FACE TO FACE
03rd Nov 2021
The apostle John, in the beginning of his gospel talks about “the Word” who was ‘face to face’ with God, who was God, and who was sent to this earth in order to make God known in a form that we humans could relate to. John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Born of Mary, He became human and divine, a person to whom we can relate, but as God, both knowable and yet to be known, as He reveals more and more of who He is. Jesus speaks of people having eyes but not seeing and ears but not hearing, and Paul prays for the early believers in Ephesus, “that the eyes of their understanding would be enlightened and they would know the enormity of what is available to them and us.” (Ephesians 1:15-23)
Jesus prayed for those who would become His followers (you and me) that we would know the same intimacy, the oneness He had with His Father, the fellowship, the instructing and directing that led His earthly life and demonstrated the Father’s supernatural presence in a human being.
John 17 is primarily about His own relationship with His Father and His longing that those who were children of God would know the same intimacy and dependency that He lived in. ‘Face to face’ as in the beginning. He clearly told His disciples that He was returning to His Father in heaven, and yet He would not leave them alone. For a little while they would see Him and then not; that the Holy Spirit would be their helper, their empowerer, their friend and the One who would never leave them.
Just before His ascension into heaven He commanded them to wait for the gift My Father has promised to you which you have heard Me speak about, “In a few days you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit.” This they received on the day of Pentecost, recorded in Acts 2.
My heart is aching for God’s people to be restored to this kind of intimacy with Father God, to know that the Holy Spirit, who is one with the Father and Jesus, wants to fill us, walk with us into our daily lives. He can tell us what He wants us to do; moment by moment He will encourage, correct, direct, pour in and pour out of us. He is the life giver, He is in the process of changing us so that He has more space in our hearts and lives, so that ‘He in us’ can demonstrate a life which is both human and divine.
How our world needs to see the living Jesus, able to save, able to heal, able to see beyond the exterior behaviour into hearts of hurting lost sheep who desperately need a Saviour.
Today, tell the Father that you want a new infilling; a baptism in the Holy Spirit, a new ‘face to face’ encounter and a new sensitivity to His voice and the courage to do what He tells you. We can turn this world upside down through the Spirit of God who dwells in us.
Ponder these things.
by Joyce Sibthorpe
