The importance of seeking God cannot be overly stressed. Your prosperity, the course of your life, your success, your happiness, your joy and your reward are all tied into seeking God. Seek God with all your heart, mind and strength and you will find Him. Require His presence. Follow hard after Him. Seek His face. Search Him out. Listen for His voice in the still of the night. Look for His presence in all that you do. Expect God to prosper your every step. Desire God. Relentlessly pursue Him. Persistently insist upon His presence. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. He is more than wonderful. He is the everlasting Father. He is your shield and your exceeding great reward. No matter how independent or great or sucessful you think you are, without God you are but an empty vessel. Your wisdom will come to nought but God’s wisdom will remain.

                                 What’s Your Heart Condition?
           The Beattitudes, or the Sermon on the Mount, is perhaps Jesus’ most famous teaching. In this sermon, Jesus teaches that you will be blessed based upon certain qualities that you possess. Let’s review Matthew 5: 3-8:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness:

for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.   

           Verse 8 contains a key truth. The pure in heart shall see God. Your heart condition --- whether good, critical or poor --- will determine whether you will see God. Your heart must be pure. You can spend your whole life seeking God by prayer and fasting and reading His Word. God can look down from Heaven and find you looking up at Him. You may have hooked up to God’s power. You may have resolved in your heart that no one else besides God is good enough for you. You may be walking in God-given prosperity. But if your heart is not pure, you will not see God. This is the ultimate prerequisite for seeing God. Even if you fulfill all other requirements in your search for God, it will have all been in vain if your heart is in poor condition.
           In I Samuel 16:7 God said to Samuel the prophet, “For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.” How true this is! God is just as concerned about what you do on the inside as He is with what you do on the outside. For many people, it is not how they appear in public that will keep them out of heaven. It is how they do not appear in public that will determine where they will spend eternity. The hidden sins --- hate, jealously, envy, strife, unforgiveness, lying, cheating, backbiting --- will prevent you from seeing God. Only the pure in heart shall see God.

                                       Priestly Preparations
             You cannot enter the presence of the Almighty God with an unprepared heart. You must be ready to see God. When you initially come to God to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, God will accept you as you are. But once you come into the knowledge of God and you receive knowledge about walking uprightly, God will expect you to have a pure heart. I Samuel 12:24 admonishes, “Only fear the Lord, and serve him in truth with all you heart: for consider how great things he hath done for you.”
           The priests of the Old Testament had the responsibility of offering sacrifices unto the Lord for the sins of the people. Of course, under the New Testament, you no longer have to offer animal sacrifices when seeking forgiveness for sins. You need only ask God for forgiveness. But Old Covenant priests had to approach God on behalf of the people. In order to enter the presence of the Almighty God, however, the priests themselves had to be prepared to see God. They could not ask God to make the hearts of the people pure if their hearts were not pure.
             The garments the priests wore reflected the importance of being prepared to see God. Their robes were adorned with bells at the hem and they wore a rope around their ankles. If, after the priest entered the Holy of Holies, the people could still hear the bells, they would know that the priest was okay. Indeed, the priest was still alive because the ringing of the bells told them that he was still moving around as he offered the sacrifices. If the priest had been behind the curtain for a long while, and the people could no longer hear the bells, that indicated to them that he perished in the sight of God (Exodus 28:35; Exodus 39:25-26). Why? Because he was not prepared to see God. His heart was not pure. Then, he was pulled out by the rope that had been tied around his ankle. No one who was unprepared could enter the temple of God to retrieve the priest’s body, so he had to be pulled out.  
           King Rehoboam, King Solomon’s son and King David’s grandson, is mentioned in the Bible for his lack of preparation, “ And he did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the Lord” (II Chronicles 12:14). In Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira, the husband and wife team who conspired against God, fell dead in His presence. Just before Ananias was stricken by the Holy Ghost, Peter remarked, “Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God” (Acts 5:4). Their hearts were impure, and they were punished accordingly.

                   Who Shall Ascend Into The Hill of The Lord? 

Psalm 24: 1-3 extol God’s virtues and then ask two very important questions:

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

For he hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods.

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?

             The psalmist asks, “Who shall look for God? And, if by chance He can be found, who shall stand in His Holy Place?” In other words, “Who is prepared to see God?” Verses 4 - 5 of this Psalm answer these questions:

He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart;

who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.

He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

             Once again, the Bible establishes that only those who walk uprightly, with clean hands and a chaste, unadulterated heart will see God. God is holy and you are admonished to be holy as He is holy and to be perfect as He is perfect. He is our example and the ruler by which we measure ourselves. Serving God is serious business. If you confess to love God and if you expect to hear Him invite you into Heaven on your day of judgment, the attitude in your heart toward your fellow man must parallel the attitude of your heart toward God. Overlooking the seemingly “small” things will cause the gates of heaven to close before your eyes. Zechariah 7:10 commands to “oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart.”

                                     What Does God Look Like?
             You serve a God whom you have never seen in the flesh. You have no idea what He looks like. Until you see God arrayed in all His glory, you can only imagine how He will appear. Allow me to reiterate that only those who are upright, holy, perfect, good and clean in heart shall see God. I imagine that as each person is being judged, God will speak to him/her, but He will not show His face. For all the goats that are separated from the sheep, he will merely cast a condemning judgment upon them and send them to the kingdom of darkness. But, to those who are His true sheep, He will turn around and give them a warm smile and a big, hearty hug!! They will meet and greet like they are old friends being reunited after 20 years. The pure in heart shall see God.
             As you spend more and more time with God, you become rubbed on, smeared on and painted on with God Himself. You begin to inherit more of the qualities of God. You become more compassionate, more giving, more patient, more loving, more spiritual, more powerful and more blessed. And as you inherit these chracteristics of God, you begin to transform physically. Your face is alive and glowing with the love of God. You have more energy as you feel the surge of power that the gospel has provided. You receive a healing. Indeed, you even begin to look more like God Himself. YOU are the resemblance of God in the earth. When people see you, they see God. YOU are what God looks like, if you are pure in heart!!
           I John 3:2-3 further verify this with,

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

           Only those whose hearts are clean and undefiled will be allowed to sit on the right hand of the Most High. Everyone who has this hope should make a determined effort to purge himself of all sinful thoughts that he may be holding in his heart. Since you serve a pure God, you should make every attempt to live in a state of purity. Remember, “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him”
(II Chronicles 16:9). 


Summary --- Preparing To See God

1. Regardless of how relentlessly you pursue God, your heart must be pure if you expect to ultimately see Him. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).

2. In Psalm 24, the psalmist asks, “Who is prepared to see God?” He answers his own question with, “He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.”

3. You must prepare to see God. Otherwise, you may do evil in the sight of God.

4. As you seek God, you take on His holy attributes and qualities. When you finally see Him, you will be like Him for you will see Him as He is.