Will We Face Him or Face-to-Face Him?

Right before God wrestled with Jacob at Penuel and revealed Himself to Jacob, you still see Jacob’s manipulative nature at work. Right before God conquered him there and defeated that old nature, you find Jacob sending gifts out to try to appease Esau. “Appease is another form of the word “penuel”. It’s “panim” or “face”. The word “appease” came from the concept of getting in someone’s face with a gift or a way to persuade or appease them. God was intentional in using that specific word to describe what Jacob was doing, because God wanted us to see something. You are either going to try to make or manipulate your own way to resolve your problems, or you are going to lay it all down and get face to face with God over them. 

You can fix your problems, America, through laws and legislation, political parties and all the foolishness that goes on. You can do it that way, or you can lay it all down and get face to face with God until He changes us, so He can get on with the Dream. The political spirit is the panim spirit. It’s the spirit that tries to manipulate its way through control. God’s way is to lay all that down and He says, “Let me go to the root.” You won’t have to manipulate your way into a blessing. I’ll give you the blessing and we will dream together.

“The man said, ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob. You have struggled with God and with men, and you have won; so your name will be Israel.’ Jacob said, ‘I have seen God face-to-face, and I am still alive’; so he named the place Peniel.” (Genesis 32:28 and 30; GNT)

Give Him 15 minutes in prayer:

• Spend some time thinking about the roots of our nation in light of the article above. Talk to God about the dream those colonists were carrying.
• Think about how our founding fathers gave up everything to join their dram to God’s dream for America. Do you feel that way about America in this generation?
• Identificationally repent for the turning of liberty into license in America. Pray about some of those things where we see a corporate “Jacob’s nature”. How are we, as Believers, addressing sin around us. Are we justifying it? Are we ignoring it? Or, are we passionately standing in the gap between what is and ought to be? Are we praying into the effects of the license our liberty has given way to culturally?
• Cry out for God to take this nation back to Penuel! Cry out for face-to-face outpourings of the Holy Spirit. Cry out for God to turn our rebellious face-offs with Him into intimate friendships with Him. Cry out for holiness and revival!

A prayer you can pray:

Lord, You brought us to Penuel. Our forefathers were brought to a place named after Penuel, Faneuil Hall in Boston, to seek Your face to birth a nation. You gave a dream to some upstart colonists. They allowed Your Dream to infiltrate their dream. The freedom, the blessing, the wealth, the prosperity, and the strength of this new nation could be used to be the voice of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. However, our liberty became license and now we live for things. We refuse to bow the knee, but You have Your ways. You are going to arrest this nation and You are going to redeem this nation, just like You did with that fallen nature in Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. You are bringing this nation back to Penuel. You are going to bring us to our encounter with the Living God and we are going to see You face to face. You are going to pour Your Spirit out on us, just like You did Jacob. We are going to recapture Your dream. We are going to run together and dream together. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.

Today’s decree:

Choose a face to face encounter with God, America!