christian perfection | Elaine Olsen

A Turn Toward the Better

September 9, 2008

Congrats to Joan (#13) at More God = Less Me for winning Chris Tomlin’s new CD (please email me your snail mail, so I can get it to you ASAP). Today, we pause in our study of “Setting the Table for Communion.” There is greater thought that pulses in my heart today and requires my attention. It’s a hard teaching, especially when our hearts cry out for an easy road…a quick fix to the problems of our lives. If that is what you’re after, you won’t find it here. Instead, you will walk my heart’s strain as I seek to make sense of all of the nonsense that crowds and confronts my current. If I can’t live as authentic before you and before God, then why bother? That being said, let’s get to the doing and to the digging in hopes of hearing Him somewhere within the penned thoughts, breathing his truth as only he can.

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“Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the LORD showed him the whole land … Then the LORD said to him, ‘This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, “I will give it to your descendants.” I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.’ And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said.” (Deuteronomy 34:1, 4-5).

Life hasn’t turned out the way that I thought it would.

I thought it would turn toward all things lovely. Instead, it turned differently. Sometimes lovely. Sometimes in stark contrast, but never quite in the direction that I thought it would. I feel the profundity of it today, as I lie upon my prayer quilt and hammer out my thoughts with God.

He understands. We’ve been here before. Perhaps, he too, shares in my disappointment. Not because his love for me breathes less as a result of my sin, but simply because he knows that my life could have lived differently. A better different, but it hasn’t. And this has been his surrendered gift to me.

A gift that allows a life to walk within the parameters of a freely chosen will. Mine, not his.

I’ve taken God up on his offer many times. Too many to count. Too awfully painful to chronicle in this moment. I don’t tell you this to warrant your sympathy. I simply offer it to you as my explanation for a life that currently lives differently than how I imagined it would live all those many years ago—when life walked young and free and full of ideals that had room to breathe and with the ample innocence to fuel their imagining.

That was then. This is now. And the life lived between innocence’s conception and innocence’s death was a vast territory of wild and reckless exploration that weeps its remembrance this day.

There are portions of the Promised Land that I will never walk on this side of eternity. Not because my Father doesn’t delight in giving me his grace-filled abundance, but rather because my sin has kept me from it. Forty-two years worth of living have authored some seasons of regrets—times in life that have been lost to the indulgence of fleshly appetites over the reasoned pursuit of holiness.

I understand this. I accept it. I know and live the ramifications of my choices everyday. This doesn’t mean that life breathes a pitiful existence for me; it would be a quick leap to live within that conclusion. No, what it means is that life simply walks different and with a full awareness that some of the dreams birthed on the front end of my existence will only find their completed rest on the backside of eternity.

Not here. Not yet, but in the Promised Land that lies just beyond these years of my desert pilgrimage.

Moses walked the territory between a promise given and its final fruition. He would never taste the milk and honey of a God-given dream, much less walk upon its soil. He would only witness it from a distance. From atop a mountain where God would open up his eyes to the wild imaginings of sacred possibility. Moses didn’t come to the mountain with the hope of God changing his mind in the matter. He’d walked with his Father long enough to reason better.

No, when Moses made the climb up Mt. Nebo that day, he did so knowing that death awaited his arrival. Moses came to the mountain to die. To witness with his eyes a final taste of earth’s best and then to witness through life’s surrender his first taste of eternity’s forever—a lasting best that far exceeds any lovely we could walk on this side of heaven.

Indeed, Moses’ life hadn’t turned out the way that he thought it would. His sin kept him from walking God’s perfect and best will. But his finish?

Well, it turned out better than he could have ever imagined. It turned out perfect and lovely and full of the wild imaginings that had followed him since his youth.

The Promised Land…forever beneath his feet.

It is the same for us, even if life isn’t walking the way that we thought that it would. There is coming a better day when all of this will be left behind and traded in for something far more wonderful than our minds and hearts can currently conceive.

If you don’t believe this—if for some reason you’re convinced that your “current” is as good as it gets and that it will breathe as similar in your “next”—then can I be so bold as to suggest that you’ve cast your faith with the wrong King?

This isn’t it, oh sleepy pilgrim. What you and I are living today isn’t the final word on our forever. This life isn’t perfectly lovely, and it certainly isn’t God’s final best. If I believed this, I would walk away in an instant and pay homage to the closest golden calf, because, quite frankly, this faith walk has been hard fought and painfully lived and deserves a final promise that exceeds my mind’s capacity for imagining.

If I could take hold of everything that God intends for me in my now, if I could capture the true pulse of a perfected good within my heart and on this side of eternity, then I’m pretty sure I would stop trying to get there. My pressing on would walk in vain. If this is as good as it gets, then I’m done because life has not turned in the direction that I thought it would.

But it will, even as it did for Moses.

One day soon, because my faith exceeds my flesh, and for all of the sins that have kept me from the fullness of God’s best in my “now,” there is none so great that will keep me from God’s best in my next.

My Promised Land—where milk and honey will be my portion and where God’s lovely will be my perfected end.

That, my friends, is what I’m after. That is the day that I am longing for, for me and for you. And until we make our final climb of surrender, may God grant us all the strength and the wisdom to walk with intention and with the promise of forever pulsing in our veins.

As always,

~elaine

A Morning’s Glory

August 19, 2008

“Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. (Hebrews 12:10).

This morning, I almost didn’t do what I needed to do.

Almost.

But I didn’t. Instead, I did what I needed to do and in doing so, I got a taste of some morning glory!

I ran, and I am the better because of it.

I made the choice to partake in a discipline that’s been following me for over twenty years. Most days, I hate the doing. It is a dread that wears hard and heavy on my will. Discipline is like that. It rarely feels good at the time, but in the end, it usually works toward my good. And while my outward doesn’t necessarily mirror the fruits of my hard laboring, my inward boasts the beauty of my commitment.

Heart health.

As it is with the temporal, so it is with my eternal.

I’ve got a heart that needs strengthening and a faith that needs walking. It’s what I need to do, and on most days, it’s what I want to do. But there are those occasions when my faith walk seems better left untouched. Unchallenged and untamed by life’s daily because, quite frankly, life’s daily wears hard and heavy upon my stubborn will.

No matter. Long ago, I made the decision to reposition my will behind God’s. In doing so, I signed up for a life that chooses best interest over preferred interest. And as much as I am prone to the latter, it is the former that keeps me on the road toward heart health.

When the health of the heart takes precedence over the emotions of the heart, God is faithful to honor such obedience with a measure of maturing that cannot be attained otherwise. We may not see it, feel it, touch it or taste it in the immediate, but down the road, it will be our strengthened portion when we most need the power of its witness.

A walking faith is a difficult faith. It means that we surrender how we think it ought to breathe and, instead, receive the deep breath of the Holy Spirit who abides our steps, no matter how sharp and hard the path. It means drinking Him in, even when our preference leads our lust toward the ladle of another well. It means keeping to the Word and believing in its effectual and accomplishing power even when the script reads as seemingly void of purpose.

It means getting up, day in and evening out, and living the truth of who we are as children of the Most High God, even when our preferred inclination leans toward the snooze button.

Fully living our sacred adoption is our good and gracious requirement if we are ever to share in his holiness and to reach our perfected end. This is the overriding truth that keeps me on the path, friends. Not my emotions or my feelings. They’ve run the show for most of my life and almost always run counterproductive within God’s agenda for me.

Thus, I am learning to deny them their unhealthy portion of influence. Instead, I am filling my life with the discipline of Jesus. Yes, that’s what I wrote. Discipline. As Eugene Peterson would say, “a long obedience in the same direction.” It doesn’t sound too exciting, does it? In fact, to most it sounds rather boring and walks even more laborious. But there again, it matters not how it sounds or feels. What matters is the choice to embrace the journey.

I am finding that with such a decision comes some of the most fantastic growth I have ever known as a Christian. Why?

Because choices that seed on behalf of the heart always yield long term benefits—a lasting harvest of peace and righteousness that will carry this soul to its perfected end.

This is what I’m after. This is why I will keep to the road…to the run, even when my preference leans toward the snooze. Jesus Christ is the great finisher and completer of my faith journey; thus, I will keep repositioning my will behind his until he brings me home to my forever.

I don’t know how this strikes you today. Many of you are weary. Many of you are in the middle of making some hard decisions, perhaps even living the effects of some bad ones. Some of you stand at the edge of a road, wondering if the walk ahead is worth the process. Some of you stand at the end of a road, looking back with regrets and wishing the opportunity for a do-over. A blessed few are skipping along with the pure contentment of trusting in Jesus for the unseen. A gracious many, unfortunately, are hitting the snooze button one more time in hopes of waking up to a better day.

No matter. What does matter, however, is what we choose to do with our now. What will be the next step in our journeys toward heart health? Our steps matter, and together, we can do this thing. We can walk home to Jesus with a measure of sure victory because we are his chosen dwelling. Rarely will it breathe easy, but always will it breathe with the hope of heaven.

“Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the grace of God…” (Hebrews 12:12-15a).

or the magnificent glory of a morning run! See to it, friends, see to it. And thus I pray…

Keep us to the path of our long obedience, Lord, which leads in only one direction—home to you. Strengthen our frames to do that which our souls need to do, rather than what our emotions cry out to do. Show us the beauty and lavish expression of your heart, so that we in turn will chose to tend to ours. And when all seems too hard and too costly, fill our frames with the wind of your Spirit who breathes sacred perspective over all our “seeming” until our seeming fades beneath the truth of our becoming. Thank you, Father, for your good discipline that is leading me on to my completion. And while it sometimes hurts and requires a hard humbling, I know you mean it for my holy. Thus, I gladly yield to your staff and to your rod this day. Amen.

Saturday Stress

August 3, 2008

“… let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

Saturday stress. My portion. How about you?

What do…

paying bills,
school shopping,

hosting a birthday party,

staring at a non-functioning blog (thanks sitemeter),

and working on an upcoming Vacation Bible School have in common?

Absolutely nothing from a worldly perspective. But add God into the mix, and the thread weaves clearer.

Temporal things.

I’ve got them. You’ve got them. We are all living and breathing them until we’ve nearly choked to death from their stranglehold.

We have got some pitchin’ and some throwin’ to do if we’re going to press into God’s eternal. There’s a real danger in holding tightly to “things” that were never meant to last. Good things, perhaps. Necessary things, but in the end, things that won’t follow us to our forever.

God knew we would struggle with kingdom focus. That is why he gave us the witness of his Spirit and the power of his Word. Let me stray one day from his presence, and I can almost guarantee a mired perspective. Martha is alive and well in my house this night and looking a great deal like the woman I see in the mirror. Mary? Well, she’s here too. At least her heart is, but her sitting and her seeking have fallen prey to the urgent and the immediate. She doesn’t mean to hide. She simply has succumbed to the pressing necessary.

It is hard to be a Mary in a Martha necessary. Wouldn’t you agree? I was born a Mary, but there are times when I must embrace my Martha and walk my required portion of essential living.

And therein lies the rub.

Essential versus non-essential. Who decides?

Hebrews 12 gives us the answer. The “who” is Jesus. He authored our beginning. He will punctuate our ending, and the life lived between the two chronicles the journey of our perfected faith. Rarely does it read pretty, but always should it read him. He is the essential and should remain our focus despite our propensity for either a Mary seeking or a Martha doing. Everything else is just filler.

My filler has been full to overflow today. As I look over my list of “doing” I don’t think that God is displeased with my choices. I simply believe that he wishes for a little more of my heart in the midst of those choices. To take time…

*to thank him for the provision to pay my bills and to do my children’s school shopping.
*to slow down long enough to enjoy the candles and the cake and the beautiful daughter who was fashioned by his hands in my womb over six years ago.
*to realize that “sitemeter” and “blogging” is sometimes less about him and more about me tracking my ego.
*to relish another VBS occasion when the greatest story on earth and in heaven will take to the stage via my words and my actions.

We will never completely resolve our temporal with our eternal. Not on this side of heaven. There will be a constant tug between our casting off and our pressing on. Between our Martha and our Mary. Between our immediate necessary and our eternal necessary. It is the way of our fleshly now.

But there is coming a then. A joy that exceeds the stress of a Saturday and replaces the chaos of our current. Even as it was set before Jesus, it sits before us…behind us…all around us.

Eternity. The essential, urgent, and necessary pulse of our Father’s heart. One beat after another in perfect cadence with the Creator’s plan.

He is worth our pitchin’ and throwin’ tonight. He is worthy of our run, so let us lace up our shoes, fix our focus, and keep to the path that will lead us home…straight into the arms of the One who authors the perfect ending to a less than perfect journey. I’m so glad he’s the one holding the pen, for he is the only one who can bring peace to my journey, and so I pray…

Write my story, Father, with kingdom perspective. Let not my essential drown out my eternal. Strengthen my frame for the road head. Give me a mind to choose wisely, the feet to run swiftly, and the heart to seek fully the truth and joy set before me. And when I am tempted to mire my focus in the temporal, shatter my vision with the reality of my forever. Help me to let go so that I can take hold. Simply let go and completely take hold. You are the grip of my heart tonight. Amen.

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A Sacred Replacement

June 19, 2008

“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” (Romans 12:9).

What do you do with evil?

What do you do with a story that breathes so heinous that it rocks you to core and forces you to utter words of vengeful wrath and retribution?

What do you do with a God who allows a thirteen year-old boy to die at the hands of his parents because they deemed him punishable—worthy of being tied to a tree for nearly two days in sweltering temperatures until he breathed his last? Until his wounds could no longer bleed. Until his cries for help could no longer be voiced. Until his weary soul finally succumbed to a death that, more than likely, was a welcome relief for this one who had suffered so long at the hands of those who were supposed to cradle and shape him for adulthood.

What do you do with this kind of evil?

I tell you what I did. I cried my soul dry. I got right down on my bedroom floor and pounded my fists, all the while asking my God some hard questions. I asked him why. I asked him about the possible good in the matter. I asked him for vengeance—for a tree tying to be the consequence for two adults who should have loved better. For retribution to be swift and to be hard. For a full measure of remorseful realization to become their portion. For their sleepless nights and for their tortured remembrances.

I am mad, and I don’t know what to do with these feelings. I am frustrated by them because there is little I can do to change the situation. No amount of my wishing and imagining can paint the scene as pretty. This simply is the ugly side of living, and it seems huge and uncontrollable and too big for my management. I have come to my brick wall in the matter, when turning to the right or the left yields a similar outcome—overwhelming sadness.

Neat and tidy living. That is what I’m after. Peace and love and joy and promise. A people created in God’s image through whom God’s image is easily detected. A people who get it right and who walk in the light and truth of Jesus Christ. Not a people who are hard to love and who are seemingly devoid of anything sacred.

When evil roams and rears its ugly swath of color, my dissonance finds its voice. I don’t like these challenges to my faith…to the truth that embodies a good God, despite the evil that persists. Still and yet, evil does persist, and I am forced to grapple with its insistence. God is OK with my questions and my frustrations, but if I am to grow in my perfection toward him, then I must come to some conclusions in the matter. I must move closer in my understanding of how to deal with evil’s prevalent presence.

And just last night, after my pounding and weeping and anger found their rest, I opened up God’s Word to the bookmarked section that would serve as my daily reading. Romans, chapter twelve.

God’s Word is an accomplishing Word. I choose to live the truth of Isaiah 55:10-11. No matter my frame of mind…no matter the circumstances that surround my current, I have learned to go to Scripture in my everyday. I may not always understand what I read or how it applies to my life, but I believe in the power of its effectual work. Last night stood as a relevant witness to this truth, especially as it pertained to my anger and to this world’s proclivity toward evil. In particular, the last verse of Romans 12.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

What am I to do with evil?

I am to overcome it with its contrast—with God’s good.

This is what my Father is calling me to do with the anger that persists in my heart and with the evil that insists its voice within this world.

To overcome evil’s ill effects…to conquer and to carry off the victory in behalf of my King…I must sow goodness into the soil that boasts my current. Period. That’s it. This is what I can do to soothe the ache of the story that has rocked me to the core. And while I wasn’t able to untie the hands of an innocent child prior to his death, I can, in part, untie the hands of evil by putting my hands to the task of planting God’s good seed while I am yet alive.

Of doing some good things today and tomorrow that will supplant the enemy’s intention for evil with God’s truthful intention for all things good.

Thus, I planted a little good this day.

I prayed some prayers on behalf of innocent children everywhere and asked God for his timely return to earth so that others would be spared the anguish of a tree-tying.

I baked some brownies for a summer feeding program that our church sponsors on Wednesday evenings.

I wrote some notes of thanks that needed writing.

I bought a book that needed sending.

I played a game that needed playing.

And in the midst of all my sowing, a friend came by to tender a little goodness in my direction.

Thanks, Beverly, for a Farmer’s Market treasure!!!

Yes, I think that God is onto something, for my day is coming to an end and somewhere within the course of my planting, my anger has subsided and the enemy’s got a portion of his due. Do my simple acts of goodness replace the heinous sins committed against the innocent? Absolutely not. But they do soothe the ache of my soul and lead me closer to a grasping of a sincere and sacred love for humanity.

I hate evil. Therefore, I will cling to God’s good. And for some reason that I cannot begin to understand, my Father allows me the privilege of diffusing evil’s grip through the sowing of his sacred seed via this flesh. I want to do my part, and so I pray…

Use my heart and my hands to plant your good, Father. Make me mindful of all the ways to sow accordingly. Let me not grow weary in the doing, for in time, you’ve promised a harvest of untold measure. Protect us from evil, Lord. Protect the innocent from the schemes of the enemy. And when the hurt grows too painful to bear, remind me that evil is not my end. You are my end, Father, and you hold the final word in the matter. And thus, my hearts says, come quickly, Lord Jesus, and speak you final peace. Amen.

In regards to buying that book that needed sending, I decided to sow some good on your behalf. I numbered the comments from my “Raising Faith” six-part series, and drew a number out. #49 is the winner of my newest read, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. Connie over at Littlerad is #49. Congratulations Connie! I can’t tell you how much I cherish this man’s poetic embrace of his terminal illness. Please send me your snail mail via my e-mail on the side bar, and I’ll get you your book ASAP!

Also, I am headed to She Speaks/She Writes this weekend in Charlotte, so I will be absent for a few days. My family is on vacation next week, and I will try and post from the road. Be blessed in all your doings this weekend. Sow some goodness for God’s sake and for evil’s defeat. Shalom!

a gracious Much

April 16, 2008

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus… .” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

What did your prayers sound like this morning? Here’s a glimpse into mine.

I prayed for a life that boasts…

The boldness of Peter. The reasoning and eloquence of Paul. The wisdom of Solomon. The spirit of Elijah.

A prayer simply spoken from a heart that believes in the sure probability of its fulfillment. A prayer deeply spoken in reverence for those who have gone before and finished the race marked out for them. A prayer confidently spoken to the one God who hears and who is faithful to respond.

I didn’t ask for minimal. I asked for much. And the God who created me for his glory has always been about my much. For within his blessing of my much, he stands to receive some glory…some praise…some of his much returned back on him as the Author of such a sacred plenty.

If God is willing to give much, then I bow ready to ask and to receive.

There are some saints of old…sixty-six books worth of saints…that compass my prayers. The lives that they lived were meant for our examination–for our strengthening and for the fortification of the lives that now cloak our flesh and frame our steps. Their much was, indeed, a healthy portion of their Father’s gifting. Without such abundance, it is unlikely that their stories would have found their home on the pages of holy writ.

God scripted each of their stories into his Word, not as an example of an unattainable life, but rather as a true measure of what he intends to give all of his children—the much that is available to each one of us. You and me…as we come to the table of his grace to receive our portion of such promise.

There are days when I have prayed for the patience of Job. For the courage of David. For the love of John and for the dedication of Dr. Luke. Seasons when I have asked for the faith of Abraham. For the trust of Hannah. For the strength of Mary.

Prayers I have voiced for the…

the commitment of Ruth.
the expectation of Zaccheus.
the surprise of the shepherds.
the tenacious drive of the wisemen.
the acceptance of Joseph.
the willing surrender of the boy with loaves and fishes.
the __________________________________.

Each saint in Scripture authors a sacred characterization that is worthy of our pause. Their much is meant for our now, for they are the great cloud of witnesses that hover around us in whispered tones to remind us that while our race is not yet finished, our race can be finished well. Finished with much from the same Almighty God who crowned each of their steps and walked them home to their forever.

I don’t want to finish this life with minimal expectation and mediocre existence. I want to run my race in abundance. I want to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus has taken hold of me, and a minimal grasp will never accomplish such a maximum finish.

And, my friends…I am after big. Much. Far much more than what I am due, for what I am due is hell. What I have been given is life. Abundant and overflowing…brimming with the sure probability of a saint’s existence—my very own chapter scripted within the annals of faith that boasts a story and a characterization that stands worthy of a Father’s pause.

Thus, I pray boldly this day for a portion of Peter’s boldness. For a voice that boasts some of Paul’s eloquence. For a mind and heart that thinks with Solomon’s wisdom, and for a life that exudes the fragrance of Elijah’s spirit.

They are mine for the asking because it is to my Father’s great glory and good pleasure to bestow my feeble flesh with such an anointing. He, too, wants me to finish well and to find my place amongst the cloud that houses the saints of old. He wants the same for you.

And so, I ask you again. What did your morning prayers sound like? How about the prayers of your right now? Are you praying for the minimum or for the much of God? Who amongst the great cloud of the saints stands as a witness to your greatest, current need? What portion of his or her much is your needed requirement for this day…for this running and for this finishing of your race?

I welcome you to add your prayers to mine by posting them in the comment section below. Be specific with your needs. Your Father wants to bless you with the same measure of abundance that he bestowed upon his saints in Scripture. Your need is specific, and our God is specifically concerned for that need. May we all walk in the bounty that is promised us because of his love that reaches beyond the reasonable and that extends further than the outer edges of our understanding. And so I pray…

Give us this day, Father, what we need to flourish…to live in the “much” that is promised us through the power of you Word and the presence of your Spirit. Remind us of the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds our every step and that beckons our participation in the race that will count for all eternity. Let us throw off everything that entangles…everything that minimizes the maximum that you long to accomplish through us. Forgive us when we limit your abundance. Keep our feet to the fire. Keep our hearts to the sacred journey, and keep our wills to the conformity of your will. Now and forever, until we cross our finish line and join the saints of old in the cloud above. Amen.

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