“Further up and further in!” The call accompanies their journey.

When we talk about the deeper life, it’s this expression - “Further up and further in!” - that we are being invited to experience. The land the Pevensies finally arrived into was heaven, but at its core heaven is nothing more than God himself. When the children were running through the land, discovering its increasing riches, it was ultimately God that they were running into; it was Him that they were experiencing! They were going further up and further into him.

And this, I propose, is what we have also been invited into. Like the Pevensies, we have been given the call by the great Aslan to go further up and further into God and we don’t have to wait until heaven to experience this. Jesus has invited us into a foretaste of it in the present. Here and now we are being called “further up and further in”. As we take the invitation, like the children, we discover that there is so much more to see and experience and know. We also discover that this is our real home, the “land” we know we have been created for.

Jesus calls us to the deeper life, he calls us further up and further in because he knows that in him we become most fully ourselves, most fully alive, most fully what we know we long to be. The proposal last year was a calling to take him at his word, and a challenge to step in and determine again to live the deeper life with him. A year in, I want to call you to that life again. I want to challenge you to decide again to live your lives set on him. I want to call you in the year ahead to be a people who hear the voice of Aslan, and choose again to run “further up and further in”. One more year, lets do it again, and this time lets go even further.

Could you agree to this? Could we agree together? The whole lot of us, all joined together, running with all that we have. The mental picture of it makes my heart stir.

The Next Step

But here’s the thing. While the emotion of that image stirs us, we all know that making a heartfelt decision is only part of the story. Decisions like this also require life choices that enable us to live out what we hold true. So let me ask the question: what will it look like this year for you to put legs to the further up, further in journey? What practices or disciplines will help achieve a deeper life?

This is where things often break down, because we ask the question and then begin to assume in our mind what the practices of this pursuit look like. We’re going to fast more, pray more, read more, be quiet more, take sabbath more, and all of these things are right and righteous things - but that’s not the point. The point isn’t what is right, the point is what is the Father asking of us. He’s the one that knows us, he’s the one that has wired us, and he is the one that knows what it will mean to put legs to our seeking in this unique season. So, rather than assuming, perhaps our first task is asking. If your struggling with what to say, maybe I can help by putting a few words in your mouth:

“Father, my desire is to seek you in a new way for this coming season of my life. I want to know you more. What would this look like for me in real time? What practice would you have me assume, that would help put actions to my heart felt desire?”

Then, as he prompts you, determine in your heart to follow through with the idea or ideas that enter your mind. Oh, and whatever it is that he lays on your heart, decide at the beginning that you are not going to be legalistic about it. That serves us no good, turning what is to be a life giving practice into another source of guilt. Instead, use the practice with determination and joy, aiming to suck all the nourishment from God that you can.

Let’s determine again to pursue the deeper life with Jesus. And as we seek him together, a year from now, might we look back on our church and realize that we have become that much more brilliant, that much more beautiful, that much more reflective of the beautiful one we adore.