I have been reflecting on a quote from St Augustine. “Christ has gone from our sight, so that we should return to our heart and find Him there.” There are times in our spiritual journey when we the presence of God seems to deminish. The familiar ways in which we felt or understood God’s presence is absent. It become a dry time, when the “lights” seem to go out. This is normal for all growing believers. The question becomes, “How do I practice my walk with the Lord, when He seems absent.” Here I think Augustine’s quote can help
Remember, when you open your heart to the Lord Jesus, He comes and abides in your heart. You have fellowship with him. “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” (I John 1:7). The light of his presence comes into your heart. “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ make his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” (II Cor 4:6). Notice the light within you gives you an awareness of the face of Christ. The light within you is constant. It does not change with regards to your outward sense of God’s presence. God is not absent. The problem is our awareness of his presence.
This is when “seeking His face,” that is, the face of Jesus becomes a vital practice. The Psalmist prayed, “My heart says of you, ‘Seek his face!’ Your face, Lord, I will seek” (Ps 27:8). He also said, “My eyes are even on the Lord” (Ps 25:15), implying it was a continuous habit, which was very intentional when he states, “I have sought our face with all my heart” (Ps. 119:58). The Psalmist is speaking, of course, about his spiritual eyes. As he pays attention to his inner life, he will fix his eyes on Jesus, no matter what might be the conditions in his actual life. This becomes an act of faith.
So I encourage men reading this blog, to cultivate the practice of seeking the face of Christ in your daily life. He is present within you. Actually he waits for your fellowship. Make it a matter of your will, to turn our spiritual eyes, the eyes of your heart, unto Jesus who dwells within. Thomas Kelly put it this way, “The religious person is forever bringing all affairs of the first level down into the Light, holding them there in the Presence, reseeing them and the whole of the world of people and things in a new and overturning way, and responding to them in spontaneous, incisive, and simple ways of love and faith.”
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