The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
of whom shall I be afraid?
2 When evildoers assail me
to eat up my flesh,
my adversaries and foes,
it is they who stumble and fall.
3 Though an army encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear;
though war arise against me,
yet I will be confident.
4 One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to inquire in his temple.
5 For he will hide me in his shelter
in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;
he will lift me high upon a rock.
6 And now my head shall be lifted up
above my enemies all around me,
and I will offer in his tent
sacrifices with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make melody to the Lord.
7 Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud;
be gracious to me and answer me!
8 You have said, “Seek my face.”
My heart says to you,
“Your face, Lord, do I seek.”
9 Hide not your face from me.
Turn not your servant away in anger,
O you who have been my help.
Cast me not off; forsake me not,
O God of my salvation!
10 For my father and my mother have forsaken me,
but the Lord will take me in.
11 Teach me your way, O Lord,
and lead me on a level path
because of my enemies.
12 Give me not up to the will of my adversaries;
for false witnesses have risen against me,
and they breathe out violence.
13 I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living!
14 Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!
After counseling with a young person for a few hours I realized that she had not been listening all that well when her summation of my pastoral advice was: Well, everyone has to do what they feel is best for them. Yea…that’s not it. But it does bring up an interesting question: As Christians, what do we do with our feelings?
We hear Christians saying things like:
I just feel God wants me to…
I feel God would never…
We know the danger of allowing our feelings to be out front, letting them lead us and determine what is right and what is wrong…and of course it is not a surprise to find folks riding the roller coaster when feelings lead.
The mistake of course is to think that our feelings, our emotions lead us to truth, instead of seeing that truth leads, or should dictate to our emotions. In our day especially, emotionalism has become a standard of truth in both the secular culture and the church. It used to be thought by some that reason had escaped the effects of the fall; nowadays this is more often thought about the emotions, the idea being that our feelings could never mislead us, when in fact that is not the case.
In one way or another, many say today, whether advocates of sexual liberation in its various modern forms or evangelical Christians talking about divine guidance: what I feel is and must be true and therefore no one else is permitted to doubt the authority of my feelings. But the Bible and our own experience would make it quite clear that emotions are quite unreliable. And what I feel, is not a reliable indicator of what is real as often we attach too much meaning, or maybe better put, too much authority on what we feel.
Remember the Lord’s parable of the sower and the various soils. The seed sown in the rocky soil represents people who hear the gospel and receive it with joy. But they don’t last. They fall away when reality begins to bite. Their so called joy was no demonstration that their lives had permanently changed. And we have seen that ourselves, a powerful emotional experience that seemed to us to portend spiritual change and the presence of Christ in a life, only to see the commitment wither over time.
What is more, we have seen very powerful emotions lead real Christians to do unwise and harmful things. All of that being said, and this gets me to my point: All of that being true we don’t want to suggest our relationship with the Lord, our Worship, and our time alone in solitude is to be void of emotion.
Despite Presbyterians being labeled the ‘frozen chosen’, emotions are an important part of who we are. To put it simply: Emotion and deep feeling…powerful inner experiences with and by the Holy Spirit are to have a place in our Christian experience. References to such experiences of communion with God, experiences that produce profound emotion, litter the Psalter and we find such reference to such experiences here in Psalm 27:
“the Lord is my light”; “to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord…”; “to seek him in his temple…”; “to seek his face…”; and “he will lift me high.” Clearly David is talking about “intimate spiritual [communion] with…God” and the mystical power of that in his soul.
There are all kinds of references to such in the Psalms: “I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and glory.” [Ps.63:2] “Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.” “…as for me, it is good to be near God.” [Ps. 73:23, 28] In other places, the psalmist is conscious of the Lord’s distance from him and longs to be brought near to the Lord again. “Why have you forgotten me? … Send forth your light…” [Ps. 42:9; 43:3] A man or woman prays that prayer only because he or she has at other times seen and felt that light.
When communion with the invisible God is described in terms of “seeing” the Lord, when the psalmist speaks of beholding the glory or the power of the Lord, every reader of the Bible understands that he is speaking of a spiritual experience, a mystical experience of heightened sensitivity, emotion, and realization. The only adequate way we have to speak about such experiences is to put them in terms of the physical senses. Obviously, David never saw God’s face…nonetheless he had an experience, an emotional and real encounter with the Lord.
And we should want such experiences ourselves…and perhaps part of our problem is that we have not sought them, or asked the Lord for them. Perhaps in our theological pietism we don’t think we should, and we are wrong. I realize that the so-called “Mountain top experiences” don’t last, and we can’t bank on them…but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have them!
Think about it this way: We experience these kinds of moments in our horizontal relationships of life, the tears of love and joy that are shed for the love of children, parents, husbands, and wives…how thankful we are for our spouse and at times, words are not enough, and emotions must take over. Why would we not think this is to be true with regard to our relationship with the Lord?
We do have to admit, and again as the Bible gives us reason, that such experiences are not at our beck and call. We don’t just summon them up, as if we can have such experiences with the Spirit of God, on a whim. If it were like that, then we would not have to live by faith, and we would think we were in control of God instead of the other way around.
David was asking for them in Psalm 27. He was asking for them because he had experienced them before, but he was not experiencing such experiences at the moment he was writing the psalm. It is not difficult for any of us to understand what David meant when he spoke of gazing at the beauty of God or seeing his face or the Lord drawing near to him. You know what he meant…and you know, because you have seen and felt the same things. And you would have to describe it in a similar way because there is no other way to describe the impressions of the divine glory and presence upon a soul except with the terms of physical life, and even then, you would admit, the words fall short.
It is the same thing when the Bible describes the life of the soul in heaven after death and before the resurrection. It can only use the language that we understand, it can only use analogy and comparison, because the communion of the invisible Lord with the soul is finally ineffable, beyond description…Such is the case with heaven…gold streets, pearls, mansions, etc.
My point is that we should seek them as the Psalmists did. We should pray for them and ask God for them. We should ask him to draw near to us, to show himself to us, to reveal his glory to us, to permit us to see his face. We should ask for this daily or often. To see God’s beauty is a very great thing, one of the greatest gifts that can ever be given to a human being in this world. It is also a gift with marvelous and wonderful effects that last a lifetime. We find in the Psalms the poets talking about such mystical experiences all the time. There is no guarantee that God will give such experiences to you, certainly not whenever you please. But that is no reason not to seek them from his heart and hand. And, in the hour of trial, pain…in the traverse of this world and the veil of tears becomes heavier…all the more should our cries for such moments be fervent and unceasing.
Prayer: Father, my heart yearns for such encounters with you through Your Spirit. I desire to see You in Your beauty, to hear Your voice speaking to my spirit and to know that you are close by, leading, guiding, speaking words of comfort and peace. I would not ask for some great thing to know or do, but Father, I would ask for more of You, that I might find a deeper joy and greater service to my King, through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Song: Revive Me
