answers their prayer and reveals his face so thoroughly to his people that the unbelieving world looking at them begins to see the face of God in them as well.

And what they see is so attractive and so compelling that they lay a hold of the praying people and say, would you tell us how we could get to know the one whose face we now see in you? Back in 1984, the first ever in the history of the church international prayer assembly for world evangelization took place, about 3 ,000 people just like yourselves gathered from 70 nations in Seoul, Korea to spend a week to talk about prayer mobilization.

And that text of Zechariah 8 was our theme text for that whole event. And we gave that event a subtitle, and it was this, Seeking the Face of God for a Movement of Prayer for the World. Now that was 1984, and the wonders that God has done in the last 20 years is leading us now to have another one in 2004, the 20th anniversary, another international prayer assembly to celebrate the movements of prayer throughout the nations that has emerged over the past 20 years.

But you know, if we were to do it again and use that same phrase, I'd put it this way, Seeking God's face for a movement of prayer for the world that finds his face. Because that's what Zechariah 8 is saying.

Or we sang a little while ago that phrase from Ezekiel 22 that you know so well that says, I look for someone to stand in the gap and to build up the broken places in the wall and to stand, what does it say?

To stand before me on behalf of the land that I might not destroy it. Do you know the first book I wrote came out in 1979, it was entitled In the Gap, and it was based on that verse. It was about how to be a world Christian, that is, how to live your life every day for the sake of the nations wherever you are and whoever you are.

And I talked about prayer in there, but I'm going to admit something to you tonight. It was about three or four years later when one day I suddenly discovered I had left out the most important phrase when I wrote the book.

Stand in the gap before me. Now you all know that, but did you also know that in the Hebrew it says literally for someone to stand in the gap to face my face. That's literally what it says. So the issue is, here's a land that's about to be destroyed, what's the most strategic thing God could ever ask any of us to do?

And that is what this conference has taken as its theme. And that is to resolve to face His face and to seek Him with all of our hearts. No wonder Psalm 80, that great revival psalm says, Lord God Almighty, restore us and make Your face to shine upon us that we might be saved.

It says it three different times in that psalm. That tells me by the witness of two or three here that this might in fact be the key to revival. And it says again, O Lord God Almighty, restore us and make Your face shine upon us that we may be saved.

That is the heart of revival. The revival for which we seek to face His face and then to find it. Now the question I want to ask you is, do we really want to seek and find His face? He's only got one face.

He has no other face to show us. The face we're going to see at the end is the face He has to show us now. And I want to say to us as prayer leaders, do we really want to seek and find His face? I mean, yes, Jacob wrestled with the angel and he called it Peniel, which means the face of God, because he said, I saw the face of God tonight and I'm still alive.

Well, that was a good conclusion that it's possible to see God's face and be struck down dead. But the fact of the matter is he had only wrestled with an angel that was closer than he had ever gotten to seeing the face of God before, but it was still just an angel.

Do we really want to see the face that even Jacob back in Genesis understood? If you see it, you could die. In fact, God in mercy, understanding that in Exodus 33, you remember when Moses is pleading and saying, send us up with your presence.

If your presence doesn't go with us, how can we go forth? Because how will we be distinguished before all the nations? And then he said, well, please show me your glory. And then God said, I'm going to answer your prayer.

I'm going to let all of my glory pass before you and I'm going to declare my name to you. But Moses, I love you too much not to also put you in a cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand so that you will not be able to see anything but the back part of my glory for no one can see my face and live.

Jesus as Monarch Rather Than Mascot

Do we really, we prayer leaders, do we really want to lead our people to seek his face? Because he has no other face. It's the only face he has. It's the face on the Mount of Transfiguration where it says when he was transfigured, it says his face showing like the sun in its brilliance.

And then the next thing it says is, and those three disciples fell down before him and listen to the words, terrified. It's the face that Paul saw on the Damascus road and it struck him to the ground and made him blind for three days and it might have even been longer if God hadn't sent Ananias to him to heal him.

It's the face that John saw, now John who rested on his breast. John who wrote some of the most beautiful descriptions of Jesus we have in the New Testament. John who spent decades serving Christ and planting churches and shepherding those churches.

John who was so faithful that in his older years he was now a martyr in prison on the island of Patmos. This John, zealous, committed, fervent, holy, godly. This John, when he turned to see the voice that was speaking, to see, voice wasn't enough.

He had to see and when he turned and he saw, he said his face was not only like the sun in its brilliance, but his eyes were like a flame of fire and he said, when I saw him, not heard him, but when I saw him, I fell at his feet like a dead man.

If he had another face, maybe he'd let us down gently and show us another face, but he's only got one face. Is this the face we really want to seek and find? If I were to give a title to this talk tonight, it'd be a little different than the one that was assigned me, almost the same.

I'd entitle it, Facing the Face that We Seek. Because before we start getting serious, if we are serious, enough to resolve to not only seek God's face, but to bring others with us to seek his face in our churches.

Maybe we as prayer leaders need to take a moment to face the face. Do we really, really know who he is? The one we say we're resolved to seek. In recent times as I've been traveling across the body of Christ, I've raised this question.

In most of our churches, how is Jesus perceived? Is he seen as our monarch, or is he seen as our mascot? I grew up in a high school famous for football. Nearly 30 state championships, a number of national championships, sent a lot of our players off to star in college and in the pros.

Some of our coaches over the years have coached college and in the pros. Had a stadium that seats 22 ,000 people for high school football with press boxes and artificial turf and the whole, as they say, nine yards.

We had a mascot. We were the Massillon, Massillon, Ohio Tigers. The name of our mascot was actually Obi. I don't know where that ever came from. That came from back almost at the turn of the century, but the last century, not this, the 1900s.

But his name was Obi, Obi the Tiger. And the mascot, the student that was chosen to play the mascot, he actually wore a real tiger skin from a tiger that had been shot in Africa. And you know, there'd be times when the team wasn't doing as well as it should have been doing.

And the coach would call a timeout. And while he had the team on the side and he was going over some ideas with them and trying to get them back in the game, well, Obi, the mascot would run out on the field and he'd lead 22 ,000 people in wonderful cheers, T-I-G-E-R-S, Tigers, Tigers.

And you know, as that resounded across the field, you know, if you played football, what happened inside the hearts of those young players, why they began to really believe in themselves again. We are the Tigers.

We're champions. We can do it. We're fierce. We're just like Tigers. And by the end of the timeout and the crowd was in a frenzy and the team was back out on the field. But then, then Obi, he didn't stay on the field, you know.

No, they brought him, tiger skin and all, brought him back to sit over on the sidelines. And it was the team that went ahead with the game. It was the team that called the plays, that ran the plays, that made the touchdown.

And in the end that got most of the glory. Now, we went out of the stadium that night having won the game, still saying we're the Tigers. But you see, the tiger we're talking about doesn't really, really make a difference in our lives the rest of the week before the next game.

He's our mascot. And I'm going to share something with you that may be shocking, but would you just track with me for a moment? It is my great fear inside the evangelical churches of this nation, of all stripes and persuasions, of all denominational labels, that in more cases than not, Jesus has become our mascot and he's not really the Lord of all among us.

And so on Sunday morning, we trot him out, we celebrate him, we sing his praises, we rejoice in the victories that he brings to his people, and we walk out of those sanctuaries ready to take on another week.

But in the end, when it comes down to it, the way the church is run and the way our lives are run, we sort of put Jesus to the side. It's all about him. It's all for him, we say. But in the end, it's really mostly about us and for us.

And what we look at is us. And that's why I raise the question, do we really want to seek the face that we read about in this book? Because most of us, myself included, would probably be absolutely shocked tonight.

I mean, we'd be just like John and worse. We might not only be like dead men, we might actually die if we saw him for who he really is. A few days ago, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II.

Well, we didn't, but across the Atlantic they did. And it was on television. You could watch it here on CNN if you had a chance. And they had massive parades and millions of people turned out because everybody loves the Queen.

She's been steady and faithful. She's endured a lot of heartache over the years. She's stayed the course. They're proud of her and they celebrated her. But there is no comparison between Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Elizabeth I or Queen Victoria.

Because Queen Elizabeth II is primarily just a figurehead. One that they celebrate, one that they honor, one that they want to read about in the tabloids every chance they get. She occupies a lot of their attention, but nobody would really even begin to shake in their boots if she suddenly scowled at them.

But if Queen Elizabeth I scowled at you, it might be the next step off with your head. What her face told you. When Queen Victoria looked at you, her whole kingdom under her rule was behind that face and it was a kingdom that stretched all over the world.

She was no figurehead. And so I ponder with you tonight. I just ask you this question. Is Jesus our figurehead? You see really what we read about in Colossians 1 where it says, Christ is the image of the invisible God.

He is the firstborn of all creations. For through Him all things were made, things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers. All things were made through Him and for Him.

By Him all things exist and in Him all things are pulled together in Him. And then it goes on to say He is the head of the church. He is the firstborn from the dead that in everything He might have the supremacy.

For it pleased God to have all of His fullness dwelling in Christ and through Christ to reconcile back to Him everything in heaven and on earth by making peace through His blood that was shed on the cross.

Now that's the face we're supposed to be seeking. And so Paul goes on in that same chapter 1 of Colossians in verse 28 and says, Him we proclaim, teaching everyone and warning everyone that we may present everyone complete in Christ.

You know what he's saying in that whole chapter? Essentially when he gets down to that last verse and he says Him we proclaim, Paul's saying my chief mission is to find believers and to teach them more of who Jesus is and to warn them about any misunderstandings they may have about who He is so that I may bring them as fully as possible in this life into a face to face encounter with Him that they might be complete in Him face to face.

So tonight my brothers and sisters, fellow prayer leaders, I ask the question of us. Would there be any reason that Paul might need to warn any of us? Or is there more teaching that needs to be poured into our lives as prayer leaders about who Jesus is sufficiently to bring us to a completion in a face to face reality of who He really is so that then we can effectively call others to resolve to seek His face and more of His face with us?

It's true in Revelation 3, He comes through the door and sits down and has supper with us and that's a nice wonderful face to face time, isn't it? But then in Revelation 5 and 7 we read that when He really shows His face in the fullness of who He is as the Lamb on the throne that all the elders and all the angels in whom there is no sin who are dwelling in the very place of glory itself that all of them fall down on their faces.

You know we read that phrase an awful lot, don't we, in the scriptures, people falling on their faces. What does that mean? Have you ever heard anybody use the phrase that person's face betrays them? What does that mean?

Well that means that the person is trying to be one thing on the outside when they're really something else on the inside and it finally reaches the place where they can't hide it any longer and you can see it in their face like with Ebenezer Scrooge.

His face betrays what's really down inside of his heart. Do you know that's what I think it means that even when the sinless elders in heaven fall down on their faces it's like saying when I see Him for who He is the contrast between who He is and who I know myself to be is still so great even when I'm standing there in glory that I sort of want to get on my face.

I don't want to reveal any more than I have to who I am because He is so wonderful. And yet we read in Romans 8, 29 that the thing God is working for good is to conform us, now watch these words, to the image of His Son that He may be the firstborn among many brethren.

Do you know why they can stand there in Revelation 22 and look at His face and not be on their face but be reigning forever? Because there's coming a day when God will so transform us in the inner being that who we are on the inside will look just like Jesus and there'll be nothing to hide anymore.

No discrepancy no shortfalls, no contradictions, we will have His image, we will have His face and therefore they will see His face and His name written on their foreheads it says Revelation 22 which means that when God looks at us He sees the face of Jesus and when we look at Him we see the same face because He's got no other face.

Do we want to resolve to seek His face even if we know to see it means we die? Do we want to risk asking the people in our church to do the same thing and possibly see a massive reconversion of our people as they repent of all the years that they've used Jesus as their mascot and finally see Him for who He really is as their monarch and there will be great weeping in the land great weeping of repentance.

That's the great repentance that's waiting to take place. So what does it mean to resolve to seek His face? I end by giving you four practical suggestions if in fact you want to seek His face at all and I would suggest you go back and pray about that before you say yes.

Don't ever say yes lightly about this matter. But I can think of at least from my own pilgrimage four ways that we could at least begin to resolve to seek God's face to begin to move in that direction.

Four Practices for Seeking God's Face

Let me just give you the four little phrases and I'll go back and explain them briefly and then we'll be through. The first is to study His face. Second, to plead His face. Third, to worship His face.

Fourth, to report His face. And if you walk through those four areas I believe you will have a wonderful experience in seeking more of His face if in fact you even want to do so. First of all we need to study His face.

Have you ever anticipated seeing somebody you'd never met before and someone brought you a picture album and you could look at pictures, photographs of that individual and it wasn't the same as when you met the person but it began to get you familiar enough with the person so when you saw them you felt like maybe you knew them a little better.

Have you ever done that? Well this Bible is a photo album. It's not the same as seeing Christ. Remember Jesus said to the people in His day, He said you search the Scriptures because you believe that in them you have eternal life and it is these that speak of me but He said you're not willing to come to me that you may have life.