trust | Elaine Olsen

one thing

May 19, 2010

{photo compliments of Shirley}

I asked God to reveal to me one thing about himself this morning during our quiet time. One thing that, perhaps, I’ve missed up to this point, or one thing that I needed brought to my remembrance… again.

Just one thing, for one thing was all that I needed to buoy me along through another day’s living and another day’s weariness. He gave me that one thing via a few verses I’ve read before. Perhaps they are familiar to you as well:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you may also be where I am.” (John 14:1-3).

Prepare. The word “hetoimazo” in Greek meaning “to make the necessary preparations, get everything ready.” Further still… “drawn from the oriental custom of sending on before kings on their journeys persons to level the roads and make them passable.” (www.studylight.org)

Oriental custom or not, I think Jesus Christ set the standard in this matter. My God sent his Son ahead of me—heiress to a royal throne—to make level the road in front of me so that I might find my way home to him in order to receive the crown of righteousness that awaits my retrieval. I have royal blood running through my veins, and I have a King who has made the most extraordinary sacrifice on my behalf to insure that I be granted a room and a robe in his kingdom.

One thing.

And my heart is less troubled… my trust more secure.

How I love my Jesus more for giving me his “one thing” today.

It is enough.

He is enough.

Knowing God, and then out of that knowing, leading others to know the same. May you know him more today. As always…

peace for the journey,

PS: Winners for my book will be drawn with the next post. See details with the previous post.

"… live on"

May 12, 2010

{For you, friend, you know who you are.}

“… and yet we live on.” (2 Corinthians 6:9)

My right hand is aching this morning. Truth be known, it ached all night… a sharp twinge located in the center of my hand, just below my middle knuckle. I’ve felt it before. It flares up from time to time when my fingers and keyboard collide at a rapid, unrelenting rate. This has been one of those times for me… one of those weeks that has authored an unusual amount of connection between my fingertips and my computer. I don’t mind it much; I really don’t think about it often, especially while in mid-typing mode. But when the computer screen grows dim and the lights go out and my hands find their rest at my side, the pain sets in reminding me of an important truth regarding the call of Jesus Christ upon my life.

Kingdom work is sometimes flanked by the painful ache of a sacred obedience.

If we are Christians, if we dare to name ourselves with the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, then we are to be heartily invested in his kingdom business. We don’t get a pass when it comes to doing God’s work. Vocationally speaking, we may hold a variety of titles behind our names, but spiritually speaking, the only holding of our hearts that matters is the One who titles us as his. And when we get this—when we finally arrive at the place of realizing that all of our earthly endeavors are meant to be the fertile soil upon which the King sows his seed—then we readily accept the fullness of that calling, ills and aches included.

The Apostle Paul understood the strain between a painful ache and a sacred obedience. He willingly chose his “ache,” chaining himself to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and believing that every temporal pain of his flesh was achieving for him an eternal glory that far outweighed them all. At any point along the way, Paul could have chosen otherwise… could have freed himself from the physical and emotional misery that invaded his flesh. Instead, he persevered in great travail and suffering so that the church might know the culminating truth of the cross. So that the church would grow. So that you and I, some 2000 years down the road, might know what it is to “live on” despite the carnage and chaos going on around us and in us. But don’t take my word on it; take his…

“Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way:
in great endurance;
in troubles, hardships and distresses;
in beatings, imprisonments and riots;
in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger;
in purity, understanding, patience and kindness;
in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love;
in truthful speech and in the power of God;
with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left;
through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report;
genuine, yet regarded as impostors;
known, yet regarded as unknown;
dying, and yet we live on;
beaten, and yet not killed;
sorrowful, yet always rejoicing;
poor, yet making many rich;
having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” (2 Corinthians 4:4-10).

I’d never seen it before… Paul’s “live on.” When reading this familiar passage I’m tempted to stay mired in the pain of it all, in imagining how my own life fits into the litany of sufferings he vividly details in his letter to the church at Corinth. Yet it’s there… two simple words that admonished the readers back then and the readers right now to “live on.” To not stay entrenched in the ache of our sacred obedience to Jesus Christ, but to “live on” in spite of it. To press on to take hold of all of that for which Christ has taken hold of us. To keep putting one spiritual foot of faith in front of the other until we press through to victory and can realize, even as Paul realized, that we possess everything, even though the world labels our possession as nothing.

The painful ache of a sacred obedience.

Some of you are living your ache today. Some of you are all too familiar with Paul’s suffering because yours, at some level, mirrors his. You may not be locked in a prison cell or experiencing the physical trauma of a flogging, but I imagine there are many of you who feel the emotional and spiritual intensity of some chains and some wearing and tearing away of your flesh that feels comparable in their depth to Paul’s.

Some of you are expending a lot of your faith on behalf of God’s kingdom gain while seeing little results. Some of you are standing on the front lines of a tenacious, spiritual battle where the line is wearing thin and your reserves have run for cover leaving you alone to fight it through to victory. Some of you are tired; sleepless nights have claimed your good sense and the energy for a new day has long since been usurped by the previous night’s wandering of your mind. Some of you are hungry; a famine of soul is crying out for the bread of heaven, yet the manna seems to have missed your acreage during its morning dispensation. Some of you are working hard, enduring long, speaking truth, and loving lavishly; still and yet, the payoff seems minimal and our Father’s notice all the more. You feel “unknown” and as an “imposter” upon the soil beneath your feet.

I hear you. I feel you. I cannot fully understand what it’s like to be you, but like you, I, too, have known moments, days, and seasons of feeling the painful ache of a sacred obedience. I cannot perfectly aid your comprehension as it pertains to the questions and “whys” behind your struggle, but I can, like the Apostle Paul, give to you a couple of words that have carried me through a great many aches in my past.

Live on.

Don’t die mid-stream. Live on. Press through. Receive everything as if it were happening to our Lord Jesus Christ and then, live on. For of this I am certain… you are known by our Heavenly Father. He sees your sacred obedience and regards you and your faith as genuine in his eyes. If you remain faithful to live on in Jesus, despite the carnage going on around you, then there is nothing in your past, present, or future that will come to you that will be able to undercut the witness of God’s kingdom via your flesh. Nothing. You can live on because Christ lived on. So did Paul; so have countless, unnamed others who have gone before you, who will follow after you, and who, in this moment, stand beside you to cheer you on toward victory.

I am one of them, friends, and I need your encouragement today just as much as you need mine. We’re on the kingdom road together; it’s no mistake that we have found one another in this season of living. God intends for us to be here… to love one another in the strength and power of his Holy Spirit and to live on together until we move home to heaven. It is but a moment from now… a single breath that will transport us into our “next” where our living on will live on in living color and before the very face of God. Believing and fully trusting in that moment, friends, brings me rich perspective for every temporal ache I experience that is connected to God’s kingdom end. Even so I pray, Lord Jesus, keep me obedient.

Keep me obedient to live on. Keep my friends as well. Amen. So be it.

peace for the journey,

a view from the Jordan…

April 19, 2010

“… ‘When you see the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, and the priests, who are Levites, carrying it, you are to move out from your positions and follow it. Then you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before….’” (Joshua 3:3-4)

Never having “been this way before,” at least not exactly, it occurs to me this morning that I just might be standing in the middle of the Jordan River… awaiting the promise of Canaan, yet so completely overwhelmed and awestruck by the demonstration of God’s power in the moment that the view from the “middle” writes as promise just as much as the view from the other side does. The view from where I’m standing this morning feels right and good and in keeping with God’s plan for my life—our lives. You see, a walk to Canaan is never isolated from the presence of others. There will always be those who go ahead of us in order to point us in the right direction, those who look for our leading from behind, and those who take our hands mid-stream feeling every inch of understanding as we go and along the way.

Promise-land living is corporate living, where all pilgrims willingly take ownership of the responsibility of the priesthood—to carry the presence of the living Lord along for the journey and to interject his witness via the feet of faith. Faith feet aren’t afraid of getting wet and are strengthened in their resolve to stand firm so that others might walk through on dry ground. In many ways, those feet belong to me. In other ways, those feet belong to my husband. Together, we’ve made some deliberate choices in recent days to take those first steps of faith into the Jordan. But long before we ever imagined this “route” to Canaan, there were and still are a few people whose feet walked this route first. They have gone ahead of us and have been waiting for us to follow their lead and to join them on the march to Promise.

My dear blog readers, hear me and hear me well. As people of faith, each of us is currently standing in one of three places on the road to Promise:

Viewing Canaan from the opposite side of the Jordan;
Viewing Canaan while standing in the Jordan; or,
Viewing Canaan beneath our feet.

Not one of these vantage points holds precedence over the others. None. All are worthy points along the way in our faith journeys because all of them have Canaan within sight. Our walkabouts in faith are cyclical trails of trust. No one currently living in the flesh holds the treasure of his/her eternal Canaan in its fullness right now. That crossing over occurs when the last vestiges of the flesh surrender their pulse to the grave. Therefore, while moving toward God’s kingdom to come, there is room enough for us to move within-and-around this process of faith’s progression. In the past week, I’ve seen Canaan from all vantage points, and my faith isn’t “less” because of it. My faith is stronger because of it.

We are doing a great disservice to a great many Christians when we try to put parameters around what “Canaan” should look like for other believers. I’m a firm advocate of abundant living, but I can never live abundantly until I have first known poverty of soul. One of the greatest tragedies of a walkabout in faith is for complacency to root in our hearts while living in Canaan. God doesn’t intend for us to set up our tents on the banks of the Jordan as a permanent place of residency. Certainly, he intends for us to rest there, gain perspective there, but eventually, he’ll require us to move deeper into the heart of the Promised Land. And for that to happen, friends, we must be wiling to keep the tent pegs pliable regardless of how firmly they’ve become tethered to the soil beneath our feet.

I don’t know where you and your faith are standing this week; it’s likely that, before it comes to conclusion, you’ll experience Canaan from all vantage points. Regardless of where your feet are planted this morning, let me be a voice of encouragement to you that as long as Canaan is your goal, then your faith is well-placed and will keep you moving despite your willingness to stay where you are. God will tend to the issue of your faith’s progression; he won’t make you move, but he’ll be certain to allow you the opportunity to keep in step with his best plan for your life.

How I pray for God’s strength, wisdom, and endurance to be your portion and mine as we continue to live out the calling of the priesthood that he’s placed on each one of us! We are the living witnesses of faith whose names are being written into a history that will, one day, read like the stories of our spiritual ancestors from long ago. They didn’t know then what the fullness of their faith would mean to us now, but they lived it anyway. Not for us, but for the promise of the One who authored their lives.

Always for the promise of the One. He is why I’m here this morning, taking time out of a very busy day to remind you of your kingdom conferment and of the joy that comes to God’s children as we are faithful to keep our focus forward and our feet all the more.

Love you each one. Go in the strength you’ve been given, and until next time…

peace for the journey,

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a morning "word" from the shores of Galilee…

April 14, 2010

This morning my heart is heavy. I didn’t sleep much. Heaviness of heart seems to serve as fertile ground for sleeplessness. Such was the case for me last evening. Instead of awakening to the freshness of a new day, today I awoke to my tears and my husband’s arms around me assuring me of his love that will endure despite the chaos going on around us.

I also awoke to something else this morning.

The picture above. This morning’s sunrise over the Sea of Galilee. My friend, Stephanie, sent this picture via her phone to a few of us who have been praying for her during her missionary travels in Israel. Her words that accompanied this picture (as if any would be needed to add to its beauty)…

“I’m having fish for lunch today along the shores of Galilee after we take a boat ride there! I’ll be sure to get out of the boat when I see Jesus walking on the water! Tell Elaine this one’s for her! Shalom…Stephanie”

Shalom, indeed. A little piece of “peace” for the journey when peace is needed the most. And so, with Stephanie’s prompt ringing in my ears and the words of my “breakfast on the beach” series freshly racing through my mind, I once again turned to John 21 this morning and re-read the familiar story I’ve spent a great deal of time studying in recent days. This time, my focus fixed on verses 18 & 19:

“I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me.” (John 21:18-19)

When was the last time you heard a similar “truth” from Jesus? When did he last remind you that on your odyssey of faith there will be times when you will be called upon to travel to places of his expectation rather than yours? When did you last feel the weightiness of your kingdom conferment as it pertains to your place of service? When did what “God wanted you to do” serve as the catalyst to your wrestling out a few things before him on the floor mat of heaven?

I imagine we all have a moment of vivid recall along these lines. We don’t travel very far with God before coming to a crossroads where the path of our choosing contradicts with the one he’s chosen instead. When we arrive there, we have a choice to make…

Follow him; follow not.

I’m there, friends. Today is my “follow him” moment. God has opened up the kingdom closet this morning and is asking me to dress myself with a plan that I wasn’t prepared to wear. He’s stripped me of my previous expectations and has presented me with his instead. To be honest with you, it’s not a comfortable fit for me… not yet. You see, I’m not a big fan of trying on a new set of clothes. I much prefer the ones that are currently hanging in my closet and lining my dresser drawers. At least with them, I know what to expect. With this new set, I’m not sure I like what I see. Rather than experiencing the warmth and familiarity of my “comfortable,” God is asking me to trade it all in for a new set of clothes that initially feels foreign and stiff.

My mind tells me that with time, the “new” will soon wear like the “old,” but my heart momentarily tells me something else… that I can’t do this. That this is too much. That this is going to be an uphill battle from the get go and that no matter which way I (or anyone else) tries to “spin” this, it’s still going to be a difficult fit for me. What I imagined and expected would be my next best steps are now being detoured along a path that had, previously, never been on my radar.

Still and yet, the path is clear, and like Peter, my heart is concerned, heavy-laden, and full of a few questions… not just for the clothes that I’m being asked to wear, but also for the clothes that my brother and sister are being given to wear as well.

“Lord, what about them?” Are you asking them for a similar obedience? Why is it that their dressing doesn’t look like mine? Comparatively speaking, it doesn’t seem fair, Lord. Why am I being asked to navigate these strange waters when it seems they’ve been given smooth sailing? Why does “following after you” live differently for those of us who are called according to only one, high and holy purpose? Why does it seem that my expectations rarely measure out in accordance with yours? Am I not listening closely enough? Living faithfully enough? Praying fervently enough? I thought I knew how this was going to go, Lord; it’s apparent that I don’t… know as much as I thought that I did. Forgive me for asking, Father, but what about them?

And for all of the questions that I could ask of God this day, for all of the chaos that’s been interjected into my life in the past twenty-four hours, Christ’s response to me this morning is the same as the one he gave to Peter on the shores of Galilee nearly 2000 years ago:

“What is that to you, Elaine? You must follow me.”

Follow me. Don’t concern yourself with your brother’s portion. Concern yourself with me and all will “feel” right in due season. All is right in this season, but all will “feel” right very soon. The “new” will fit like the “old” and the path that wasn’t previously on your radar will write as perfect history—your history, Elaine. Our history—yours and mine. Follow hard after me, child, and see if I cannot be trusted with the outcome. I have called you. I am faithful. I will do it. Now, follow me.

Breakfast on the beach with Jesus, again. Thank you, Stephanie, for taking me there. Thank you, Jesus, for meeting me there. I hear the waters lapping against the shore; I smell the fire burning in the distance; I see Christ’s arms beckoning me forward to receive the food that he’s prepared for my consumption. It’s not been an easy swallow… this eating from the Lord’s fire this morning, but it’s been good for me and will be my strengthened understanding for the path that lies ahead. How grateful I am for a faith that sustains me through the night and that brings me into the glorious light of a new day! As always…

peace for the journey,

~elaine

Produced by Faith, Prompted by Love, Inspired by Hope

April 8, 2010

“We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 1:2-3).

Work. Labor. Endurance.

Produced. Prompted. Inspired.

Faith. Love. Hope.

Work produced by faith.

Labor prompted by love.

Endurance inspired by hope.

A day’s doing motivated by a heart’s holding. When was the last time the same was said of you… that the sum total of your long day’s labor was wholly {holy} fueled by the faith, love, and hope you have in and for our Lord Jesus Christ? When was the last time that these “three” enduring virtues {see 1 Cor. 13:13} produced, prompted, and inspired you to live and to do your life with an “as unto the Lord” kind of approach?

It’s something I need to keep in mind as I prepare my heart for another’s day labor within these four walls that I’ve called home for the past six years. There is a work going on in my heart that exceeds boxes and packing tape—a greater work that is prompting and inspiring me to keep at the task at hand. In some small measure {albeit much smaller than what was going on in the church at Thessalonica in Paul’s day} the work of my hands this day is part of God’s kingdom business. It doesn’t seem that way… most moments proffer as monotonous, customary, routine and necessary, and in truth, they are. But they are also so much more—a more that is attached to a hot July afternoon nearly thirteen years ago.

On that day, I signed on for the role as helpmate to my preacher husband, Billy. It’s a role I freely chose and understood on the front end of our “I do’s”–the moment when he took my hand and the hands of my two sons into his and promised his forever love and watchful care over our lives in exchange for mine…my forever love and watchful care over his life. Together, we all said “yes” to the itinerant, ministry life of a Methodist preacher, knowing and believing that the One who called us would be faithful to “complete” his work in us… wherever he leads and whatever is required of us because of that leading.

You see, as I’m pitching and sorting, throwing out and packing in, it’s all just part of being faithful to my “right now” and God’s “what’s ahead.” Without my work, labor, and endurance on the front end of this move, God’s “what’s ahead” is going to arrive in my life, and I will be unprepared for its advent. If I don’t allow my faith, love, and hope in Jesus Christ to be the underpinning of today’s activity, then God’s “what’s ahead” might be met with my dread and bitterness rather than with my sacred expectation.

I want to be found faithful with my day, friends. I want my trust in God to be the solid foundation from which I draw my strength for the tasks at hand. I want the accomplishing work of this day to, in some small way, add to the kingdom work that has been assigned to my family as we seek to honor the calling that he has been placed on us to be a people of movement.

Really, it’s a calling that has been placed on all of us as disciples of Jesus Christ. Faith moves forward with the cloudy pillar of God’s leading. Faith never stays mired in the current soil for very long. Faith stays long enough in a certain assignment to accomplish God’s kingdom agenda, but then faith has the wisdom and the courage to move on. This is my moving on moment; perhaps you’re experiencing one as well… if not a physical move then, perhaps, a movement of your heart in a new direction.

Would you allow your faith in God to produce the work of your hands this day? Your love for God to prompt your labor? Your hope in God to inspire your endurance?

God is after far much more in you and through you than what your mind can currently conceive or imagine. I don’t hold all of the answers for your life; I really don’t hold many of the answers regarding mine. But I do firmly believe in them—the answers—and I hold fast to the One who authors them all. And as far as it concerns me and my household this day, we’re putting all of our faith, love, and hope in Jesus Christ for those answers and will be faithful to do our part to make sure that God’s kingdom isn’t hindered by our unwillingness to move forward with his plan.

Let us not be a hindrance to the advancement of the kingdom, friends. Instead, let us take to our days with the understanding that even the smallest measure of willing obedience on our part will yield an eternal result that fits perfectly into the bigger plan that belongs to God. Packing tape and boxes may not look a whole lot like “faith”, but my heart tells me otherwise.

It’s also telling me, I’d better get busy, so until next time…

peace for the journey,
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