Monthly Archives: July 2008

If you are joining us for the first time in our desert series, please take time to read our scripture focus, Acts 8:26-40.
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“As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?’ And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him.’” (Acts 8:36-38).

The Great Commission. The going and making and baptizing and teaching of people, all in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19-20).

How is it living in your life today?

It lived as holy consecration in the life of Philip as he traveled the uncertainty of a desert road in obedience to the certainty of his calling. He went. He made. He taught, and in one final act of servant discipleship, he baptized. He stepped down into the water with his new brother to give him a drink of holy cleansing.

It is what he came to the desert to do. To bring water to the thirsty. To bring understanding to the confused. To bring life to the dying. To bring consecration to a journey—both to his and to the eunuch’s.

One came to the desert because of his thirst. He sought the Truth. The other came to the desert because of his obedience. He hoped to offer someone the Truth. Both men walked the heat, and both men allowed God his way in the matter. This is how a life lives as consecrated in the desert.

Yielded. Simply yielded to God and to his intended purposes for our every day.

Philip yielded, never stopping short of the finish. He followed through, and follow through is a mark of a true disciple of Jesus Christ.

Being in the desert is not enough. In fact, often just being there is more than we can handle. But our Truth calls for a stronger witness. No matter our reasons for our heated current, God charges us with the task of moving past self-interest to embrace his best interest. And his best interest is always people.

I don’t know about you, but I am a girl who wants that label. I want to be about my Father’s business. So often I fail in the matter. Most days, I’m good with my going and with my teaching. But my follow through? Seeing my brothers and sisters all the way down into the water? Well, obedience doesn’t always breathe genuine through these hands. Perhaps in the heart of my “want to”, but not always in the hands of my actual.

I find it easier to serve God’s purpose when the heat is not my portion. The Great Commission finds its voice more readily through me when I can pick and choose my deserts. But when God picks one for me that requires my welcome, my grit for the follow through hosts a singular focus.

Me.

Rarely do I choose a greater grace that allows the companioning of others alongside. Instead, I am careful to crawl as prickly and to horde as selfishly, without realizing that that God’s fountain flows to everlasting and is intended to harbor the entirety of humanity’s thirst.

It is time for my focus to change. To grow up and to embrace the sacred perspective of desert dwelling rather than abandoning it at the first sign of a heated hard. I want to pilgrim through the desert with God’s purpose in mind. I want to move forward in faith, without needing all the particulars of God’s plan up front. I want to live as Philip did.

He began his day without seeing its end, but when the ending arrived, he closed his eyes knowing that his faith had served the kingdom of God in its fullness.

That is follow through. That is consecrated living. That is the Great Commission fleshed out and served up as God intended for it to breathe.

A few days from now, my husband and son, along with eleven others, will be traveling to a desert of sorts. Bolivia. They have tended to the Voice within who issued them the call to go and to make and to teach and to serve. I have no doubt that, should they be called to the water’s edge, they will follow through. You see, I married a Philip, and I birthed one. They are true servants of Jesus Christ, and they go with my blessing.

And while they serve there, I will serve here within the sands of a North Carolina heat. The people on my road won’t look the same as the ones they meet in Bolivia, but there is a thread that unifies and ties as common. All people, every last one of us, share the best interest of God. We are the heart of his matter.

He willingly entered into our deserts. To bring water to our thirst. To bring understanding to our confusion. To bring life to our dying. To bring consecration to a journey—both to his and to ours. He didn’t stop short of the water’s edge. Instead, he took to his baptism so that we could know the bathing of a lavish and most sacred grace.

I have been to those waters, my friends, and it is a cleansing beyond the portion I am due. What I am due is hell. What I have been given is everlasting life. It is the one gift that should not be horded, and so I pray…

Pour it out of me, Lord…this gift of your Truth. Your requirement of me is nothing less than the absolute and total embrace of the Great Commission. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, I can go and make and baptize and teach. I can do all things through your power, Father. Forgive me when I settle for less and for the times when the desert seems too much, and I find my retreat within its sands. I long to be a better pilgrim. Today, I ask you for the courage and tenacity of a sacred “follow through” and for the faith of Philip. Amen.

For Judith…I stand alongside you today!

Please take time to read today’s scripture focus, Acts 8:26-29.

“The Spirit told Philip, ‘Go to that chariot and stay near it.’” (Acts 8:29).

One of the gifts of walking in barren seasons is the pleasure of God’s voice. I so often miss it in my chaos and my crowded. But when I am alone and feeling the confinement of my anonymity, my heart is tender and ripe for the hearing. I think this is why I am sometimes led to walk a desert’s heat. God is ever speaking, and my penchant for the same often precludes my listening to him. Thus, a desert sometimes becomes my consecrated necessary.

God shapes our lives in the desert. Oswald Chambers speaks to such a shaping:

“If we are going to live as disciples of Jesus, we have to remember that all noble things are difficult. The Christian life is gloriously difficult, but the difficulty of it does not make us faint and cave in, it rouses us up to overcome. Do we so appreciate the marvelous salvation of Jesus Christ that we are our utmost for His highest? … Thank God He does give us difficult things to do! His salvation is a glad thing, but it is also a heroic, holy thing. It tests us for all we are worth.”[i]

Noble. Heroic and holy. An utmost kind of living that requires our refinement through the gloriously difficult. Sounds like Mr. Chambers knew something of a desert dwelling and finding its sacred consecration within. I want an “utmost” life lived to the uttermost, and if a desert’s necessary becomes God’s way of accomplishing his ultimate for me, then I am prepared for its embrace.

I am at a place of contentment in my life right now, not feeling the particulars of a desert’s scorch; still and yet, I am reminded that many of you are walking its heat. I have heard from some of you. I have seen you in my community and in the church pews. I have watched you pilgrim through your daily and your constant, and I am moved by your faithfulness to keep a forward focus even though a backward glance is all so tempting.

Through you, God has issued me an invitation to walk a desert road. He has clearly communicated the need, and compelled by his love, I willingly come. Not to instruct or to correct or to whisk you away from your heated necessary, but simply to come alongside and to walk the road with you. There is refinement for the both of us in the process.

Philip came alongside. He took to the road with very little knowledge about its consecrated purpose. He simply listened to the words of God’s angel and to the promptings of God’s Spirit.

Go to the desert road.
Go to that chariot and stay near it.

Herein lies one of the glorious truths of the desert.

Deserts are full of fellow travelers.

Our self-indulgence allows us to reason that we go it alone…that there is no one else who shares the sandals of our hard. But the reality of our pilgrim identities paints a truer picture. The desert is replete with a parched people. Unfortunately, the laboring and tearing of our own thirst rarely permits us the privilege of noticing another’s.

But occasionally there comes a friend, perhaps even a stranger who is able to look past self-interest in order to preserve the sacred interest of God.

Philip was one of those people. A stranger in a strange land living out what, some would say, was a strange and mysterious calling. From table service to chariot chasing, indeed, Philip was no ordinary servant. He was extraordinary in his service to God and to mankind.

At the Spirit’s prompting, he took the time to embrace a man that was rarely embraced.

An Ethiopian—a man of ethnic difference.
A lesser man some would say because of his eunuch’s status.
An unclean and fully blemished man.
A Gentile.
A foreigner.
A wealthy man.
A stranger to the truth, and yet…

A seeker of the Truth…of the one God who captured his worship and who sent him on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in search of that Truth.

I don’t know what he found while in Jerusalem, but I do know what he found while in the desert.

He found a friend named Philip. And better still…

He found a Savior named Jesus.

He found the Truth, simply because of one man’s obedience to walk a desert’s heat and to maintain an outward focus so that God’s consecrated purpose could be birthed within sinner and saint, alike. Not a bad trade for a desert’s pilgrimage. In fact, a very good exchange worth every blistered tear and parched longing.

Purpose in the desert. Yours and mine and theirs. We all walk its heat for different reasons. Our thirsts are uniquely crafted by God’s consecrated will for humanity. A noble, heroic, holy, and perfect will that leads to a perfect end—an utmost kind of end where eunuchs and Gentiles, foreigners and strangers, family and friends, will gather to worship the one God who authors us all.

Home is where we are headed. It is not far, friends. It is just on the other side of this desert. On the other side of a sometimes, hard obedience. On the other side of steps that are gloriously difficult but that are willing, nonetheless, to keep an outward focus.

We are moving through these sands to get to God’s unshakable mountain. Better to get there with a few fellow pilgrims by our sides, and so I pray…

Carry me through the desert, Lord, so that I may reach the shores of an unshakeable faith. Direct my steps and lead me to those who will best pilgrim the journey with me…both for my sake and for theirs. Yoke us as one to your yoke so that, together, we can find our consecrated purpose for the journey. I thank you for the fellow sojourners whom you have placed on my road. Give me the ears to hear your voice, the courage to obey your voice, and the faith to walk toward your voice even when I cannot see through these uncertain sands. Bring me to my noble and utmost end. Amen.

[i] Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (Uhrichsville: Barbour Publishing, 1935), July 7th.
[ii]Sara Groves, I Saw What I Saw from “Tell Me What You Know” (Nashville: RBI Productions, 2007).

Copyright © July 2008 – Elaine Olsen. All rights reserved.

As a way of closing today, I want to share with you a song by Sara Groves that speaks the story of a desert road. For those of you who are walking one right now, I echo her heart when I say…

“Your pain has changed me. Your dream inspires. Your face a memory. Your hope a fire. Your courage asks me what I’m afraid of. Your courage asks me what I am made of and what I know of love.”[i]

Today, I begin a new mini-study with you on what it is to embrace the life of a desert dweller. It is an existence that has chased me my entire life. Only now am I beginning to live in the sacred potential of such a pilgrimage. I welcome your participation and look forward to your walking this road with me. There can be peace in our journeys, friends—even when the journey boasts a desert road. Pack your bags, put on some good walking shoes, and let God turn up the heat! I believe that he has something to teach us all.

“So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.’” (Acts 6:2-4).

There is story in God’s Word that has followed me for nearly two years. I can’t seem to shake its prod. It is easy to miss if one is prone to lingering in the pinnacles of scripture—those big story moments that have remained in the spotlight for thousands of years. Nestled between a martyr’s stoning (Stephen) and a persecutor’s redemption (Paul), is the story of one lesser known. He was a man content to live in service to his Lord, even when that service required a desert’s walk.

His name was Philip, and from his first mention in scripture until his last, Philip lived his consecrated calling. No task was beneath his servant hood. What began as a ministry of literal feeding emerged into a ministry that exceeded the needs of the flesh to include the spiritual needs of the soul.

And when those needs required a scattering—a relocation to a lesser desired location—Philip obeyed. He went without complaining and with the holy perspective that God’s kingdom agenda would best be served somewhere beyond his comfort. Beyond his normal. Beyond his now. Philip would be called to the desert, and rather than run from its heat, Philip reached to take hold of its warmth.

What emerged from this lesser preached obedience is a story rife with application for those of us who, like Philip, find ourselves in a desert’s pause and who sometimes feel adrift, forgotten, and certainly not consecrated for such an existence.

Desert dwelling.

It is a hard walk. A hot and arid journey, where water falls brief and sand sticks thick. A day’s pilgrimage that sometimes turns into weeks. Months. Years. Maybe, even a lifetime. It is an uncomfortable reach, especially for children who have been promised a spacious land filled with the milk and honey of an abundant grace.

I could skip over this seeming contradiction. Pretend that waterfalls and full living are my constant, but the truth of my matter is the fact that, for most of my life, I have been a desert dweller. For reasons beyond my understanding, I often stay stuck in my desert. I stay as I am, and as each day passes, I grow exceedingly weary with my seemingly little progress toward nowhere. I believe that there are others who share my sandals and who have walked the same. This wilderness wandering is one of the many breathing realities within the Christian community today.

We are a people existing in desert conditions, desperately searching for our consecrated purposes within its heat. If we can’t escape its hold, then we often choose to wander within its confinements with our aimless and angry intent companioning alongside. Rather than accepting its parameters and finding God’s sacred objective in our allotted space, we relinquish our feet and hands and hearts to the blisters and parch that rarely yield purpose and almost always birth resentment.

I speak from experience, for I have lived and breathed such a witness. For all of my years of walking with Jesus, one would reason me past the confines of a desert’s enclosure. But years and experience and wisdom aren’t always enough to warrant me worthy of its escape. No, sometimes something more is required of me. God’s more. And God’s more is always rooted in his best.

Thus, there are seasons when a desert walk becomes my consecrated necessary.

What I choose to do with that “necessary” is solely up to me. God will never force my consecration in the matter, but lovingly he offers it to me as the best option. He knows that there is a time and purpose for every season in my life and that sometimes, his best purpose is fleshed out upon the sands of an uncertain desert.

Philip walked upon those sands. He stepped up to the table when he was called to serve. He wouldn’t know the fame of the apostles. Indeed, his story is easily missed if we are prone to the prestige and pageantry of bigger biblical moments. But it is his story, as contained in the book of Acts, that has shadowed me for a long season, and now I am ready to put thought into his consecrated necessary so that I, too, can find purpose in mine.

There are things—sacred and unseen truths—that birth in our seasons of seeming barrenness. On the front end, we are often blinded to their realities. Sometimes we enter the desert knowingly. Sometimes, we wake up to find ourselves already drenched in its dry. Either way, our only certainty in these uncertain seasons is Jesus. Simply Jesus. When we allow him his purpose in our necessary, the outcome always favors his kingdom agenda…in our lives and in the lives of those we meet along the way.

I don’t know how your season is currently living. Mine is living pretty well considering that I have just come down from some recent mountain moments with God. I much prefer my time on the sacred pinnacles, but the valley is where I do most of my living. It is where God most often chooses to hammer out my faith. In the heat and in the dry, but with the promise of a consecration that boasts kingdom purpose and abundant return.

We will witness this truth in life of a servant named Philip over the next several posts. I hope you will join me in the desert. Many of you are already there. Let us walk the sands of our uncertainty together and see what great things our Father has in store for us.

The table has been set. The time has been chosen. Today is that time. God is inviting you and me to receive his eternal purposes for our lives, even in the midst of our heated temporal. Would you be willing to step up to the table and allow him to consecrate your desert for his kingdom agenda? I am and so I pray,

Lead on O King Eternal, in the heat and in the cool of my desert. I confess that I do not always understand your wisdom in the matter, but I am willing to try. Keep me to your Word, Father…to the truth of a desert’s embrace. Consecrate my every moment, every encounter, every word, and every act of service for an eternal purpose that exceeds my weary. And when I can no longer stand, when the drought of the desert threatens my thirst, bring me to your well of living water for lasting refreshment. Teach me, Lord, how live as a desert dweller. Really live. Beyond my usual. Beyond my aimless, until I walk straight into your eternal purposes for my life. Amen.

A further pause…

~Describe the setting of your most recent desert dwelling.

~After reading Acts 6 – 7, what are some reasons that might have Philip already walking a figurative desert road, even though he’s yet to walk one physically?

elaine

Copyright © June 2008 – Elaine Olsen. All rights reserved.

If you would like to join me in the desert, please take time to read Acts, chapters six and seven over the next couple of days. These verses will set the stage for our study of Philip’s sojourn in the desert. As a way of further reflection, I will offer a couple of questions with each post. Feel free to comment regarding those questions or add any additional thoughts you would like to share. I won’t be posting again until the weekend, so you have plenty of time to reflect. Shalom!