“For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer” (I Timothy 4:4-5). As it is in every act honoring to God, whether public assembly, family, and private devotion, it must be an exercise of the heart. The Psalmist expressed it so in Psalm 27:8, “When You said, seek you My face; my heart said unto You, Your face, Lord, will I seek.” The commentary said, “David’s was a ready response to a Divine call. It is a natural duty of man to God, his responsibility to his Creator’s demands, especially so in that of a renewed man. When God regenerates a man it is but right that the man should answer to the call of his Maker. When the Creator says, “Seek you My face,” it is the duty of the creature to reply, “Your face, Lord, will I seek;” even more so because our Creator renews our obligations by His sustaining power and maintaining our existence. We are ‘created’ everyday, we would go back to our nothingness, our bodies would return to the dust and our spirits would expire, if it were not for the grace of Divine Omnipotence by which we are kept.” Being dependent on the Preserver of men, it is an everyday obligation that when God says, “Seek you My face,” the debtor should gladly reply, “Your face, Lord, will I seek.” God’s commands are always good and reasonable, and the duty of man is to obey them. The Word of God is to our interest and the wisest thing we can do is follow the wise, loving, and tender counsels of the great God. Prompt obedience is a duty, wherever it exists. It is a work of the Holy Spirit. A mere man cannot make the reply of “Your face, Lord, will I seek,” unless the Holy Spirit makes him willing to do so in the day of God’s power. If any are obedient, the glory of their obedience must be given to the Holy Spirit who works all our works in us and makes us both to will and to do of the Lord’s good pleasure. In my own case this was so. The Lord said to me, “Seek you My face,” hundreds of times by His Word, both when I read it and when I heard it preached. But when He spoke effectually through the Holy Spirit that penetrated my soul and enlightened my understanding, bowing my will I said, “Your face Lord, will I seek.”
“All that I was, my sin, my guilt, my death, was all my own. All that I am, I owe to You, my gracious God, alone. The evil of my former state was mine, and only mine. The good in which I now rejoice is Yours and only Yours. The darkness of my former state, the bondage – all was mine. The light of life in which I walk I walk, the liberty—is Yours.”