Let your face shine upon us

An important requirement for the Gospel to be shared all over the world is:

"His face should shine upon you" (Ps 67:1)

Similarly, Ps 4:6 also says that when people ask "where does goodness come from", there is no verbal answer. The answer should be our faces that shines with the Lord's face.

Numbers 6:25. Here, God gives instructions on how to bless others. "Let The LORD's face shine upon you". 

Jesus also said (Mat 5:16), "Let your light shine".

These verses clearly emphasizes the importance and requirement of the Lord's face shining upon us.

To Shine:

1. His face should shine. Not ours. We need a will to surrender and to hide all our complete honor and exhibit him alone.

This requires a need to understand that we deserve no honor in this world. Is 43:7 says that we are created for His glory. We have no other purpose to live other than glorifying ourselves. Let us remember the parable of the pharisee and the publican (Luke 18: 9 - 14). The pharisee was right in being a good person. He did not lie to God about his righteousness. But God ignored him only because of his pride and giving glory to himself.




2. An object that shines another person's face needs to be flat and polished. We need to have a will to be molded and made. A will to accept pain.

Is 64:8 says that we are just clay in God's hands. We are to be molded. Clay has no goodness in its own. Unless a potter lays his hand and does his work, it has no value. Another reference is at Is 60:21 where God says that all righteous men are the work of His hands and made for the display of His splendor. 

Jesus mentions this as an important requirement for discipleship. Luke 9:23. Taking up cross is essentially the will to suffer. 

3. This object should come in front of the light. This means all our shortcomings may get exposed here. A requirement to be pure and clean.

In John 3:19, Jesus himself mentions that if we are in darkness, we are not good and are scared that our dirtiness will be exposed. Vs.21 requires us to be in the truth that all our private secrets may be exposed, but still God be glorified. This requires a lot of holiness. 

Psalms 115

Location and Setting:

• This psalm introduces God, compares him and speaks about his blessing
• The first verse is a prayer
• The author of this psalm is unknown.
• But, it can be understood that this psalm was written when:
• The Jews had other gods (or statues very accessible to them).
• The Jews had a chance of going back and worshipping those gods.
• The Jews were very discounraged.
• So, we can understand that this can be during the exile in Babylon.

The prayer

The prayer at this time normally will be a request for salvation or help. But the ONLY prayer in this psalm asks The LORD's name be exalted.

That too twice. There is no other Prayer or request in this psalm.

This is the ideal method to pray. Even Jesus taught us this method to pray. The first request is to ask for "Hallowed be thy name". All the other requests or desires follow up. This means all these have lesser priority than "The LORD's name be glorified". The focus in the Lord's prayer is on God, his kindgom, righeousness etc and a small portion that asks for our bread. The focus should always be the LORD and never us or our requirements.

Actions

Similarly, our actions should have the LORD prioritized more than anything else. We should be 

Ready for any criticism, failure or offences that are caused to us when God's name gets glorified.

But many times, we are in an opposite situation. We ourselves cause harm to God's name.

Conclusion

If you are alive, we do not have a choice but keep glorifying God's name. This obviously includes caution that our name doesn't get any honor than God's.