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.