We Would See Jesus - Chapter Three

Chapter Three: Seeing Jesus as All We Need

Roy and Revel Hession write wonderfully about the name of Jesus in this chapter. They draw from the Old Testament revelation of "Jehovah" and the two-fold meaning of that name:

1. The "I AM", the Ever-present One, "who stands outside of time and to whom there is no past nor future, but to whom everything is present...To Him our lives with their past and future are all present; our yesterdays as well as our tomorrows are all now to Him"
2. The grace of God...in other words, while "I AM" speaks of His utter completeness in Himself, the further revelations of Him in the Old Testament (the name "Jehovah" compounded with another word, such as Jehovah-Shalom, etc.) reveal Who He is related to humans. "...the moment human need and misery present themselves, He becomes just what that person needs...The name 'Jehovah' is really like a blank cheque. You can fill in what he is to be to you - just what you need, as each need arises..."

The Old Testament reveals seven compound names for Jehovah, and these are known by those of us who love and know God. But the focus of this book is to fix our eyes on the "supreme compound of Jehovah - JESUS."

The name Jesus means "I am your Salvation." This introduces the idea that man is not only in need of help in our weakness and brokenness but in our sinfulness. Our greatest need is for a Savior and Lord in our sinful state. The authors go on to say,

"...where there is sin, there is always Jesus - seeking to forgive sin and recover all the damage that it has caused. He is not shocked at human failure; rather He is at home in it, drawn by it, knowing what to do about it, for he in Himself and in His blood is the answer to it all...God, in giving Him to be the answer to our sin, has given Him to be the answer to all our other needs, both spiritual, moral and material, for 'how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?' (Rom. 8:32)"

And so we must see ourselves as sinners (not just theoretically but under the Spirit's conviction) if we are to have a revelation of the beauty of Jesus..."Apart from seeing ourselves as sinners, we shall see no beauty in Jesus that we should desire Him."

This week as I re-read this, I fell in love with the Lord Jesus once again (this is a lifelong experience with each fresh illumination from the Spirit about Jesus). In recent years I have come to realize how hopelessly lost I am without Him and how I need Him to save me every day from sin and selfishness. And He does it as I lean heavily on Him. Because of my life history within the "holiness" movement (both in upbringing and in the mission that I've been a part of), I lived many years of my life in God with subtle spiritual arrogance about my condition in God. I love what the Spirit has given me through the holiness movement but realize now that it is only a piece of the truth of the living God.

Now I'm much "happier" in a fuller revelation of my need and of the One Who satisfies my every need, whether it be forgiveness of sins or strengthening of my inner life or my physical body, etc. I'm no longer surprised at my sin and weakness and am learning more each day to run to Him immediately rather than stay afar from Him in my spiritual pride.

Like the Shulammite in Song of Songs, I am discovering Him to be "altogether lovely (beautiful)"! He is the "I AM", fully complete in Himself while He is also the grace of God poured out lavishly in being the "I AM _____ (the name that answers whatever the need is)". The cross is more meaningful and beautiful to me as I realize my condition as a sinner saved by grace and my need for His salvation every moment.

So my prayer for us this week is that the Lord would give us the wonderful gift of conviction of sin; without that, we could take what the author says in this chapter and come under a lot of false condemnation and accusation, or we could try to make ourselves feel badly about our sin. Only the Holy Spirit can convict of sin, and only in true conviction are we empowered to leave the sin behind. Holy Spirit, come and reveal sin as You interpret it and reveal JESUS, the answer to my sin. Oh, thank You, Lord Jesus, that You are attracted to sinners and weak people. Manifest Your jealous love for us and Your power to deliver! Thank You...

Next week will be chapter four: Seeing Jesus as the Truth.

We Would See Jesus - Chapter Two

Chapter Two - Seeing God in the Face of Jesus Christ

"...we realize that our goal should be God Himself, but He seems far off, unknowable. The fact is, God is unknowable, unless there is an easily appreciated revelation of Himself. Apart from that revelation, men have groped for Him in vain and have had to say with Job, 'Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!'...Left to themselves, men arrive at a false knowledge of God, a knowledge that begets fear and bondage, and which repels rather than draws them to Him."

The authors go on to say that the full and final revelation of God is in His Son Jesus. Jesus Himself told His disciples that seeing Him, they were seeing the Father (John 14:9). God is light but light is "invisible unless it shines upon some object...The object upon which He has shone is the face of Jesus Christ, and as we look into that face, there shines in our hearts the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, which we can see nowhere else."

II Cor. 4:6 says "...it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." This, at first glance, sounds wonderful and beautiful until we realize that the glory being referred to here by the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul is the ugliness and shame of the cross (John 12:23, 32).

"We are always falling into the mistake of thinking God is one like ourselves (Psa. 50:21) and therefore that His glory consists in much the same things as that in which man's glory consists, only on a bigger scale. Man's glory is normally thought to lie in his ability to exalt himself, and humble others to his will...How often have we coveted the glory of being able to sit at a desk as a high adminstrative chief and at the touch of a button command men to do what we want!...In Jesus, however, we see that God's glory consists in the very reverse - not so much in His ability to exalt Himself and humble man, but in His willingness to humble Himself for the sake of man..."

God is Christlike! We see in Jesus a startling meekness and humility that caused Him to be very approachable, and the Father is just like that! As Christian believers we have learned this with our heads, but we need revelation of this to our spirit in order for it to transform us at the gut level. I find that I need ongoing revelation of this truth to my heart and mind in order to not come under the lies of the evil one who is constantly slandering the character and nature of God in subtle ways.

How do we see the face of Jesus? We find His face in the written Word first of all; but we must not be like the Pharisees who knew the Scriptures inside out but couldn't recognize the One Who the Scriptures were talking about when He showed up. It's possible to know the written Word of God better than anyone around you and not know the Living Word intimately.

And so our approach to the Word must be one of poverty of spirit (in other words, coming with a childlike hunger to learn even if it runs cross-grain to what I've believed all my life about Jesus) and a willingness to take the time and effort to fast and pray and study the Word of God under the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit. It means to cry out what the Greeks cried out to Philip: "We would see Jesus." The word "would" in the original language carries the sense of "preference, wish, desire, will", etc. This wasn't a passive wish but a must for these Greeks; in other words, they went out of their way to try to see Jesus.

For us as well, seeing Jesus requires that we go out of our way; it will be inconvenient and mess with our lifestyle but until we seriously seek Him out through fasting and prayer and studying His Word and leaving some things undone, there won't be said of us what was said of the early Church disciples in Acts 4:13, "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus."

Before the Lord returns, He will have a Bride across the earth of whom this can be said; meanwhile, each of us can be moving in this direction in our own walk with Him, starting with baby steps: short times of fasting and prayer and study that will grow into longer times, and also inviting one or two others to join in on this because God wants us to do this in partnership with Him and with others rather than try to make it on our own.

God bless you with the empowering grace of His Holy Spirit to seek Him in the face of Jesus this week! Next week we'll look at chapter three, Seeing Jesus as All We Need.

We Would See Jesus - Chapter One

Chapter One: Seeing God - the Purpose of Life

"...there is but one purpose for mankind...(it) is to know, and to love, and to walk with God; that is, to see God. (Deut. 10:12; Micah 6:8; Mark 12:30)" And I'll add Luke 10:42; Phil. 3:8; Psalm 27:4; Revelation 2:4,5; I Cor. 3:18.

With this simple statement, the authors summarize this chapter about what the purpose of God is for every human.

They point out that we modern believers consider the monastics as misguided in their extreme seeking after God but warn that all of our so-called "light" in understanding the Gospel has not given the modern Christian any hunger and passion to see God but seems to have had the reverse effect, making us a driven people that believe serving God to be our primary purpose in life, rather than "seeing God."

He also warns, on the other hand, about what I call "spiritual lust." In other words, in our seeking to see God, we can unwittingly slip into seeking Him only for experiencing good feelings.

Both of these realities (drivenness to activity and seeking only to have certain feelings) can fool us into thinking that we know the Lord Jesus while we may be experiencing a Jesus made in our own image.

Roy and Revel Hession speak with prophetic voice when they say the following of Christian service for God:
"At first sight it seems heroic to fling our lives away in the service of God and our fellows...Service seems so unselfish, whereas concentrating on our walk with God seems selfish and self-centred. But it is the very reverse. The things God is most concerned about are our coldness of heart towards Himself and our proud, unbroken natures. Christian service of itself can, and so often does, leave our self-centred nature untouched. That is why there is scarcely a church, a mission station, or a committee undertaking a special place of service, that is without an unresolved problem of personal relationships eating out its heart and thwarting its progress. This is because Christian service often gives us opportunities of leadership and position that we could not attain in the secular world, and we quickly fall into pride, self-seeking, and ambition. With those things hidden in our hearts, we have only to work alongside others, and we find resentment, hardness, criticism, jealousy, and frustration issuing from our hearts. We think we are working for God, but the test of how little of our service is for Him is revealed by our resentment or self-pity, when the action of others, or circumstances, or ill-health take it from us!"

They conclude this section with this wonderful paragraph:
"We need to...concentrate on seeing God for ourselves and finding the deep answer for life in Him. Then, even if we are located in the most obscure corner of the globe, the world will make a road to our door to get that answer. Our service of help to our fellows then becomes incidental to our vision of God, and the direct consequence of it."

Watchman Nee writes with clarity about this as well saying that much of Christian service is a fulfilling of a lust to be active rather than an overflow of a lovesick heart.

Meanwhile, the overactivity of the Church has caused some who are desperate for Jesus to seek for feelings about Him rather than for the real Jesus. (By the way, A.W. Tozer warns that a there is something wrong with a Christianity that does not experience God emotionally, so the desire to feel His love is not bad at all; but we must not fall for the lie that we can only truly encounter Him when we have surface emotions going on.)

This short life we're given in this fallen world is primarily for the purpose of knowing God intimately, and through obedience to His voice, becoming like Jesus. This life is an internship in which we are being shaped and formed into His likeness so that He can entrust eternal rulership alongside Him to any who are walking in full abandonment to Him as best we know how. The things we may accomplish now are important when done in loving obedience to Him, but they are the overflow of lovesickness for the true God which issues forth from having revelation of His ravished love for us.

Because I have shared simple suggestions a few times in this blog about how to focus on knowing Him intimately, I won't repeat those here. (Please refer back a couple of weeks or so, if you are interested...)

Lord Jesus, send Your Spirit to help us; we are helpless to deliver ourselves from our lust for self-satisfaction whether that be through hyper-activity or through surface feelings. Thank You that You are filled with fiery jealousy over Your Bride and that You will fully capture her heart! We cry out to You to do this, for the sake of the One Who gave Himself to have an equally-yoked Bride for eternity.

Next week we'll look at Chapter 2: Seeing God in the Face of Jesus Christ.

We Would See Jesus - Preface

I've just been worshipping and interceding to the words of a beautiful worship song:
"O my God, You've won my heart by giving me Yours forevermore;
Here I pledge in life or death, I am Yours forevermore..."

I believe with all my heart that we humans are created with a desire to give our all to something or someone, and I believe that the empowerment to do that comes from having been captivated by something or someone outside of ourselves.

As Christians we know this "something or someone" to be the Lord Jesus Christ. I fear that our watered down version of what being a Christian means has deceived us into believing that theological correctness means we have given our all to Him. If that were the case, the evangelical Church would be filled with burning hearts that can't be contained for very lovesickness for the Lamb who will come as a Lion soon to establish His earthly throne in the city of Jerusalem.

And so I have picked the book We Would See Jesus (by Roy and Revel Hession) to review next, simply because I believe that without really "seeing" (beholding) the real Jesus and how He has given His heart to His Bride, there's no hope of my pledging that I am His in life or death.

In the preface of this book, Roy and Revel Hession focus on the bedrock reality that, as important as it is to deal with the various aspects of the Christian walk, when you boil it all down to one simple reality, “it is enough to see Jesus. Seeing Him we are convicted of sin, broken, cleansed, filled with the Spirit, set free from bondage, and revived…He is both the Blessing we all seek and the easily accessible Way to that blessing.”

The theme of this book (seeing Jesus) has been and continues to be foundational for my life and ministry in God. I believe that all of the schemes and strategies of the evil one are ultimately aimed at hindering humans (whether believers in Jesus or not) from seeing Jesus for who He really is.

The authors explain two words that are used many times throughout the book:
1. Grace: in the New Testament “grace is not a blessing or an influence from God which we receive, but rather an attribute of God which governs His attitude toward man, and can be defined as the undeserved love and favor of God….The whole essence of grace is that it is undeserved (Rom. 11:6)...This means that when at last we are content to find no merit nor procuring cause in ourselves, and are willing to admit the full extent of our sinfulness, then there is no limit to what God will do for the poor who look to Him in their nothingness…The struggle, of course, is to believe it and to be willing to be but empty sinners to the end of our days, that grace may continue to match our needs.”
2. Revival: the author points out that his use of this word in this book refers to the possibility of a person living in vital union with Christ as a lifestyle, recognizing his/her need for continual renewal and awakening. He is not downplaying corporate revival, and I want to note here that at the end of this age, the focus will be on our corporate life in God (while not neglecting the private walk with Him), so I'll underscore this all along the way so that we don't miss what God is after as we approach the end.

I won't go any further with the book but want to stress this week how critical it is that we make seeing (beholding) Jesus the priority in our life if we want to stand under the end-times pressures that are coming; and so I encourage you to pray as you read this book so that it's not mere facts and information being passed on but rather impartation of life and light and power in the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, come and strengthen in us desire for Jesus, the One You love unashamedly. Breathe on us, Lord, or we have no life-giving breath in us. Show us the real God-Man...we love You and thank You for how faithful and true You are in our lives...

Next week we'll cover chapter one: Seeing God - the Purpose of Life. Blessings on you this week!