trust | Elaine Olsen

a single thing

February 15, 2010

“…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philipppians 1:6).

A few days ago, I wrote a post—a few rambling words brought about because of a single picture that spoke a single word to my spirit. Peace.

If truth be known (and really what profit is there in pretending), I didn’t want to write anything. My pen has grown weary in recent days. In fact, a certain fear crept over me last week, albeit momentary, that, perhaps, for the first time in a long time, I had nothing to say… nothing worthy to write. I’ve heard of writer’s block before, but I’ve never experienced it. Even typing that feels strange, almost ominous, almost as if by speaking it aloud, it might come on in full measure after hitting the “publish” button to this post. If I’ve written it once, I’ve written it a dozen times…

For as long as God allows the ink, I’ll keep penning my heart for him. And so, despite my feelings regarding an empty computer screen and with ample tears to go alongside, in obedience I began to type and pray. Pray and type, all the while asking the Lord to just use it as he would… if he would. Apparently, he has, and that, my friends, is no credit to me. It’s a credit to him.

God honors our obedience to use our gifts, most days in spite of us. We can choose our “no’s”—decline his offer of kingdom investment into the lives of others—but our “no’s” do nothing to further his agenda. Certainly there are seasons when our weariness and worn-out status diminish our effectiveness. We must heed those prompts of needful restoration. But even then, God will always use our willingness when our willingness concedes the struggle to his hands over ours… when we get to the end of ourselves and simply say, “If you will, Lord, use me once more in this single thing.”

A single thing.

We never know when ours will make an impact… our single thing—our one act of obedience, chosen freely despite feelings, emotions, and wills that sometime lead us to consider another direction. Instead of choosing self, we choose a single thing that extends influence beyond personal gratification—that changes the direction in someone else’s life, albeit seemingly small and immeasurable. We…

Bake some bread.
Pen a card.
Visit the sick.
Send a gift.
Run the carpool line.
Make a call.
Share a ride.
Hug a neck.
Speak a word.
Write a check.
Answer an E-mail.
Say a prayer.
Lend a hand.
Offer some time.
Share a smile.
Voice some truth.
Do some chores.
Live some love.
Give some Jesus.

Single things, when gathered and collected, become a big thing in the lives of those who stand on the receiving end. We’ve all been the recipients of single things; time and again our need has dictated their arrival. If we were to chronicle those single things—perhaps even the ones that have been lavishly bestowed upon us over the past week—then we would begin to understand the length that our Father’s love is willing to travel in order for us to have a more perfect life.

He’s working it all out, friends, in a way that exceeds comprehension, and he’s using us as his conduits of sacred dispensation. He’s taking the single things of our single days and weaving them into a tapestry that radiates with kingdom color and creativity. Rarely are we aware of his workings as they unfold, for we are a people easily distracted by temporal details and frustrations. God’s goodness continues in its liberality within our day-to-days, but without pause in our spirits to receive his invitation of sacred participation or to receive his goodness as it arrives, we come to the end of our days barely aware of his entrance and intervention on our behalf.

This week you will stand on both sides of God’s equation for goodness; you will receive it in abundance as well as be called upon in some capacity to add to someone else’s. Your obedience with your single thing will bring color to God’s bigger thing—a portrait that collectively gathers grace upon grace to paint a masterpiece worthy of the throne room of heaven. You may think that your single thing doesn’t matter, is too small and too inferior to make a difference. But your obedience to that single thing may just be the one thing that shifts the eternal foundation of someone’s forever.

Don’t underestimate your single thing, friends. Don’t diminish your obedience to use the gifts that God has generously seeded within your heart for kingdom progress. He who began a good work in you is faithful to bring it to completion. Not just for your sake, but more importantly, for his.

Keep to your single thing; keep yielding your heart in obedience as the Spirit prompts, and see if he is not faithful to make it all count! These are good days to be serving alongside of you in continuing faithfulness. Let us march the steps of our spiritual ancestors, believing God for far more than the eye can see, mind can conceive, and heart can imagine. I love you. As always…

peace for the journey,

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returning light…

January 6, 2010

“You, O LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light.” (Psalm 18:28)

God’s returning light.

It’s returning to me after a long six-week season of diminishing dimness. Not elimination; God’s light always flames within me, but there are times when it decreases in its intensity. Not because of anything he’s done, but rather because life and its many messy circumstances have flickers all their own. A heart has a hard time highlighting them both; thus, when one takes the stage—flames fuller and burns brighter—the other retreats to the wings and waits its turn.

It’s God’s turn in my life, friends, and I feel the intensity of his flame returning in me. It matters not the situations that led to his light’s retreat. It began around Thanksgiving and continued its solid march through the month of December. In many ways, I had to break free from Christmas in order to live my Christmas. I realize that in writing this, some of you will be confused and left to your imaginations as to what I could possibly mean. But I think if you live with that statement for a few minutes, understanding will come.

Christmas wasn’t designed for its cramming into a confined calendar slot. Christmas was meant for a twelve month existence. For me (and this is Elaine talking for herself), I live the witness of Christmas better in the eleven months preceding its planned remembrance. Those months are less messy for me, less crowded, less programmed. And while Christmas isn’t to blame for my season of recent struggle, they happened to share the same month. I imagine there are others who could voice the same.

Through it all, I pressed into my faith because that is what faith does. It presses into known truth—a truth that relies on God’s strength to carry us through to resolution. Faith carries us in times of darkness. Faith anchors us, holds us, reminds us that on the other side of smoldering embers lies the hot breath of a Holy God who bends at the ready to flame them into significance.

My life has hosted many seasons of diminishing flames like this past one. I don’t imagine it will be my last. And while I don’t welcome them, I’m better prepared for them because I’ve lived each one of them successfully through to victory. To feeling the warmth of God’s returning light and to embracing the dawn as dawn was meant to be embraced.

With celebration … anticipation … high and holy expectation for the day that births anew with unlimited opportunities to unpack my God further. That is how I awoke this morning; by his grace, tomorrow will birth the same.

It’s good to be in fellowship with a God who understands the seasons of our lives, who walks them with us despite our willingness to walk them in isolation. Without the embers of his enduring love, our struggling seasons suffer deeper, linger longer, fester wider. There is little hope of emerging victory when we fail to tend to the wick of God’s sacred flame within us.

I’ve tended to that wick, even when my flesh cried out its resistance. I prayed about it, wrote about, spoke to God about it, and read about it in his holy Word. God’s Word is replete with a people who have stood where I have stood. They, too, pressed into their faith in order to move past their flesh.

God’s returning light. It’s found its way to my soul again, and I am eternally grateful for the mustard seed’s worth of faith within me that pushed me through to victory.

I don’t know where you are in your journey with God right now. Perhaps your faith is burning brightly with little wiggle room for doubt. If so, thank God for his continuing illumination. Perhaps your faith flickers with intermittent warmth and sporadic guidance, just enough to quell your worries regarding its diminishment. If so, pray to God for clearer vision and for firmer resolve. Perhaps your faith is down to a few smoldering embers as other “lights” have taken to the stage to voice their opposition. If so, cling to God as if your life depended on it.

Our lives depend on it, friends, on him no matter the season we’re walking. Without his continuing presence in our lives, we have little hope of emerging from the darkness. Thus, keep pressing into our faithful God. Keep running with him; keep walking beside him; keep crawling toward him, all the way through to final victory. I know it’s not an easy journey. In fact, “easy” doesn’t fit with an extraordinary faith. But extraordinary is exactly what we’ve been given. The heart of our Father could give no less. “Less” isn’t in keeping with his character.

I love you, am willing to pray for you, and am writing you my heart this day because it is all that I have to give to you. It seems to me that, perhaps, at least one of you needs the witness of my last six weeks. If so, know this…

God is approaching your soul in this very moment. His light is returning to you, even as the dawn is approaching its birth, and God’s hot and very holy breath would like nothing more than to fan into flame the embers of your struggling faith. May our good Father grant you, precious one, the witness of his presence as you close your eyes to slumber this night. As always…

peace for the journey,

~elaine

PS: I don’t know when I’ll be here again. As the Lord prompts my heart, I will be faithful to add a few words and post them here. I’m giving intentional focus to my latest WIP with a goal of finishing by February’s end. I would appreciate your prayers along those lines. In the meantime, if you have a special prayer request you’d be willing to entrust to me, I’d be most privileged to receive it. You are the reason I keep to my pen. Shalom.

"unpack me"… a night Visitor re-visits

January 2, 2010

{Hadn’t planned on being here today; hadn’t planned on writing today. Some days, however, our experiences call for some words, some remembrance. This was one of them. Maybe I wrote them for you as well. Shalom.}

“But when he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.” –John 16:13-14

“Unpack me.”

Words that haunt me eleven hours beyond the moment they first enveloped me. Somewhere along 1:30 AM, I awoke with the startling awareness that God’s presence was within reach. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him… the kind of feeling that frightens me, all the while enlivening me. A deep, rich peace surrounding me, calling for my attention and my willingness to entreat the “voice” of my Father. Past experience has taught me not to run from his voice, but instead, to wait for it.

This time, it was immediate. Not audible in the exterior, but loud and clear in my interior. I groped for the pen and notebook that resides on my bedside bookshelf and scribbled down these words in the dark:

“There is none so mysterious as the One standing in this room with you at this very minute.”

“Then what am I to do with you, Lord?”

“Unpack me.”

As quickly as the words arrived, they stopped; the pen and paper found their way home, and I snuggled deeper beneath the cover of night, cradling the gift I’d just been given—

The voice of God.

It arrived on the heels of an evening prayer where I’d wrestled some things out with my Father on my face and with some ample tears to chorus my questions. Questions about his character and his trustworthiness as they pertain to my life. Dangerous questions to ask, yet ones I needed to articulate because my faith had been challenged along these lines earlier in the week (thanks, friend, for the call, the faith, and the prod).

Can I trust the character of God? What is sum total of God’s character? Am I operating from his reality—the truest truth—or from a reality based on my perceptions regarding his interaction in my life? Can I know the character of God, and if so, how do I get there? How do I piece together a better understanding of who he is, so that I can begin to operate my faith from there rather than from a place of skewed awareness? Could it be that a lack of faith stems from ignorance regarding the true nature of faith’s Creator—faith’s Author and Perfecter?

Dangerous questions, yet ones that my Father was willing to entreat on my behalf last evening, because when it comes to his character and his child’s willingness to know him more fully, he bends low to listen, even further to deliver his answer.

“Unpack me.”

And with his voice, I discover something most distinctive about the character of my God.

He is near, and he wants to be known. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken the time to startle my soul from slumber and give witness to his mysteriousness, all the while allowing me an unpacking of him therein.

Are we meant to hold mystery and revelation all in the same moment?

Apparently so.

I held it last evening; it holds me today. It leads me to worship. It moves me to faith.

Perhaps today, at the beginning of a new beginning, you have some similar questions for our Father. Perhaps you languish in your understanding of God’s character. Perhaps you’re wondering if he can be trusted with your life. Perhaps you’ve seen much, lived through much, fought through much, to the point where your “much” seems too much in keeping with the character of a good God. Your faith is shaken, and you’re heart is asking…

“What am I to do with you, Lord?”

If that is the earnest and honest and purest plea of your heart, would you be willing to leave it with our Father? I don’t have the answers to all of your questions; I certainly haven’t found the answers to all of mine. But I know where to bring them. I trust the character of God enough to know that he receives them, hears them, ponders them, and then in his own time, his own way—

He answers them.

Sometimes in a whisper. Sometimes through a loud roar in the midst of loud day. Sometimes in the reading of his Word. Sometimes at the altar of grace. Sometimes through another’s kindness. Sometimes in a storm. Sometimes in peaceful waters, and sometimes in the middle of the night—bending low and standing bedside to honor the request of his daughter’s heart.

All the times, I think, through a simple two word command that leads all hearts to a greater point of sacred understanding.

“Unpack me.”

Are you willing to move past the questions, friends, into a greater revelation of our Father’s character? I am willing because today I hold the worth of a night’s pause with a night Visitor. I don’t imagine I shall ever recover; I’m certain that I don’t want to…

ever recover from God.

Let’s unpack him together in 2010. It would be my privilege to come alongside you in your night’s pause to entreat the voice of our King. As always…

peace for the journey,

~elaine

Contending

November 11, 2009

“Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.” {Jude 3}

I ran across it this morning; rather, it ran across me. All over me. In me. Through me. Within and without of me.

A verse. A single Scripture that my desperation cried out for like a beggar plowing through a garbage bin for the scraps from yesterday’s fine dining. A yesterday’s fare that still tastes fresh and rich and full of all the nutrients a hungering soul needs.

God’s Word is like that. It feeds our wanton estate with the richest bounty of heaven. All that is required from us in the matter is our willingness to entreat the bounty with faith enough to believe that what we’re looking for will be found in ready supply. With God’s Word our souls never go hungry, never leave empty, never walk away with “less” than what we had prior to our arrival at the table.

God’s Word feeds fully.

Today, he fed me with this verse from Jude. He told me to contend for the faith that he has entrusted to me. To “strive and to fight” for the faith that has been “delivered, handed down” to me. Those words shot through me with a clarity I’d not seen before. The previous underlining of them was a good indicator that I’d read them before, but for whatever reason, today they packed a punch and forced my pondering.

Interesting that this “contending” in the Greek is the opposite of the word eireneuo which means “to keep the peace or to be at peace” (and you know how I feel about that particular topic…). I am not to be at peace with my faith… to be a casual attendee on the road of faith. Rather, I’m to be vigilant in my efforts at faith’s cultivation. At growing and further developing the initial belief that was first transferred to my heart from a loving God who entrusted me with faith’s safe-keeping.

It doesn’t make sense to me to have been entrusted with such a gift. God knows just exactly how many times I’ve failed him in this department. Times when I’ve chosen doubt over trust. Selfish control over selfless release. My shifting manipulations over his tried and true. My plans, my thoughts over his. Indeed, it seems another saint might be a better fit for God’s gift of faith.

Still and yet, he calls me his saint, his “set-apart and his consecrated.” He tells me that faith is mine for the keeping. Not to contend with it, but to contend for it. Why? Because faith isn’t a gift that warrants my rebellious fists. Faith is a gift that deserves my open hands. My willingness to receive, to hold, to absorb, and to clothe myself in the cause of Jesus Christ.

A gift so precious is a gift worthy of my best contending.

Day in. Day out, until all of my earthly days are done and I come open-handed to the throne of my Jesus where I return to him the package of faith I’ve been given. He will put the punctuation mark on this journey he’s authored in me. In that moment, there will be final perfection—an end that serves as a fitting conclusion to the story that he and I have been writing together for the past forty-three years.

How I contend for my faith now is directly linked to how I will be commended for my faith then.

They won’t measure out equally, for there is nothing I can do here in the present that will match what I’m going to receive from God in the future. His grace and blessing will always trump my efforts at the same. But I do believe there is something more to be gained from my contending for the faith on this side of the eternity that will matter for the other side of eternity. Something better … something further … something grander because I was willing to go to the mat for my faith and for my Jesus until my final breath.

I don’t want to peacefully find my way to heaven. I want to go there contending for the One who was willing to go to the mat for me on a hillside 2000 years ago. Who looked down through the ages and saw a young girl named Faith Elaine and decided that her life was worth his. That her heart could be trusted with faith’s impartation, with faith’s safe-keeping. A risky calculation in my estimation, but not enough to keep Jesus from making his altared surrender.

I want to honor that surrender with my honest contention. My best efforts at forging ahead with my faith. These are the days when we must move forward in our faith, friends. We are not to shrink back in our belief. We must not waver in our understanding regarding our finish … our end. God is that end. He who began a good work in us is faithful to complete it. He serves as the bookends to all faith journeys, but we must be vigilant in our walking the “in between.”

Faith steps ahead, not behind. For faith to grow there must be movement beneath our feet and progress within our hearts. Otherwise, we’re stuck.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to finish this race stuck. This is the tragedy of an infant-fed faith. Do you realize that we could spend the rest of our spiritual lives stuck right where we are, right now? When we close our eyes on our earthly days, if all we have is an initial belief in Jesus, then we’re going to make it home to him. But I don’t want to just make it home. I want to make it home with something more to give him—a package of faith that was well-contented for and well-lived. Not some half-hearted attempt at the process.

Thus, I choose striving over peace-keeping. Moving on rather than staying stuck. Keeping the faith rather than casting it to the curb. Pressing in, pressing further, pressing through until my faith becomes my eyes, and I hear the commendation that my heart is contending for even today.

A good fight for a good faith all the way through to a very good finish. Keep contending for the King, friend. He still contends for thee. As always…

peace for the journey,

there will come a day…

November 4, 2009

~Alex Christopher Mercado~

Your day has come… rest in the sweet arms of Jesus, precious boy! I’ll meet you there soon.

PS: For those of you who haven’t read the previous post, this is the young child who inspired my heart-felt response. Apparently, yours as well. Thanks for weighing in with your thoughts and support.

Hold onto your faith, friends … there is coming a day.

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