We can only be face-to-face with someone we are intimate with. The term implies intimacy, just try getting in someone’s face you don’t know and you are liable to have a fight on your hands. When you are face-to-face all of your attention is focused on them and theirs on you. You know that you are safe because that person is allowing you access to them.
With this understanding consider this word from David: When you said, “Seek my face,” my heart said to you, “O LORD, I will seek your face.” Do not hide your face from me. Do not angrily turn me away. You have been my help. Do not leave me! Do not abandon me, O God, my savior! Even if my father and mother abandon me, the LORD will take care of me.” (Psalms 27:8-10)
David knew that when all others, even his father and mother, forsook him he could trust in God’s love for him because he had a very intimate relationship with his Shepherd. “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not be in want.” (Psalms 23). “He makes me…he leads me…he restores me…he guides me…he is with me… he comforts me… he prepares a table before me… he anoints my head…my cup overflows… he will dwell with me forever.” David learned this face-to-face communing with God in prayer. When we meet face-to-face we will see the need to “Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling.” (Psalms 2:11). Why? Because the whole duty of man is to “…Fear God, and keep his commandments…” (Eccl. 12:13). Again, we may say why? Well, because the “…fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Prov. 1:7). We don’t want to be fools scorning the knowledge of God. The way to avoid this is to know just how awesome our God is and how capable he is of carrying out his judgment against the works of unrighteousness.
When Solomon was conversing with God about what he (Solomon) needed most to be effective in leading his people to God, God said: “And thou, Solomon my son, 1know thou the God of thy father…“ (1 Chron. 28:9) 1yada’ means to observe, to encounter, to experience, to fullyknow. God was saying to Solomon that he needed to have an intimate relationship with him. -Bill Stockham