Seeing The Captain's Face

Matthew 5:8  Blessed are the pure in heart

for they shall see God

Although God is the “cleanser” we do have our part. James 4:8  … Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Or “you mixed minded”.  Notice – not, you evil minded, but you mixed-minded.

So, what’s our part in purifying our hearts? I think Ezekiel 18:31 says it well.      Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit…

James takes it a step further.  He speaks of this mix mindedness or mixed- heartedness in the first chapter of his letter.  James 1:5-8  If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. [6] But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. [7] For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; [8] he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

Mix-mindedness misses out on what God desires to reveal.

The criteria of being pure in heart is this:  coming to God and allowing Him to do the cleansing that only He can do – and often.  Psalm 119:2 Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, who seek Him with the whole heart!  A pure heart is one that seeks God wholly. 

The result – we will see God.  Now, what does that mean? Let’s look at just two things.

1.  To see God is to be awestruck by His glory – by a direct experience of His holiness.  Seeing God is not about physically seeing Him.  Yes, all who are believers will one day see Him face to face – but, it’s about experiencing Him.  After God spoke to Job in the whirlwind (Job didn’t physically see God), remember what Job said?  Job 42:5   "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear,   But now my eye sees You.

2.  To experience His grace.  And remember a good  definition of grace is the acronym – God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.  So, what we are saying here is that seeing God is experiencing what Christ died for us to experience - knowing Him, His comfort His peace, His presence, His mercy, His forgiveness….. I could go on and on – maybe some of you could do that by posting a comment J

In Psalm 27 David declared the goodness of the Lord.  And then in verse 8, he wrote:  When You said, seek My face, my heart said to You, Your face Lord will I seek.

Robert Louis Stevenson, in one of his stories, wrote of an interesting incident in which some people were out in a boat, in the midst of a storm.  It was a rather small boat.  And in the midst of the storm they became very fearful about what was happening, and one of them said he would creep up to the deck and take a look and see how things were.  So he crept up to the deck, and he came back not long afterward and said, “It’s alright.  I’ve just seen the captain’s face.”  James tells us that we don’t get the captain’s wisdom if we are double minded.  Really, we don’t experience any of His graces.  But, the pure in heart do – because we want it more than anything else.