Encounter Deep Intimacy with the Father

The apostle Paul wrote, “For now we see in a mirror dimly…” (1 Corinthians 13:12a).

The context is love—the “more excellent way,” the perfection that comes, causing the imperfect to pass away (see 1 Cor. 13:10). The love Paul talked about is the kind of love that begins in the Father as a condition of His heart. This kind of love eludes us when we fix our eyes on the vague reflection in the mirror of self-righteousness and mere religion. In the days Paul wrote about the mirror, there were no such things as plate glass mirrors. The mirrors were made of hammered metal, usually bronze or brass. The reflections were much distorted at best. We are so busy trying to impress God and ourselves that we ignore Him. We have missed the music!

Beloved, we are created to live face-to-face, presence-to-presence with our Father. We bear His very breath!! The Eternal kissed us alive, intending that we would never turn away. Yet we so often live in the mirror. When I live in the mirror, I am looking at myself or my past or comparing myself with you. I look at myself trying to improve or impress myself and you. I see what is right or wrong with me and find myself wanting. I become fascinated with the mirror and cannot see you or anyone else. I look at my imperfections—a pimple here and too much scalp there. As I look in the mirror, I age. I no longer see the 20-something young person; I see Elmer Fudd!

When I live in the mirror, I am always looking at my past, and I fail to see the present or the future. I see where I blew it and where there seems to be no hope. I cannot move beyond that deadly offense or believe that the Father would see anything beyond that failure.

When we live in this face-to-face kind of relationship, we are not looking around for the right thing to do or trying to impress God with our deep spiritual insights. He knows who He is. We are born to live within a breath’s distance of a Father who is passionate about seeing our faces. Imagine the ache in His heart when we turn aside because we have looked in the mirror and seen that our lives are not yet perfect. He sees us perfectly, and He has called us to move beyond the mirror and into His face and presence.

An Obstructed Focus

God reminded Moses of His priority of living face-to-face in the first of the Ten Commandments. God said, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:2-3). A literal rendering of the Hebrew text translated “before Me” suggests something like, “You shall have no strange gods (or anything else for that matter) before My face.” The words for face and presence are substantially the same in Hebrew. It is the heart of God that we would live in an intimate awareness of His presence and heart. This is the place of ultimate power and love.

Brennan Manning said:

The gospel proclaims a hidden power in the world—the living presence of the risen Christ. It liberates men and women from the slavery that obscures in them the image and likeness of God.

Beloved, we have damaged and distorted images of ourselves and the One who calls us to a deep and quenching intimacy.

Two Faces

When I read these first words of the Ten Commandments, an image of two faces comes to mind: Christ’s and mine. And there is a junkyard of debris laying between them on the table. I see this junk between the faces of married people all the time. Marriage is much like two people sitting down at a table across from each other. Two people come together and are in love with each other. In the beginning they can see one another and are able to love and be loved. But as life happens, a layer of undealt with offenses piles up between them until they can no longer see one another; they are looking at the pile of rubble. Here lies the rusting hulk of failed marriages, the broken remnants of familial relationships. In this no man’s land of rubble, there are burnt and broken stones cast aside from past failures and unrealized dreams.

Between Abba and us there is the tangled junk of performance and the many ways we’ve tried to earn what was already freely ours. Likewise, the Father’s passion to see our faces is obstructed with sin, self-effort, and issues growing from the bitter roots of past hurts. This junk cannot be overlooked and shoved aside; it must be hauled out to the curb with the rest of the trash.

There are so many things that have obstructed our focus from our Father’s face. When Adam and Eve stumbled in the garden, they removed their focus from the Father’s face and put it on themselves. Ever since the fall, we have been fascinated with the mirror and our shortcomings. We have squandered precious face time with God and stood in front of the mirror practicing our religion just as I used to practice my trumpet. We are trying to get all the moves down and look good to the world and God. We are fascinated with ourselves and locked onto our imperfections. Both we and the one who invites us to intimacy are deprived of each other’s eyes.

When we spend our lives looking into the mirror, ignoring the eyes of our Father, we reject ourselves. Henri Nouwen said “Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is self-rejection.”2 We live in a culture of mirrors and self-rejection.

Oh, how we are seduced by the mirror! Even when we have come to experience a saving personal knowledge, we take our eyes off the Father’s face and return to the mirror.

But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back again to the weak and worthless elemental things, to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? (Galatians 4:9)

What will ever get our focus off of ourselves and back onto the face of our Father? There is only one way, and that is the way of mercy released in repentance. Repentance, in the Hebraic sense, is simply turning back. But it is not just turning in another futile direction. So many of us keep turning like whirling dervishes to other things to validate or excuse whatever we have seen in the mirror. But we seldom turn back toward His face. How many times did the heart of the Father cry out through the Law and the Prophets, “Return to Me…”? Repentance is simply turning back toward the Father’s face where we were created to live.

We have lived life in the dim and shadowy reflections of a mirror. “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). When is the “then” Paul was talking about? There is a greater knowing of God, face-to-face. It is when the imperfect passes away, when we put aside the mirror and look deeply into the eyes of the one who created us to love Him.

Beloved, our Father has a passion for our faces. He has withheld nothing to remove the obstacles and shadows that have come between us—to remove the mirror and call us back to His face. It is only when we look into His face that we will know our Father’s heart and our truest selves. The Psalmist said, “They looked to Him and were radiant, and their faces will never be ashamed” (Psalm 34:5).

When we take our eyes off of the mirror and again “look to Him” we become “radiant;” we literally sparkle in His presence. We no longer focus on ourselves, our past wounds, our offenses, or our sins. We are now focused again on the Lord for whom we were created and recreated in Christ Jesus. The Father has removed every obstacle in Christ Jesus, according to His great love toward us, as expressed in mercy.

They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads (Revelation 22:4).