Day 26

What Rises — Intimacy with the Father

Today's Scripture: Philippians 3:10 (NLT)

There is a verse in Philippians that, when its full weight is felt, becomes one of the most haunting and beautiful sentences in all of Paul's writings. He says, "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death." Notice the order. To know Him. The power of His resurrection. The fellowship of His sufferings. And then — being made conformable unto His death. The progression is not accidental. The knowing of Christ deepens through resurrection power, deepens further through shared suffering, and reaches its richest form in being conformed to the very death that He died.

And here we come to the deepest rising of the entire crucified life — not freedom, not fruit, not power for ministry, glorious as those are. The deepest rising is intimacy with the Father Himself. The God who calls us to die to self does so not because He wants to diminish us but because He wants to draw us into a closeness that no half-surrendered soul can ever know. There is a measure of communion with God that is reserved for those who have walked the road of dying. It cannot be reached by any other path. And the soul that ventures down this road discovers, mile by mile, that what looked from the outside like loss is in fact the gateway to a gain that nothing in the world could equal.

Paul, who could have boasted in his theological brilliance, his apostolic credentials, his church-planting record — Paul says, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord" (Philippians 3:8). The excellency of the knowledge of Christ. Not the doctrine about Him. Not the academic study of His teachings. The personal, experiential, soul-deep knowing of Him as a Person, as a Lord, as a Beloved Friend. Paul says this is so valuable that he counts everything else as dung — refuse, garbage — for the chance to gain it. And the road that leads to this kind of knowing is the road we have been walking all month: the road of dying to self.

Why is intimacy with God connected so deeply to the crucifixion of the self? Because the self, while it is alive and ruling in the soul, is always interposing itself between the believer and the Father. The self gets in the way. It clouds the communion. It demands to be the center, and the Father, in His kindness, will not displace the heart of His child by sharing the throne with that child's self. He waits patiently, while the self is being dethroned, and as the self comes down, He comes closer. The dethroning is the doorway. The dying is the way in.

Listen to the saints across the centuries on this. They almost universally testify to the same thing: that the deepest seasons of communion with God in their lives came on the heels of the deepest seasons of dying. The mystics called this the via negativa — the way down, the way of dispossession, the way of letting everything be stripped that could be stripped, until what remained was only God Himself and the soul that had nothing left to bring Him but its own emptiness. And in that emptiness, the Father came. He filled it. He made it His dwelling place. And the soul that had given up everything discovered that it had gained the One who is everything.

This is not the language of religious extravagance. This is the testimony of countless believers, in every century, who have walked this road. Augustine, who said in his Confessions that his heart was restless until it found its rest in God. Bernard of Clairvaux, who wrote of the soul's longing for the Beloved. Thomas à Kempis, who spoke of the imitation of Christ as the path to inner peace. John Owen, who wrote of communion with God as the believer's highest privilege. Madame Guyon, who described the soul's union with God through total abandonment. They lived in different centuries, different traditions, different cultures. But they spoke with one voice: that the deepest knowing of God lies on the far side of the deepest dying of the self.

And this rising — this intimacy — is what the Father has been after in you all along. He did not call you into this month to torture you. He called you into it because He loves you, and He wants you close, and the road of closeness runs through the death of the self that has been keeping you at a distance from Him. He has been pulling you toward Himself by allowing the things in you that hinder that closeness to be put on the cross. And what is rising in your soul, beneath all the dyings, is a capacity for communion with the Father that you did not have before.

Stay on the road. The Father is at the end of it. He has been at the end of it all along.

Prayer

Father, I want to know You. Not just to know about You. To know You — as Paul knew You, as the saints across the centuries have known You, as You have invited me to know You. If the dying is the way in, then let it continue. If the cross is the gate, then I walk through it. The excellency of the knowledge of You is worth every loss. Draw me close, even at the cost of everything else. Amen.

Today's Challenge

Spend extra time today simply being with God — not asking for anything, not bringing a list, just being. Sit in His presence. Let the silence be a place of communion. The intimacy you are pursuing is not always found in many words; it is often found in stilled words.

"The Father is at the end of the road of dying, and the closeness He gives there is the only thing in the universe that finally satisfies a soul made for Him."