Category Archives: christian perfection

A Sabbath Pause, Some Parenting Thoughts, and a Giveaway

A Sabbath Pause, Some Parenting Thoughts, and a Giveaway

It’s been a good Sabbath rest for me and my family. The highlight?

Watching my almost twenty-year-old son as he stood in our church fellowship hall, serving up drinks over the noon-time meal. Why?

Because I was reminded, once again, about the fine young man that he’s becoming and that his growing up Godly has been no accidental pursuit. It’s been a hard-fought deliberation—a combination of parental intention, his cooperation, and a whole lot of grace served downward from on high.

I blinked and nearly two decades of my life have traveled the miles and through the years and enveloped my best efforts at parenting within the flesh and frame of a boy whom I call Nick. And while I cannot predict (or would even want to) how the next twenty are going to breathe, today I bask in the truth that growing Godly kids is not only possible, but it is probable when done so through the trust and faith in a God who’s brought into the process … a lot.

Nick, along with a dozen other members of our church, will return to Bolivia this summer for more mission work at the Kory Wawanca Children’s Home in the mountainous region of Tacachia. Remember his post from last summer? My husband will not be making the trip this time, and so there’s a bit of a sting in this mother’s heart for the release of my son to his journey–a journey without any parental involvement to go alongside … at least not in the physical.

Still and yet, my worries about the potential risks involved wouldn’t keep him from it. Life is filled with risk … with unknowns … with walks along the street where the corners up ahead provide all manner of intrigue and possibility. And while, as a mother, I would sometimes like to be the one to absorb those corners on behalf of my children, I am fairly confident that it would stunt their growth. Mine too.

Parenting involves a great deal of trust for the process of an eighteen year seeding and beyond. At some point, our influence—our shaping and our guidance—needs some room to breathe apart from us. Rarely is it an easy approach to these moments, but it is a necessary one. It is a good walk and a good trust and good growing for all parties involved.

Thus, Bolivia and Nick without any parents this time, yet fully and completely with the God who held him first and who loves him best. It’s time to turn that corner, friends, and I am ready for some new growth as a mom.

Perhaps, some of you are in your own season of “letting go” and learning to trust the process of your parenting. Perhaps many of you are still in the midst of the training years. Perhaps, there are a few of you who are profoundly longing for your turn at this parenting thing. Regardless of your station in the journey—whether in the prelude, in the middle, or in the aftermath—parenting is a sacred trust and should not be entered into lightly.

It is a profundity that exceeds expectation. A complexity that forces the issue of our maturity. In the end, I am confident that God will use my parenting as a tool toward my perfection. Kids do that … perfect us in a way that would otherwise be missed should we decide to go it alone. Nick has offered me ample opportunities for growth along the way. There are three others who follow him and who will, undoubtedly, continue to proffer me many occasions for growth—mine and theirs. They still walk under my umbrella of influence; they still eat and sleep at the hands of my provision.

And until they walk in independence from my 24/7 constant vigilance, I have a few moments of profound persuasion left within my control. Thus, I will spend them on behalf of kingdom shaping and kingdom purposes so that when the time comes for my children’s autonomous launch from the nest, I can let them go knowing that they go with the truth of Jesus. What they choose to do with that truth is their choice to make, but they will make an informed decision because their parents were willing to sow some seed toward that end while they were yet young.

It is all that I can do. It is the best that I can give. It is the daily choice that I will continue to make for as long as God allows me the journey … corners and all. May I always have the good sense to walk them with the good grace of heaven as my guide. As always,

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As promised, friends, I’ve compiled a short list of some resources that might be helpful to you in your daily life of “doing” family. It is by no means exhaustive, but rather is a jumping off point for you to seek some further guidance in many of the areas that I addressed in my recent posts about purity. Take time to review some of these resources by clicking on the highlighted words, which will link you to the corresponding website.

Leave a comment to today’s post, and I will draw a name to receive a copy of one of the books or CD resources listed. The winner will be announced on Tuesday. You do not need to be a parent to win a prize. All are eligible! Peace to you and yours as you walk this week beneath the light and comfort of Almighty God.

  • The Focus on the Family website is always a good place to begin with all things parenting and family related.
  • One of our favorite family resources from Focus on the Family has been the “Adventures in Odyssey” listening series. Our children have grown up with Mr. Whitaker and Whit’s End and all things Odyssey. Great for road trips and for listening to after bedtime tucks and prayers. I promise! I’ve been addicted for years.

  • Plugged in online: movie reviews/ music reviews/ television reviews. This has been an invaluable resource to us as a family as we make the weekly Blockbuster run for movies!

  • BSafe Online: filter for home computers…very restrictive, but can be tweaked according to parental preferences.

Focus on the Family Radio Interviews (CD’s):

Book resources:

Vicky Courtney Resources:

Running Above Our Average

Running Above Our Average

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. (1 Corinthians 9:24).


I didn’t mean to find them.

They were hidden there amidst the accolades of my former season: diplomas, caps and gowns, tassels and cords, a Master’s Thesis, my first diary, my first attempts at creative writing neatly organized in a bright yellow folder. A banker’s box worth of yesterdays was crammed at the back of my attic and the purposeful intention behind my husband’s search a few nights ago.

I was looking for a high school photograph of myself. What I found, instead, was a treasure trove of memories. All of them precious. All except one.

I don’t know why I saved it. Of all the many gracious and tender mementos that I had packed away for future viewing, I’m at a loss as to why I kept this one.

A battered blue pocket folder filled with eleven papers that I had written for my Advanced Composition Class during my freshman year at college. All typed on onion skin paper. All amply marked with “red,” and all of them, every last one of them, crowned with the academic genius of a “C.”

Average papers, friends. The problem? I wasn’t an average student. “C’s” were not my portion. At least not in the academic realm. Life, perhaps a different matter, but when it came to grades, I made the grade. Needless to say, when I pulled out that memory, my heart skipped a beat as I recalled the disappointment that I had felt when receiving those grades over twenty years ago. And while my husband and senior son provided their good humored ribbing alongside their accompanying shock, I quietly nursed some old wounds that reared their ugly in vivid detail.

It’s been happening to me a lot lately … this retrieval of old and sometimes painful memories. I’m not sure as to the exact reason why, but I think that it has something to do with an upcoming talk that I will be presenting about becoming “a living stone from brokenness”—my life of almost forty-three years presented in a forty-five minute nutshell. And friends, that’s a whole lot of broken crammed into a very small window of opportunity.

I have my outline and pages of corresponding back-up material ready to go. There is even a scripturally based “formula” prepared for taking my listeners, even as I have taken myself, from a state of brokenness toward a state of repair. But for all of the words that I have planned in advance, for all of the preparations that I have put into this one event, none have touched me so deeply as the ones that have presented themselves to me in vivid and living color over the past few weeks.

Real people. Real situations. Real memories. Real brokenness.

And here’s what I think, especially as it pertains to those of us who are endeavoring to humbly walk our accompanying talk.

Whatever God is “working on” in us, whatever he is refining and tweaking in us toward his good purposes and our perfected end, this is the very thing that he allows to confront us in raw and unedited ways. At unsuspecting times and, yet, in perfectly determined measure.

I’ve come to expect God’s unexpected; thus, when it arrives, I have a choice to make. I can bury it, or I can run with it to see where Father God will lead. And since burying usually leaves me as I am, I am prone to choosing the latter because I’ve finally come to the conclusion that running with God is his intended adventure for this heart of mine.

Accordingly, I ran with my battered blue folder all the way to my computer on a prompt from my son.

“Let’s Google this guy and see if we can find him, mom.”

Within seconds, I had access to this professor who was responsible for the blight on my academic record and for my former status as “average.” On a whim, I emailed him, reminding him of my presence in his classroom and about the amount of red ink that he so willingly expended on my behalf. Our families were acquainted with one another. Growing up in a small town and attending the corresponding college dictates a familiarity between the “locals” that is rarely gleaned in a larger arena.

Consequently, I was fairly confident that he would make the connection. He did, and the next morning a beautiful and humble response was waiting for me in my “inbox.” He acknowledged his “fussiness” over his grading in the past and went on to thank me for introducing him to the second half of my life. He’s added “peace for the journey” to his favorites list and also shared with me about some of the personal pain that he is currently experiencing in his own life.

In return, I thanked him for his gracious reply and for the privilege of praying on behalf of his family. I did pray, and I will continue to do so. Why?

Because God intends for me to run with him wherever the wind blows. And just this week, it blew me backward and then forward again to land me in a better place of understanding—a holier place of perception that breathes with the living pulse of an eternal Father who promises to work all of my “things” … all of your things … toward his good and perfect end.

And that end, dear ones, is anything but average. It rates much higher than a “C”, and for the record, it carries the red marks of a Savior’s love who isn’t content to leave us as we are, but who bled all over the pages of our manuscripts so that we could carry him as the most treasured memory of our always.

Unexpected moments—the real and raw and perfectly timed occasions of doing life with Jesus. I’m ready to run. I hope that your heart cries out for the same. Thus I pray…

Keep us to our run, Father, and to our willingness to embrace your wind beneath our feet as it blows. Let not the brokenness from our yesterdays prevent us from our healing in our today. Instead, use them as your building blocks for our tomorrows—for the seasons that are waiting to breathe in fullness because we’ve entrusted our past into your faithful and tender care. Take it all, Lord, and use it for your glory—my history and my now. Humbly I offer them both for your gracious and completed end. Amen.

Copyright © February 2009 – Elaine Olsen

~elaine

PS: Just in case you’re wondering, Mr. Professor’s red ink was warranted. After reading some of those papers…

Have mercy! Shalom.

Crossroads

“This is what the LORD says: ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’” (Jeremiah 6:16).

“If you write conviction, elaine, you’d better live conviction or else be prepared for conviction to find its way to your table.”

God’s message to me in my spirit moments ago. Fast and certain and with resolute clarity while I was washing my face. I kept repeating it for fear that I would forget it before finding my pen. It happens sometimes. God impresses his thoughts upon my heart, and I cannot help but give them ample room to grow. To breathe their depth as I take the time to unpack them before God and his Word.

Tonight I unpack them alongside the prophet Jeremiah’s pen as he scripted God’s heart to a people who had lost their way. To God’s dearly beloved, who were instructed to stand at the crossroads and to examine the path before them. Behind them. To the left and to the right of them, and then to ask God for his directional good—those ancient paths that secured safe passage to his place of rest.

His heart.

It would have been easy for them to find their way home if they had been willing to stand at the crossroads. But they weren’t, they didn’t, and consequently, they found themselves on the road toward a restless exile and a formidable captivity. Nothing good and certainly no rest came for those who were adamant to keep walking without pausing at the crossroads.

God’s crossroads, not theirs.

We all come to a crossroads at least once in our lives. Some of us, multiple times. Whether we mean it or not, we are quick to mouth its refrain.

(I’m standing at a crossroads, and I don’t know what to do. Where to turn. What path to take. What wisdom to choose.)

I understand. I’ve said as much even this day. But there is a danger in our paying lip service to our crossroads. As God’s children, dearly loved and carefully protected, when we come to a crossroads in our journey, he asks more of us than simply an approach to the process. He means for us to fully engage with its truth.

To come to the center of the matter. Where beam meets beam. Where horizontal hammers into vertical. Where wood and nails collide. Where faith and flesh intersect to bleed the witness of a sacred juncture.

When we do that … when we stand smack dab in the middle of Christ’s crossroads … it is easy to discern the good and ancient path that will secure us safe passage to God’s rest. When we center our lives at the heart of his willing sacrifice, no matter the direction we turn—whether before or behind, to the left or to the right—we are bathed in the lavish cover of a Father’s love.

We are reminded of just how far he traveled on our behalf so that we, like the ancients of old, could find our way home.

The problem? Many of us never make it that far. We choose the perimeter of the cross because, quite frankly, the center bleeds too red. Too messy and too fully. We deem our standing at the cross with Jesus as enough; but God calls each one of us to something greater.

He asks for us to stand in the crossroads with him.

Then, and only then, will we be able to measure the worth of God’s intended rest and peace for our lives. It’s a peace I want for always. My heart’s desire is to walk the path of the ancients and to rest in God’s good as I go.

Thus, this night I write the conviction of my heart. I am prepared to live its depth so that conviction doesn’t re-visit my lip service with the poke and prod of a Father’s hurt.

Tonight I am willing to walk to Calvary because I feel deeply in need of doing so. In many ways, I seem to be standing at a crossroads. There are decisions to be made. Big ones. Ones that not only involve my future, but ones that also include the future of those whom I love the most.

Rather than stand at the perimeter of the cross, I’m going in. To its center in order to stand where Christ has stood and to receive the cleansing truth of my salvation. I believe that my vision will be clearer there. That wisdom will be more readily available, and that the path of the ancients will present itself so that I might walk in it and receive God’s good and needful rest.

Perhaps, like me, you’re sensing the need to walk your heart toward a deeper point of surrender. Your life is at a crossroads, and the only thing you’re certain of is your uncertainty about what lies ahead. Would you join me on the road as we walk the beams of our Savior’s bloody surrender until we come to the heart of the matter? Would you, this day, be willing to live your convictions all the way into the center of his sacrifice? If so, then may the prayer of my heart belong to you as well…

Father, your cross is serious business. Forgive me for thinking that I can stand at a distance and see clearly the path that you would have me to follow. Thank you for the conviction that leads me into the center of your surrender and that baths me in the truth of your love. Baptize my feeble understanding with your wisdom that bleeds pure and true and full of insight so that I can find my way through the chaos that is pressing in ever so tightly and so certain. Bring me to your crossroads in my many matters, and show me the path of the ancients. Keep me, then, to that secure path until I find my way to your heart and to your good and promised rest for my journey. You are my life’s end. Bring me safely to my perfected conclusion. Amen.

Copyright © January 2009 – Elaine Olsen. All rights reserved.

~elaine

PS: Friends, I ask for your prayers tonight, not just for me but for all who are standing at a crossroads and need the widsom of a standing “in” with Jesus at the helm. If you’re struggling and you need a friend, please feel free to email me your thoughts or leave a request in the comment section. To read an excellent post about conviction, please visit LauraLee for further thought and inspiration. Shalom.

Bethlehem’s Light

Bethlehem’s Light

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” (Isaiah 60:1-3).

We’re here. We’ve arrived. At Bethlehem, and if you’re reading this, you’ve arrived intact and, undoubtedly, with some relief.

Me too.

And of all the greetings I could send your way in the earliest hours of this occasioned day … of all the clever and enchanting ways I could paint this moment with my words, none would suffice to adequately capture the truth of what this pilgrimage has meant and continues to mean to me.

None, except, perhaps this picture.

They say a picture is worth 1000 words. I say this one is worthy of a few more. Not because of its superior quality. It comes close to failure in that department. But rather because of the eternal truth it scripts.

Our Light has come … has entered into our darkness. Not to shatter us into a pile of irretrievable pieces, but to illuminate us with the single truth…

of Bethlehem’s pause.
of creation’s purpose.
of our reason for being given this season of influence in our lives.

Never will our God shine brighter, loom larger, or beam bigger then when he is given the permission to illuminate his heart and love through the likes of you and me. At least not on this side of eternity.

There is coming a day when our faith will be made sight, and our fleshly attempts at being his light will fall prey and bow down to the weight of his inapproachable light. But until then, we are given the inconceivable privilege of housing his grace and his eternal flicker of hope.

We are the keepers of God’s Light. The tenders of a sacred wick that is meant to flame with the heat of a Father’s holy passion. Our failure to understand the depth of such a holy privilege not only leaves us as we are, but also succeeds in leaving others as they are.

In the dark and without hope. Confused and groping for the way home.

When we fail to reason God’s unreasonable as our assigned portion and to allow his living pulse to become our living breath, we live less. We walk smaller and not as God intended. He intends for us to live within and beneath the shadow of his accompanying presence each day and in full and unsuspecting ways. He means for others to see him through us. Thus, our membership in his household called faith and in his kingdom called Christendom.

We live selfish when we shine God’s Light in isolation. We mock Bethlehem and its mangered pause when we neglect to walk the fulfillment of its illumination … when we turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the Matthew 5:14’s and 26:18’s of God’s Holy writ.

Nations have been assigned to God’s Light via our vessels. There are those who will walk home to Jesus because our candles have been the faithful radiance to shine the way. When we bow in holy submission to such Light, we pay high and holy honor to our created purpose. When we walk proud and with little regard to such privilege, we damper God’s illumination.

Does he really need us in order to shine big?

Not really, but his grace allows us the consecrated participation. And when it happens, when our exposure allows Christ his, we experience a fullness that exceeds the solitary whispers of a single flame. We land our lives squarely in the middle of a roaring, Holy Spirit, Jesus-breathing, burning bush kind of revelation. Not the kind that burns to ashes, but rather the type that burns to pure.

To perfection and to a knowing that rests easy with the flaming wick and that concedes the heart to the tending therein.

I don’t know about you, but I want to be the luminary that shines forth our Father’s light. I want to be pure, and I want the joy of seeing others see him because of my privileged participation in the matter. The one God who shines brighter, looms larger, and beams bigger because I’ve allowed him a home in my heart.

Today I will watch young and old come to the manger to receive the gift of Christmas. Together, we will unwrap another year’s worth of spending and doing in short order. But when evening comes, when the bows and paper and plates have been cleared away and my head finds its rest, I pray that my loved ones will have unwrapped more than my meager attempts at love. I pray that they will have seen God in our midst, casting his high and holy shadow through the single flame of my willing heart.

If I can show them Jesus this Christmas, then holy intention has walked its course, and my life has served good purpose.

I pray the same for you, my friends. Holy intention and good purpose lived through you with every package opened, with every smile given, with every difficult relative loved, and with every kindness offered. May God’s Light within you be the flame that lights up your home this Christmas with the warmth and the truth of Bethlehem’s sacred pause.

Arise and shine, for your Light has come.

Merry Christmas, precious friends. From my home to yours. It is my joy and privilege to break bread with you in this season of my life.


As always,

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Loving Deposits

“Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. … Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 3:18, 4:7-8).

I went to the bank to make a deposit this morning. It is a doing I’ve been doing for a long season.

As a child, I would often accompany my father to the bank and watch him make his deposits. They were occasions filled with greetings and laughter and the simple joys that came with growing up in a small town where everyone knew my daddy’s name and offered me, because I was his daughter, the obligatory nod of approval. I always walked out with a lollipop. Most banks still honor the tradition—a small punctuation of thanks for the exchange of trust between client and banker.

I appreciate my bank even as my father appreciated his. And lest you think it was and is all about the transaction of money, bank visits with my father exceeded the customary function of the visit. Deposits were, indeed, the order of the day. Not solely in terms of cash, but more fully in terms of something far greater.


People.

When daddy went to the bank, he did so knowing that there would be on occasion for him to invest his love into the lives of others. In fact, going anywhere with my father yielded such a platform. He’s a people person with a generous heart to match. Watching him love is one of the noblest classrooms that I have attended as a student of the human race. His hugeness of heart for humanity is where mine began. And while his capacity for loving easily eclipses mine, I caught his spirit early on, and it’s been working out its perfection in me ever since.

Loving pure and loving big. The overriding and constant prayer of my heart.

When I examine the outgrowth of the fruit of the Spirit as scripted in Galatians 5:22-26, love stands at the helm. Without it, every other manifestation of the Spirit’s seeding breathes less. And when I walk in understanding of the magnitude of the Gift I’ve been given, I am humbled by the reality that my love often walks lacking.

The Purpose Driven Life has coined the mantra “It’s not about you,” but the purpose driven Elaine usually banks to the contrary. On my best days, there is still an awful lot of me in the mix. Thus, the constant prayer of my heart for the filling up and the spilling forth of God’s immeasurable love, not mine. Left to myself, my love deposits less—impure and small and of little worth in my Father’s kingdom economy.

My words and my pen may voice big, but at the end of the day, have my actions proved accordingly? I don’t want to simply write love, I want to live love … what my friend, California Kristen, would call “being the evidence.” Am I the living and breathing witness of God’s reach to humanity, or am I simply keeping my investments … my deposits … close to the vest? Are my transactions with others limited to the safe and the perfunctory, or do they extend to the deeper level of a heart to heart exchange?

Good questions to ponder this day. Not for condemnation’s sake but for eternity’s.

What we do with God’s love matters. If loving comes naturally to you, if the outgrowth of your inward pulse speaks love, lives love, and unwraps love in lavish measure, then there is something of our God living in you. You may not fully understand where your propensity for loving comes from, but its anchor holds in heaven, gripped by the hands of the Almighty Father who’s always been in the business of making deposits.

For our gain and for his glory.

God is love. He has gifted us with the capacity for knowing his love and for being his love to others. And while it sometimes might be more convenient and less messy to skip the process, as Christians, love is our requirement. No one gets a pass on this exam. Rather, it will be the measure of heaven’s reward.

“God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s.” (1 John 4:17, The Message).

When love “runs the house,” love rules the heart. And a heart ruled by love is a heart that is welcomed by a world in need of its deposit. Be it…

in the bank.
at the check out line.
in the doctor’s office.
at a school program.
in a courtroom.
in a classroom.
in a restaurant.
in our pews.
around our tables.
at the bedside of loved ones.

Wherever our journey leads, love in action is the one investment that seeds eternally. Thus, a doing I’ve been doing for a long season. A bank “deposit” that not only nourishes the flesh, but also tends to the soul as well.

Perhaps this day, in some small or huge way, there is “bank” awaiting your loving deposit. It probably won’t look like mine; no matter. God’s love breathes in all shapes and sizes and dimensions to fit specific needs. Your requirement is simply to come alongside his heart and to complete the process. To put action behind the thought and to “be the evidence” of your Father’s residency within.

It’s the stuff of small town living with a focus toward big kingdom gain. A day in the life of a believer, where laughter and joy abounds because others recognize our heavenly Father by name and give us the obligatory nod as his children. A sacred punctuation for the exchange of trust between man and his Maker. Between me and my God. Thus, I pray…

Help me to love, Father, even as you love. Fill me to overflow, and keep me making deposits accordingly—into the lives of others for their gain and for your increasing glory. You have entrusted me with the gift of your love. Let my actions and my obedience breathe with the witness of such a lavish endowment. And when I am tempted to love less, to invest safer and to the withdrawal therein, remind me of my family bloodlines that trace back to heaven and that require my privileged participation in the matter. Let your love run my house and rule my heart this day. Amen.

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

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To make a “deposit” like I did this morning, please visit Indiana Krisen at “Over the Backyard Fence” for this recipe of pumpkin crisp.Worth the baking, friends. I promise! Shalom.

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