pilgrimage | Elaine Olsen

A Quick Word from the Bench…

February 26, 2009

“When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we’ve worked hard al night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.’” (Luke 5:4-5).

I just returned from our church’s Ash Wednesday service. My husband used this passage from the Gospel of Luke as the scripture focus for his brief, albeit powerful meditation. And while I didn’t intend to come “off the bench” this week with my words and my sweat accordingly, I must at least come into the midst of our huddle and offer you a thought—a word that struck me profoundly and pointedly at the moment of its hearing.

Could it be enough to simply obey the voice of the Master because he “says so?” Could his “say so” be as much as we’ll ever need to warrant our “because you said so” in all our many matters? Whether it be…

To cast our nets into deep waters because he says so.
To anchor our boats in the harbor and to follow because he says so.
To walk a top the raging seas because he says so.
To be prepared in season and out with an answer because he says so.
To feed the 5000 because he says so.
To embrace the least of these because he says so.
To carry our cross because he says so.
To feed his sheep because he says so.
To wash feet because he says so.
To love because he says so.
To pray about everything because he says so.
To go into all the world because he says so.
To _______________________ simply and profoundly because he says so.

Isn’t his “saying so” a worthy enough word to necessitate our awe and our immediate obedience?

It should be.

God’s words via his Word are life and breath and the stuff of eternal and lasting significance. And if for some reason in this season of beginning pilgrimage to the cross where God made good on his word once and for all, if you’re choosing the words of man over the words of God, then you have chosen less. You’ve obeyed the cravings of your sinful flesh, and your life and heart will be found wanting at the end of the day.

At the end of this life.

You will walk to the grave missing out on the deepest catch of your sacred and intended purpose, and you will forsake the overflowing grace of God’s intended sacrifice that was always meant for your keeping. And to miss that, friends, all because his “saying so” isn’t good enough to yield our “doing so,” is to miss everything.

Let it not be so my fellow pilgrims. Instead, let us willingly concede our wills, our wants and our words, to the One whose word never fails, is always true, and is guaranteed to lead us home into safe harbor where the unseen faith and trust of our “now” gives way to the sights and the splendor of our “next.”

It’s enough for me; I pray it enough for you.

Thanks for the huddle time, my good and kind readers. May God be with each one of you as you take up your cross this Lenten season and carry it all the way to Calvary. He is so worthy of the climb. As always,

Sought After

February 17, 2009

“You will be a crown of splendor in the LORD’s hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God. No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the LORD will take delight in you, and your land will be married. (Isaiah 62:3-4).

High school and I were an awkward fit. In fact, I hated most every minute of the three years that I spent walking its hallways and trying my best to make sense of the nonsense. I wasn’t popular. I wasn’t stunning. I wasn’t a cheerleader. I wasn’t asked out on dates. In fact, to me it seemed as if I wasn’t much of anything, except…

forgotten … deserted.

The friends of my younger days had long since traded me in for a newer model, and my teachers? Well, there were a few who noticed my worth, but a majority of them never even knew my name. Thus, it was no surprise to me that when I graduated a year early, it came and went with little fanfare.

For me, my high school years were a detrimental season of living—shaping years that, unfortunately, left my already fragile self-esteem in further ruin. Accordingly, I couldn’t wait to break free.

Starting college at seventeen was a good decision. I chose to attend a school in my hometown, and from the moment that my feet hit the campus of Asbury College, I knew that my heart had finally found its home.

College was the fertile soil of my becoming—of my beginning to break free from the chains that had followed me down those painful hallways of high school. I fit, and for the first time in my life, I began to see myself as someone more than the scared little girl who had always felt deserted.

I had friends and dates and professors who, not only called me by name, but who also came to expect my leadership in the classroom. After a first semester of academic adjustment, my grades soared toward excellence and landed me with honors by the time graduation rolled around. In addition to my cherished diploma, I had an engagement ring on my finger.

I was on my way to becoming a preacher’s wife and an elementary school teacher in short order. No more painful high school hallways for me. Being deserted was no longer my issue … at least not for a season. But as all issues go, unless dealt with by the illuminating and healing presence of God’s love, they tend to resurface at unsuspecting times.

Mine would reappear on occasion and became more frequent as my marriage began to unravel. After seven years of being a wife and a mother to two young sons, my feelings of worthlessness barked their insistence over my soul, and I found myself, once again, returning to the familiar hallways of my adolescence.

It would take a long season of painful recollection and deliberate intention to free me from my feelings of being forgotten. Thankfully at age forty-two, I’m finally getting close.

(ages 17, 21, 42)

God in his mercy and through his far-reaching love has kept me on the path of recovery and rediscovery. My identity is no longer shaped by the hallways of my youth or by the divorce that forced me to grapple with my worthiness as it pertains to God and his kingdom agenda. Today I walk in the grace that was mandated for me long before my sin required its covering.

Accordingly, I know longer feel deserted; my Father and the cross of his Son made sure of that.

“The LORD has made a proclamation to the ends of the earth; ‘Say to the Daughter of Zion, “See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.”’ They will be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the LORD; and you will be called Sought After, the City No Longer Deserted.” (Isaiah 62:11-12).

Today, I walk in the freedom of a new name. Many still know me as elaine. But my Father? Well, he knows me by a few others.

*Sought After.
*City No Longer Deserted.
*Hephzibah meaning “my delight.”
*Beulah meaning “married.”

Not a bad trade for the deserted and desolate of my youth?

I don’t know how this strikes you today. I’m not even quite sure as to the reason for the penning of my words. But I have a thought that, perhaps, there is someone out there who needs the truth of a new name this night. Maybe the hallways of your adolescence … maybe even those of your most recent … are plaguing your thoughts with feelings of being forgotten, unloved and unnecessary. I understand.

I’m not so far along in my faith journey that I don’t occasionally revisit those names. The enemy would like nothing more than to keep us trapped in the lie of such an identification. But the truth is…

Our Jesus didn’t go all the way to hell and back to leave us as we are. Instead, He made the journey in order to bring us home as his bride. We are the sought after delight of our God. Never forgotten. Never deserted. Never unloved and never unnecessary. And that, sweet friends, has always been and will continue to be the most sacred and deliberate intention of our Father’s heart—

to be the Lover of ours.

Won’t you allow him his turn to bathe you in the truth of what you’ve always meant to him? He is so worthy of your pause. Mine, too. Thus I pray…

Show me, Father, your love. Teach me what it means to be your bride … your delight … your sought after and prized possession. My youthful shapings and my adult rebellions have kept me from knowing the full depth of my identity in You. Replace the sting of feeling deserted with the truth of your deliberate pursuit of my heart. Thank you for holding onto my fragile estate all of these years and for continuing to remind me of my sacred worth in You. And when I am tempted to revisit those hallways of my long ago and faraway, turn my thoughts toward my “soon to be” and my “ever so close.” I love you, Father. Thank you for taking me as your bride. Amen.

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Running our Sacred Intersections

February 7, 2009

“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” (Philippians 3:12-24).

A sacred intersection.

There’s been one this week.

Between your brokenness and mine.

And while I didn’t plan on it, I’m not surprised by it. Why? Because brokenness yields brokenness. Whatever we’re speaking about, teaching about, walking and talking about, we do so hoping that someone else will resonate with our words. Otherwise, that’s all they will ever be. Words … void of purpose and with the hopeless float of nothingness. But when our words are spoken from a pure place—a place that harbors and collects the truest truths of our journeys—then they breathe with a clarity that strikes a chord in others who are walking a similar path.

That’s what I was after when I shared with you the prompting that had been swirling around my heart for the past couple of weeks. As I approached my blogging anniversary, I had a thought that, perhaps, God was calling me to share the story of my “letting go” of my childhood home, my prodigal years, and my father’s reaching love therein.

There was very little planning that went into my re-telling of that event. I just grabbed Billy and the flip ultra and told him that we needed to do a little video message. No notes. No polish, just shootin’ from the hip and the heart. It’s the way that I do most things, especially when it comes to my many words.

How could I have known at the time that my words … my prayer … would come back upon me in full measure and in surprising and unexpected ways? I couldn’t have known; thus, I didn’t expect. Yet within a few hours of verbalizing my heart, my “inbox” was flooded, not only with your comments, but with more personal pleas for notice … for prayer.

It matters not the details of those requests nor the places, both far and wide, from which they came. God simply allowed them their landing in my lap, and I am undone with the prospect of what it all means. Let me unpack that a bit.

Pain is a powerful tool for reaching other people. When others know that you’ve walked pain through to the other side of healing, they become more willing to talk about their own journey of sorrow. Pain speaks a language all its own, and when you’ve become proficient with its “speak” because you’ve fully worn the consequences of its truth, you become a conduit for receiving the pain of others.

It’s a gift of sorts. Both to them and to you. When God allows the witness of your brokenness to intersect with the lives of others who are currently trying to fight their way out of the rubble, both parties receive the gift of God’s magnificent grace. You are allowed to use your pain for God’s greater purposes, and, subsequently, they are allowed the vision of a greater purpose for their pain.

I think this is what the Apostle Paul had in mind when he penned the following truth:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-5).

Thus, a sacred intersection.

Thus, your brokenness and my healing co-mingling on the road of life this week, all the while hearing my Father’s voice ringing in my heart with a question that directly relates back to the prayer that I prayed with you on Tuesday. Hear now a portion of the unscripted request of my heart as recorded on the video…

“Father in heaven I thank you for this glorious day of celebration that brings my life into the lives of your daughters and your sons, Lord. I pray, Father, that the words of my mouth, not only this mouth but the words of my pen would reflect you all the days of my life … that something in my life could be found pleasing to you and that you would run with it God.”

He’s running with it, friends. Apparently, he’s found something pleasing—something purified solely through the atoning work of his cross—and he’s decided to run with it. His question back to me?

“Will you run with it, elaine? I’ve given you this intersection between your brokenness and the brokenness of others. Will you run with it? Will you be the evidence of things unseen? Will you stand as my witness with your words and your prayers and your follow-through while others choose their silence over involvement? Will you contain my witness within the comfortable parameters of the righteous or will you allow me a voice via yours to those who have yet to be clothed with my majesty from on high? Will you run with it, elaine, or will your words float hopeless and void of purpose? This is your sacred intersection, elaine. Will you run with me and see it through?”

How would you answer? What do you do when the brokenness of your past catches up with you in order to be the blessing for someone else’s pain in the present?

I tell you what I am doing and will continue to do. I receive it, all the while believing that our intersection is part of God’s great design for both of our lives. I take its gracious landing onto my lap and hold it with all the care of heaven. I run with it, all the way to my Father’s feet and place it before him as an offering. I intercede for your healing. Your wholeness. Your turning toward home and finding the truth of who you are meant to be in Jesus Christ.

Will you do the same, friends? Run with your Father and see things through to the end? Your brokenness doesn’t necessarily breathe like mine. God has tailor-made an avenue of ministry for you because of it. Thank God for it; don’t minimize its worth in your life. Find your healing through Jesus Christ and then allow him his further hand in the matter. He has taken hold of you for a specific and everlasting purpose—a purpose that directly links you with the lives of others who are walking in similar stride.

We need not fear the exposure of our bad, our shattered and our defiled. God doesn’t condemn us because of our brokenness. God heals us so that we can bring his healing to others through our restoration. There is no shame at the cross of Jesus Christ. There is only freedom in the truth of its witness.

{image removed on 7-18-2017 at 10:58 PM}

A sacred intersection for all mankind. Between God’s brokenness and ours. A powerful pain that continues to reach … to teach … to take hold and to transform all of that which is shattered into a conduit of lasting and final significance.

Run with it, friends. Run with Him … all the way home to receive the prize for which God has called you heavenward in Christ Jesus. Together, we can do this thing. I count it a joy to intersect my life with yours for our Father’s great and mighty purposes.

In the name of the Father who planned us, the Son who saved us, and the Holy Spirit who keeps us as such, Amen.

PS: The winners of Watermark’s “A Grateful People” are: #15 Laura and #79 Beth E.

Thanks to everyone for playing along this week and for your wonderful support of peace for the journey. I look forward to sharing another year’s worth of words with you; perhaps this will be the year in which many of us could gather together and have that cup of coffee, diet coke, or latte. Now that would be something, wouldn’t it?! I’m asking God for this specific happening. Shalom.

A Worthy Knowing

February 2, 2009

*Please note update below post…

“For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2).

For all of the ways that we could spend our words this week, what is more worthy than spending them on the truth of Jesus Christ? For all of the things that we could share with the world, whether at home, at work, at play, or on the cyber canvas that you call your own, what is more important than the boast of Jesus Christ?

We will think of them … ways to spend our words and our time accordingly. Some necessary. Some less than. But when this time next week rolls around, we will have recorded a solid seven days’ worth of lip service to our life’s walk. And for all of the ways that our lives will require the investment of our words over the next week, none is more important than the ones that we will invest on behalf of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

None.

Yes, there will be those necessary occasions that ask for less—occasions that don’t call for the Jesus talk. But all of them, every last one of them, require the heart of a Jesus walk. When our “necessary” doesn’t require our words, we still write a story. Their witness speaks even when our words remain silent.

The Apostle Paul resolved to know nothing except the message of Jesus Christ. He was a learned man, schooled and versed in the pharisaical way of doing life. Still and yet, no amount of book learning could prepare him for the task that he was ordained to do. It would take something far greater, far grander and more spectacular to shape his heart for the kingdom mantle he would be asked to wear.

It would take an illumination from the heavenlies—a moment of brilliant awakening where the shattering truth of the “Word made flesh” would shatter the lie believed to the contrary.

Paul received his moment of brilliance, leaving him blinded by the revelation of just enough great and quite enough grand and over the top spectacular to forever alter his destiny. No longer would he rely on his formal training or his former understanding for doing life. Instead, his formal and his former would concede their pride to the new and humbled way of a crucified life.

The lifestyle that once earned Paul’s persecution and ardent disdain would now become the life that he would embody. And while we may not fully grasp the revelatory depth of Paul’s brilliant moment in the sun with the Son, if we know Jesus Christ as Lord, then we, too, have been called to a new and humbled way of living.

It’s a living that shifts our focus from me to Thee. At least it should. And if it hasn’t, if for some reason you’re still thinking that your me is bigger than your Thee, then may I suggest to you that a humbled walk under the brilliant light of God’s Son might serve you well this week? Not so that you can feel more guilty and more discouraged about your life as a Christian, but rather because it is time for the truth of Jesus Christ to take its rightful place in your heart and, consequently, in the way that you do life.

The way that you walk life. The way that you speak life and move through the paces of your day so that when you come to a week’s end, you do so being spent on behalf of something that matters rather than something that doesn’t.

Jesus Christ is that something. Everything else is just extra. Not necessarily bad, just extra. I don’t know about you, but I want my extra to be built upon something solid and real and lasting. Otherwise, when the extra fades, there’s nothing but empty. And friends, I’ve spent a whole lot of my life doing empty—investing my many words and my many doings in a way that literally says a whole lot more about me than him.

Time to grow up and to put the language of my childish ways behind me. Time to realize that my words are not my own. They were bought with a price, and therefore should be spoken according to the blood that was exacted for the freedom of their saying.

Thus, like the Apostle Paul, I resolve to know nothing else but Jesus Christ and him crucified. He is the knowing that has shattered my world with just enough great and quite enough grand and over the top spectacular so as to forever alter my destiny. He is the foundation that I want beneath my extra so that when the world comes knocking this week my responses are anchored in the truth of who he is rather than in the lie of thinking that I am anything apart from him.

Without Jesus, my words ring hollow. My life lives empty. My light burns dim. My time spends wasted. My story reads vacant. With him?

Words come to life. Lives live full and lights burn with the intensity of heaven’s illumination. Time spends wells and our stories become the stuff of lasting and kingdom significance. And that, my friends, is the worthy ending of a well lived week. May we each one, walk toward such a sacred conclusion with every step that we take and with every moment that is ours to write. Thus, I pray…

Help me keep focus, Lord, on the stuff that matters. Fill my heart and my mind with the foundational truth of your gospel, and keep me humbled with the witness of your crucified life. Forgive me for thinking that I am more, thus assigning you your less. I must become less, and you must become more. Be the anchor that holds my extra. Be the fire that burns my pride to ashes, and be the Spirit that blows them accordingly … in line with your will and for your fame alone. You are worthy of my words, Lord. Sanctify them toward your mighty and perfect end. Amen.

Copyright © February 2009 – Elaine Olsen

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Friends, please be sure and join me all week! There will be some give aways incorporated into daily posts beginning tomorrow. Shalom.

Crossroads

January 9, 2009

“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.

~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.

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