Category Archives: grace

DJ Coles and "Your Grace"

DJ Coles and "Your Grace"

Over the past couple of weeks God has been ministering to my weary soul with the music of DJ Coles. Most of you aren’t familiar with his work. I wasn’t either until early May when DJ was the guest worship leader at our church’s spring revival. DJ serves as the youth pastor and “praise and worship” leader for Sunday worship services at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, which is located in within our community.

From the moment he took the microphone in hand, I was keenly moved by DJ’s giftedness to not only sing, but also to write some incredible music that moves a heart into an immediate posture of worship. I sat and wept through most of his selections. In particular, DJ favored us with many of the songs off of his first full-album release, Your Grace.

 


Your Grace is a collection of songs written for an audience in search of healing, inspiration, and God’s grace. The project is meant to inspire the human spirit beyond what may seem impossible or what may appear unbearable. After an agonizing year of uncertainty and loss, DJ was inspired to write songs that would help others through life’s challenges and triumphs.

From the title track, “Your Grace” to “Good Morning, Lord” to “Only a Prayer Away” and every song in between, you will sense and hear DJ’s desire to persevere and to relate with everyday people. Also peppered within the album you will find what Barry Weeks has called, “Our nation’s next anthem”—referring to DJ’s song, “A Prayer for America” (a personal favorite). You can get a brief listen of it by clicking here. Trust me when I tell you that not one song on this album is wasted. I love every track (how often can you say that?).

How thankful I am to have come across DJ’s ministry in this season of my life. God timed this “sacred intersection” with perfect precision. I couldn’t have appreciated the depth of DJ’s gifting had I not been in this posture of deep need.

Perhaps you understand. Maybe this day your heart is also in deep need of a touch from God—a touch that will penetrate through your pain and your weary in order to soothe the ache within. Your Grace offers that touch, and DJ has offered three copies for me to give away via the blog. One of the copies is reserved for Runner Mom (you all do know that she is making a road trip next week to come and visit with me…); the other two will be given away to those of you who leave a comment on this post.

In addition, if you’d like to order your own copy of Your Grace, you can do so through amazon.com (click here) or at cdbaby.com (click here). Further, if you would like to contact DJ regarding leading a time of worship at your gathering, you can email him at: [email protected] .

I am reminded again today (thanks for the call Joanne), that we all have a story to tell; some of us will write it. Some of us will sing it. Some of us will tell it, but all of us are commissioned with the task of living it! I won’t live it exactly as you do, but by God’s grace, I will walk the rest of my earthly days on purpose and with a heavenly end in mind.

Life is a precious gift. His grace … all the more. Live it like you mean it, friends. As always,

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The Amazing Confrontation of Grace

The Amazing Confrontation of Grace

“On hearing it, many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?’ Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, ‘Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe.’” (John 6:60-64a).

I made a two-year-old cry this morning.

I didn’t mean to make her cry. Singing about the amazing grace of God isn’t supposed to bring one to tears, at least not her kind of tears, but this morning … it did.

Perhaps I sang it too loud. Perhaps too shrill. Perhaps too full of a truth that exceeded the silence of the moment. Regardless of the reasons behind her tears, they came in full measure toward the end of my song, accompanied by her tender proclamation to her grandma, “I don’t like that song.”

It made my heart smile, and then it made my mind think.

The amazing grace of Jesus Christ is a confrontational word. It is meant to stir a response in the hearts of those who sit within earshot of the proclamation. Jesus Christ didn’t go all the way to Calvary and back to keep us paralyzed by its truth. Grace is meant to evoke a response in each one of us.

For some, grace swallows sweet. For some, it’s a longer chew. For others, grace doesn’t swallow … amazing or otherwise. It’s simply too big of a bite for a stomach that is content to gnaw on the stony rations of an uncomplicated understanding.

Just ask them—those “followers” of Christ who were eye-witnesses to the real-time unfolding of grace’s “amazing.” Some would immediately take to its unwrapping. Some would live with it for a season before coming around to acceptance. Some would simply balk at the weight of it and run in the opposite direction. The “them” of Jesus’ day are no different than the “us” of this day.

We like to think that our responses to Jesus would have been different had we been there. That somehow we would have immediately taken to the truth of his living witness. But I don’t think the benefit of a 2000 year hindsight has birthed a better faith in most of us. Why?

Because we have the truth of Christ’s living witness in our midst. He is here among us; he didn’t vanish on a hillside to never be seen again. He’s been presenting himself and his amazing grace to humanity throughout the existence of time. You and I sit on the backside of grace’s redeeming finish; still and yet, its truth isn’t an easy cloaking for many. It is a “hard teaching” in our time, even as it was during its genesis on a Judean soil so long ago.

Does this mean that grace no longer works? That the amazing of John Newton’s 1779 penned reflection lacks in its truthful punctuation about the completed work of the cross? That our many words about the Word have somehow lost their potency … their capacity and strength to transform?

Not at all.

Grace is still amazing. Two thousand years of testing its waters hasn’t diminished its effectiveness. Grace’s truth remains, despite man’s neglect to the contrary. But grace is as grace has always been.

Confrontational.

Thus, some will receive it and some won’t because confrontation pushes the issue of our consent for God’s holy consecration of our lives. Grace stands at the door of a heart and knocks and pleads and invites and offers, but never will it hammer its insistence into the heart of unwillingness. The cross of Jesus Christ will never force its grace into the will of an unbeliever. It only forces a choice in the matter.

Acceptance or rejection. There is no middle ground when it comes to the amazing grace of an amazing God. Hearing his truth requires a response.

As a teenager, I walked my definite response to an altar on a wintry night in Alabama during a youth retreat. In some ways, it was a familiar walk; from my earliest days I have believed in a great big God who loves me beyond reasonable limits. It wouldn’t be the last time I would walk a pilgrimage of surrender. I’m still walking it. I did so today.

Not because I have finally come to the conclusion of what an amazing grace means, but rather because grace and all its amazing is worthy of my bended knee and a heart’s pause that cries out a prayer or two of unashamed thankfulness.

Even when it’s loud. Even when it’s teaching is a hard swallow. Even when it elicits unsuspecting tears. And especially when the fullness of its truth exceeds the worth of a world’s silence to the contrary.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound!
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
[i]

How glad I am for the amazing confrontation of God’s grace with my heart. May I never lose the wonder behind its unwrapping. May I always speak the witness of its truth. I pray the same for you. Thus, I offer my plea this day to the One who created us with grace in mind…

Intersect our hearts, Father, with grace’s amazing witness this week. Fill our mouths with the sweetness of its taste. Loudly knock its truth upon the door of our wills so as to drown out the world’s insistence to the contrary. When it’s hard to understand, when it’s difficult to accept, paint grace for us in a way that swallows easy and that portions fully. May our tears pour the witness of understanding rather than the wet of confusion. Gently wrap our faith in the mystery of Love’s redeeming work and then give us the ample courage to tie the bow accordingly. What we now know in part, we will one day fully grasp. Keep us in revenant anticipation of that final revelation. Amen.

[i] Robert J. Morgan, “Amazing Grace,” Then Sings My Soul (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003), 78-79.

By faith, elaine…

By faith, elaine…

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” (Hebrews 11:1-3).

By faith…

Faith Elaine that is.

Forty-three years ago today. Easter morning. Father standing behind a pulpit preaching about life issuing forth from the tomb. Mother lying in a delivery room earning bragging rights about life issuing forth from her womb. Both having something to say in the matter. Both cradling the blossoms of Spring—a Savior and a longed-for baby.

By faith, both blossoms were received into the lives of two parents who longed for their arrival. One into their hearts; the other into their arms. It was a good day for Chuck and Jane for so many reasons. It was a good beginning for Faith Elaine for so many more.

In both the literal and in the spiritual sense, the cross of Jesus Christ has shadowed my steps for the past forty-three years. Regardless of my wanderings to the contrary, the empty tomb has been my haunting—my known truth and my accepted understanding all the days of my life. There has never been a time when I believed otherwise. Jesus has always been real to me.

My journey with God is a “by faith” kind of thing. A deeply rooted belief in something grander, someone Greater who keeps the ebb and flow of my days in check. Who simply says and IS, and therefore, is worthy of my believing.

There have been moments of clarity along the way. The well-worn paths to the altar of my surrender are stained with tears of deeply rooted repentance and understanding. Times when I have strengthened my faith with a more intentional and willing trust in a God who longs to consecrate my life toward holiness. But from the very beginning, my life has been filled a knowing perception of God.

I’m thankful for that. It’s been a gift that has spared me untold heartaches … of that I am sure. And while I’ve had some questions along the way, never have the answers (some obvious, some still awaiting their voice) swayed me in my belief of an unseen, yet profoundly “felt” God.

God and me … well, we just go together.

And lest you think it is pride thing—that somehow I think I hold the market on what it means to walk a life in complete faith and holiness—then you don’t really know me at all. For if you did, you would understand that it is only by God’s grace, only by this “going together” seemingly from my beginnings, that I’ve made it to my 43rd birthday with any “absolutes” in my bag. If God hadn’t presented Himself to me early on in my life, I’m confident that I wouldn’t be presenting Him to you as the Savior and Keeper of my soul. Why?

Because I love this world too much. I am easily enticed by its trappings. It invites me, tangles me, and has the propensity to hold me to the contrary of everything sacred. I know that we are all prone to our struggles along these lines, but, perhaps, there are those of us who struggle with it more profoundly. I am one such struggler. Accordingly, I’ve needed the grounding of my Easter morning birth.

To walk my life in the shadows of a splintered cross and an empty tomb has been to walk in Truth. It is the way of sacred pilgrimage. It has been my way, much as it has been the way of the ancients of old. The “by faith’s” of Hebrews 11—the Hall of Faith as it pertains to biblical history.

We don’t see ourselves there. Instead, we focus our attention on the names and the corresponding “stories” that are attached to those names: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses’ parents, Moses, the Israelites, Joshua, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets, the martyrs. Indeed, a list of worthy journeys … all marked by faith.

But if we stay mired in their stories, if for some reason we think that their journeys hold the market on faith and that ours could never follow suit, then we’ve missed an important part of Hebrews 11. Before any mention of the well-knowns from our spiritual history, we are there … listed as part of the faithful entourage.

“By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” (Hebrews 11:3).

Did you catch it?

“By faith WE… .”

You and me, listed amongst the heroes of our ancestral faith. Why? Because we believe that our world was created by an unseen God, and that his saying so—his speaking it all into being—is more than enough to solidify our limited understanding into a rock solid faith that is worthy of a mention alongside the ancients of yesterday.

I’ve spent most of my forty-three years living by my middle name… Elaine. I’m good with that, at least in the temporal. But in the spiritual … in the way that my Father sees me on a daily basis? Well, I want to be known by my first name. I want my life to be rooted in a by Faith kind of understanding.

By faith …

Elaine lived, Elaine died, and Elaine rose again to see the fruition of her first name made sight and the fullness of her hope made certain.

It won’t be long in coming, friends. Maybe in this new year of life that I’ve been given. If not, then in a season to come. It matters not to me the day nor the hour. What matters to me is my confidence in its arrival. And by faith, I am believing God to be the sure and final outcome of my intentional and current trust.

I began my earthly life within the confines of a resurrection remembrance—an Easter Sunday morning forty-three years ago this day. I will begin my heavenly life with the same. With a resurrection of a new body in a new place where everyday lives like Easter.

By Faith, Elaine is going to get there. By faith, I pray you’ll get there too.

I love you precious friends. Thank you for sharing this pilgrimage with me. Take some time this weekend to find your name written within God’s Hall of Faith. If you know Jesus as your Savior, then you are there, verse three (write it down). By faith,believe it and receive with all the certainty of an Easter morning’s resurrection. I love you each one. As always,

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PS: Many thanks to my Tuesday night Bible study girls for remembering me! You women have been so faithful to study and to live your God. Keep to it! (note the inscription on the cake…aren’t they awesome?!)

Ultimate Blog Party 2009!

I heard there was a party going on in town.

Not wanting to miss out on the fun, consider this my official RSVP to the largest blogging party of the year. For those of you who are new to my blog, welcome to peace for the journey. For those of you who are regulars, consider yourself invited. Hop over to Five Minutes for Moms to offer your RSVP and join in on the fun.

The only thing that would make this party better would be to have you, my blogging friends, with me at the table, sharing a cup of mocha and surfing the blogosphere alongside one another. Alas, I think I am the lone blogger in my neck of the woods, so I’ll manage the party hat and coffee by myself … sort of.

Blogging for me has never been a solitary undertaking. Instead, it has been an open canvas upon which to paint the words of my heart. And just in case you haven’t heard, my heart belongs exclusively to Jesus. Yes, my heart is also crowded with love for my family and friends, but my God reigns supreme. He holds the title to my “now” and my “next.” Thus, when I take to the pen via a blank computer screen, I cannot help but bring his truth alongside. There is no other worthy boast of these lips than that of Jesus Christ and him crucified.

I could try and pretend otherwise; lighten things up a bit so as not to offend anyone who might be stopping by for a peek. But in doing so, I would denying the essence of peace for the journey. Peace is not a concept and cannot be accomplished via a prescribed measure of steps. No, peace is a person, and his name is Jesus Christ. He has radically and profoundly interrupted my life with his grace and has allowed me his leading companionship for the road ahead.

I am undone with the gift for I am unworthy of such a lavish expression of eternal love. Still and yet, I humbly and gratefully hold out my heart for the receiving. Time and again, because of God’s overflowing love for me and through the life changing work of his presence within me, I endeavor to pen my thanks and his truth via this blog. To hold it as private … to hoard God’s love and his truth in selfish reserve … is to walk in isolation from the gift’s intention—a ministry that was always meant to be shared.

A Gift that was meant to be given away, not hidden away.

Thus, the impetus behind peace for the journey. I give it to you, my readers, as the best offering that this heart will ever make. I don’t always get it right; I am fragile and yet young in my understanding of all things eternal. Still and yet, my heart is in the right place, and my deepest desire is for my words to bless and honor the one true Word—Jesus Christ.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. … The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1, 14).

He’s the one Word who has made all the difference to me as I pilgrim this earthly sod. Because of Jesus and his sacrificial surrender on the cross over 2000 years ago, I understand that this journey—these days of weary walking and a sometimes difficult hard—is but a passing through to my forever. In a time when things around me seem uncertain, I cling to the certainty of my God.

He’s real. He’s alive, and his Peace is available for the journey. Yours and mine.

May you always find Him here … through my words and in my life. You are welcome at this table anytime, and I consider it a privilege to walk the road with you, my friend. As always,

~elaine

I’d love to hear from you! Please leave a comment to receive the chance of a $15 Starbuck’s gift card. My prize isn’t officially registered on the UBP 2009, so I will be doing my own drawing at the end of the week from the comments on this particular post. Make sure and check out all the fine prizes over at the UBP 2009! Shalom.

If I am chosen as a winner by the UBP, my top three choices are:

#19 — $50 Target gift card from Shoot Me Now; #21– $50 Target gift card from Agoosa; #22– $50 Target gift card from Beginner Baby Blog.

If not chosen for these, I would also like #68 ($30 gift card from CBD), #91 ($25 Target gift card), and #123 ($20 Kohl’s gift card).

Good Soil

For Joy… may you find some good soil with our good God this day.

“Then he told them many things in parables, saying: ‘A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears, let him hear.’” (Matthew 13:3-9).

 

 He who has ears, let him hear.

I’ve been listening to this passage of scripture for several months now. An intentional haunt of sorts, both on my end and on God’s. A hearing so intense that I cannot shake its echo. Let me tell you what my heart has been hearing as I read.

“Good soil.”

Not the well-trampled soil, nor the rocky or the thorny soil, but rather, the good soil.

What qualifies one more than the other? What makes the earth beneath the sower’s seed more viable for the growth over the others? How do we define our lives accordingly … within the sacred ground of the good rather than in the contemptibleness of the others?

Why not the less desired? After all, our lives are mired in the well-trampled and the rocky. Why not some growth in the common place of our common walk rather than in the pasture lands of a lush and green that often seem too far out of reach and too far beyond reason? Why not in the thorny and in the loosened earth that cradles our weary feet?

Good questions. Ones that I have thought a great deal about in recent days. And here’s what I think as it pertains to the seeding of God’s Word into the good soil of our hearts over the seeding of it elsewhere.

Good soil is the preferred breeding ground for God’s best because good soil is the most receptive to its growth.

Good. Kalos in the Greek meaning “good, honorable, beautiful, sound. Good as to quality and character.”[i]

If God’s Word, which is the seed, is to stick and to know the bounty of a fruitful harvest, then it is worthy of an honorable and beautiful soil. A soil of sound and quality character that willingly and carefully guards the sacred planting with all intentions of seeing it come to full bloom.

Good soil is meant for Godly living, but good soil is not always an easy find.

Why?

Because to get to the good one has got to be willing to walk through the others. Good is hidden. Good is deep. Good is buried and is contrary to human nature. But make no mistake, good is there. It just takes getting through a few layers to unearth the soil that was meant to seed the good of God’s intention.

The heart.

A difficult find most days because on most days, the well-trampled and rocky and thorny is the common pounding beneath our feet. Even today, many of you are walking the ills of such a path. Perhaps, you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed by the trampling over and upon your lives through the feet of others who claim territorial rights that were never theirs to claim. Perhaps the rocks are the pebbled annoyance that is, not only impeding your progress but is, also, wounding your feet with the jagged rough and cut of sharp intention. Maybe the thorn’s prick against the tender of your moment bleeds too deeply … too suffocating … too fully so as to cut the life out of your faith.

And while our God is more than willing to sow his Word into those moments of our lives, he understands that in those times of difficult pilgrimage, his seed is likely to fall prey to the demands of the immediate, rather than taking root toward the eternal.

Thus, he waits for our rest in the good soil. He commits his time and his energy to the lush and the fertile green and asks for us to pilgrim through the less in order to arrive at his best—the ideal location for a beautiful and honorable planting.

In these moments of uninterrupted pasture, our Father opens up the treasures and secrets of the kingdom and generously pours their seeds into the furrows and gullies of our freshly tilled hearts. Without the well-trampled—the rocks and the thorns—to impede their roots, God’s secrets grow a beautiful crop.

A hundred fold. A sixty fold. A thirty fold. A good output based on a good input by a good God who makes our hearts into a good soil for a good Word. This is the way of a good and gracious life that lives to the full and that pours to the overflow.

I don’t know about you, but I am more than ready and willing to pilgrim the well-trampled, through the rocky and between the thorns, to get to the lush and green of a sacred planting.

Good soil, friends. God’s best. He who has ears, let him hear. Thus, I pray…

Keep me listening to the truth of your Word, God. Plug my ears to the insistent pleas of my temporary and unplug them accordingly to receive the seeds of your truth. Let me not forsake the journey to the verdant for the choking of the urgent. I long to rest in the pasture of your deep and hidden because I long to know the sacred seeding of a divine kingdom. Thank you for the privilege of knowing you, Father. You are good. You are God. Amen.

[i] Entry for “kalos,” The NIV Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible (Chattanooga: AMG Publishing, 1996), 1637.

Copyright © March 2009 – Elaine Olsen

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