Live Dead Joy: 30 Days of Living and Dying with JesusSample

“Farther Up and Further In”

My favorite book among C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia is The Last Battle. In the final chapter, as the Narnians explore Aslan’s country, they find that the farther they travel, the broader and more beautiful the land. God’s concentric circles expand the closer you press to the center. The Narnians exhort one another to press on and up to “higher ground” in joyful, noncompetitive discovery as they race one another.

But not all things of the Lord can be pursued in community. In Exodus 24, Moses ascended the mountain of God with the elders of Israel and Joshua. There they “saw God” and even “ate and drank” with Him (v. 11). Staggering! How wonderful that communal interaction must have been. But God had a further invitation for just Moses and Joshua: “Come up to me . . . and be there” (v. 12). Moses and Joshua climbed farther up, and the glory of the Lord descended on the mountain as they lingered in God’s presence (vv. 13–15).

On the seventh day, God called Moses alone out of the cloud, and Moses communed with God for forty days and forty nights (v. 18). No companion traveled with Moses to that place of intimacy. Some things of the Lord cannot be experienced corporately. Some things, Jesus tells us, should be told to no person, no spouse, no child, no friend. Some intimacies are intended just for the partakers.

Some things of the Spirit are not to be shared. The lesson of the wise virgins in Matthew 25:9 is that oil is not to be given to others at a cost to your own supply. This sounds counter to laying down your life for others, but Jesus never intends for us to sacrifice intimacy with Him in the pursuit of helping others. He sets this boundary clearly: We must at all costs preserve a personal intimacy with Jesus, even if that pursuit means we refrain from helping or serving others. Why? Because if we are not intimate with Jesus (if we run out of oil), we will have nothing transformative to give to others.

The best thing I can do in my service to others is to abide with Jesus. When I preserve my personal intimacy with Him, I serve those around me best. My intimacy with Jesus gives me the right—and the authority—to exhort others to rush “farther up and further in.”

Pray for the Unreached:

Persian Muslims of Iran

29,000,000

0.09% Evangelical

Pray that God would raise up missionaries from all over the world to plant the church tougher among the Persians (Matthew 9:37).