Seek my face
The first turn inward
The first step into the castle is not a technique but a response. David records a quiet exchange that happens in the depths of a heart: When you said, Seek my face, my heart said to you, I will seek your face. God speaks first — seek my face — and the soul answers. The inward journey begins as an answer to an invitation already issued.
This is crucial, because we tend to imagine the search for God as something we initiate, a project we undertake to find a hidden God. David has it the other way around. The desire to seek God is itself God's gift, the echo in us of his prior call. Before you ever thought to look for him, he was already saying seek my face — and your longing to do so is the proof that he called.
So the entrance into the interior life is simply to answer. Not to manufacture a feeling or master a method, but to say back to the God who is calling, yes — I will seek your face. Seek the Lord and his strength, the psalmist urges; seek his face continually. The whole long journey inward, through all the rooms, is just the working out of that first, simple yes to the One who called first.
“When you said, Seek my face, my heart said to you, I will seek your face, the LORD.”
— David — Psalm 27:8 (WEB)
Answer the invitation already issued — say yes to the God who first said, seek my face — and let your longing for him be the proof that he called.
“Seek the LORD and his strength. Seek his face forever more.”
We hang back from the journey inward, imagining it depends on a desire we must summon and a method we must master. The interior work is to recognize that the longing to seek God is itself his gift — the echo of his prior call — so the first step becomes not a daunting project but a simple, continual yes to the One who has already said, seek my face.
This week, treat your desire for God, however faint, as his invitation, and answer it daily: say back to him, I will seek your face, and turn toward him in prayer as a response to his call rather than a project of your own.
Self-doubt whispers that the whole journey rests on a longing you must manufacture, and since you cannot feel enough of it, you hang back before you have begun. Yet the very pull you distrust is God's own voice saying seek my face — and the soul that simply answers has already taken the step it feared it could not.
We often hang back from the journey inward because we think it depends on us — on summoning a desire we are not sure we have, on mastering a spirituality that feels beyond us. David shows us the desire to seek God is not something we generate; it is the echo of his prior call. The very longing you feel to know him more is the sound of him saying seek my face.
That changes the first step from a daunting project into a simple response. You do not have to work up the longing; you only have to answer the One who has already called. And the seeking, the psalmist says, is not a one-time act but a continual turning — seek his face forevermore. If you feel even the faintest pull toward the depths of God, do not dismiss it. It is his invitation. Answer it: yes, Lord, I will seek your face.
- Do I hang back because I think seeking God depends on me?
- Could the longing I feel be the echo of his prior call?
- Will I answer the invitation: yes, Lord, I will seek your face?
Lord, you said, Seek my face, before I ever thought to look for you, and my longing for you is the echo of your call. I answer now: I will seek your face. Draw me into the journey inward as a response to you who called first. Amen.