Category Archives: christian perfection

Contending

“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,

the purest place…

The purest place.

The place from which I want to write my words. Greater still, the place from which I want to live my life. To write and live otherwise is hypocrisy.

Hypocrite. The word hupokrites meaning “one who acts pretentiously, a counterfeit, one who assumes and speaks or acts under a feigned character; a dissembler, pretender.”

I’m not a pretender; I live out loud before my God and before you. The me you find here isn’t the sanitized, polished version of me. Some are uncomfortable with that; some would rather see me otherwise. No, what you find here is a woman on the road toward perfection. Some days getting it right; most days living beneath that “right”. If there is any good living in me, it is solely based on the sanitization that has come to me through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. He, alone, is my worthiness.

To write from a place of perfection is to never write at all. If “having it all figured out” were the prerequisite for blog entries, then none of us should ever pick up the pen again. I’m not kidding. What kingdom profit is there in our pretending? What can be gained from prettying up our “pictures” other than to stroke our egos via the compliments of others? I don’t want to write from a place of pretension. I don’t want to read it as well. I just want to live real and to be in a community of people who feel the same way.

This means, there will be days when I struggle…

with Sundays.
with worship.
with sin.
with disappointments.
with regrets.
with anger.
with love.
with parenting.
with selfishness.
with unkind words.
with unclean thoughts.
with unforgiveness.
with _____________.

This also means there will be days when I joyously overflow…

with Sundays.
with worship.
with freedom.
with hope.
with promise.
with kindness.
with love.
with parenting.
with selflessness.
with encouragement.
with purity of thought.
with grace.
with ______________.

You’ll find it all when you come here because my all is what I have to give you, not some sanitized version therein. This is my life; my walk of grace; my journey toward peace. No one thing, one experience, one difficulty gets a pass. It’s all open ground for God’s kingdom purposes.

Our days and nights, nights and days, are filled with the stuff of our becoming. Our moving closer into the image of Christ. Our being shaped and fitted for a bridal gown worthy of the aisle of heaven. We don’t get that dressing overnight, friends. In fact, until we shed this flesh, we live each day exposed, half-dressed for the entire world to see. I think God has created our flesh for public disclosure. In doing so, you and I become a living witness and testimony to the power of God’s transforming work in our lives.

But we’ve perfected our cover-ups, and they are easily detected by God and others. It’s painful to watch, painful to read, painful because there is no healing, no moving onto perfection, as long as the hiding of our “stuff” takes precedence over the exposure therein.

I’m not suggesting that your “putting it all out there” in a public forum is the best way for you to work through your problems; some issues are better dealt with in the privacy of your own sacred space with God. Some things are too raw for public viewing. What I am suggesting, though, is that when you and I do take the steps to “work out” our salvation with our words and our honest approach to the process, grace and kindness should be the portion we afford one another; not judgment or condemnation.

The purest place. The inner chamber where the living God resides and where faith’s illumination and grace’s redeeming work is accomplished.

If we cannot write our words from that place because we fear the words of others in this place, then we live as hypocrites. Counterfeits. Characters on a stage that, when the curtain is drawn and the applause has subsided, go home to live in isolation and emptiness. And I, for one, refuse to resign my life to isolation.

I choose exposure. To God and to you. For some of you, that’s not an easy swallow. Your palate prefers a smoother, more digestible menu. I understand, and I graciously excuse you from the table. But for the few of you who’ve made it this far, who’ve hung with me and who think there just might be something to this “being real” with one another, then stick around. There’s more to come because, God willing, I have a few more seasons to walk. And whether I want them to or not, words find me on the path. Fill me, and then force me to pen them for public disclosure.

The sustaining prayer of my heart is that when I do dip the pen into the inkwell of my thoughts—when I choose public disclosure over private rumination—my words will write from the purest place within. The place where my heart intersects with the heart of God and where the resulting conclusion births kingdom seed.

You are my friends. I value your presence in my life. I value your life. This isn’t a game for me, and certainly isn’t about painting you a perfect picture. It’s solely about living God’s truth out loud and on purpose with the hope of encouraging your heart to do the same.

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, always be found acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. Amen. So be it. As always…

peace for the journey,

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“hupokrites” from… Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary Old Testament (Chattanooga: AMG Publishers, 1992), 1423-1424.

Growing up Solid

“We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” (Hebrews 5:11-14).

The riding lawn mower quit working recently. Apparently, grounded tree limbs and freeway driving speeds over top of said tree limbs don’t make for a good mix. I’m not surprised by the breakdown. I’m only surprised it didn’t happen sooner.

After a few days at the shop and a costly repair, I informed the “lawn mowers” in my household that mowers and sticks don’t mix; they nodded their understanding. It didn’t sink in; not fully. For just the other day, the “lawn mower” man was at it again, driving like Mario Andretti, all the while crunching and munching the remnants from a recent storm beneath the blades of the newly renovated mower. When I confronted him about the issue, he looked at me with all sincerity and ease and simply replied…

“Mom, I don’t do sticks.”

My immediate response to him?

“Son, that is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You don’t do sticks? Are you kidding me? How old are you?

I’ll spare you the rest of the details. Your imagination is ample enough to create a fairly clear picture of just how it all went down.

I’ve raised two impatient sons as it pertains to the “doing” of the rudimentary tasks of daily living, which includes anything that doesn’t make their list of “how a young man should be spending his time.” And while they’ve always been willing to comply with these daily chores (and to their credit, with little grumbling alongside), the rules of engagement for accomplishing the tasks share one common denominator.

The faster the better. The sooner it’s done, the sooner the fun. Sometimes it works out that way; sometimes it doesn’t. They are both finding out via personal experience that faster isn’t always the best route for progress. That speeding through life sometimes presents them with a yield—a pause that forces them to grapple with their impatience and their choice to either “grow up” in this area or to keep returning to the bottle of their infancy.

As it goes with them, so it goes with me. There are seasons in my life when the pressure to mature burdens me with the responsibility of having to make a choice along those lines. In the days of my youth, I couldn’t wait to be older; at least then I would be in control of my decisions.

I was right; I’m now in control of my decisions, but there are times when the comfort of a little milk and a warm blanket are tempting. Times when I wish I could revert to the cradle and leave all the decisions up to someone else. Times when I, like my sons, say dumb things to others and to God, in hopes that my words make sense, but all the while knowing that they don’t. That they are offensive to the ears of those on the receiving end.

Unreasonable words. Thoughts based on emotion rather than truth. Casual statements issuing forth from a place of unbelief, fear, and selfishness. Justifications that aren’t thought out but, rather, are based on inconsistent sentiment that shrouds my flesh in self-interest.

I spoke as much to God this morning.

“Where are you God?”
“I think you’ve forgotten about me.”
“Could you just hurry up with the answer?”
“Is there really any point to this day?”
“I imagine that this is about as good as it’s going to get, so I’d better get up and get it over with.”

Yammering unbelief like that, on and on for a few moments, only to be quickly followed up by my confession.

“I’m sorry God. That was really a dumb thing to say.”

And then I laughed; and then he did. And thus, the conversation was opened up for a better word; a truer truth; a love and a grace that exceeds my stupidity to say,

“Now that we’ve cleared that up, elaine, let’s move on to some solid food.”

It’s time to move on with some solid food, my friends. Our maturing doesn’t happen overnight or with a quick ride around the lawn. Our “growing up” in the faith takes time … takes a willingness on our parts to bend to the menial tasks of picking up sticks and slowing our pace. Of entreating the pauses that find us, whether forced upon us by others or freely chosen by us because we’ve come to the conclusion that faster doesn’t always yield better. That solid food requires a longer chew.

And that chewing can, in fact, bring pleasure to the process of our becoming.

How about you? What excuses are you bringing to the table of grace today? What could you possibly offer up to our God as a justification for your staying as you are? What bottle of milk tastes better than a steak? What questions could you ask him that remain without answers? What elementary understanding stifles your “gettin’ on with the gettin’ on” as it pertains to your faith journey?

Can this mother’s heart be honest?

It’s time to grow up. Time to slow down and sit with Father God and listen to what he has to say. Why? Because if we don’t, we risk a lifetime of infancy, never tasting the freedom and joy that comes with moving onto our maturity in Christ. Jesus didn’t go all the way to the cross and back so that we could stay as we are; he made that journey so that we could become a living conduit of his kingdom and his grace.

And that kind of sacred consecration and calling, my friends, deserves more than our menial attempts at maturity. Kingdom bestowment deserves our unparalleled obedience and humble willingness to grow into our crowns and to be thankful for the grace it has taken to make them a worthy fit.

Leave the bottles for the infants and keep to the table of rich meats this week. I’ll meet you at the table of grace where the food is solid and the communion is ever sweet. As always,

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a seventh birthday celebration

a seventh birthday celebration

Today, my daughter celebrates her birthday. She is seven. Yesterday she was six.

It’s been an interesting “watch” … this observing her as she navigates her thoughts about growing a year older. For months, she’s been planning her birthday festivities and adding to her “gift list”. A couple of days ago, I caught her staring at herself in the mirror. When I asked her what she was doing, she simply replied, “I’m seeing if I look any older.”

Miss Amelia has longed for seven ever since she turned six. It’s the way of her young heart … looking forward and hoping that with this birthday will come more maturity, more responsibility, more being the grown-up she sees in her older family members. It’s hard being the caboose of the family some days. She wants to catch up to the rest of us; she seems to think she’s missing out on something by being the youngest.

Being seven, to Amelia, seems a whole lot better than staying six. But for all of the reasons she could articulate behind her desire to see this day arrive, there’s still a part of her that longs to remain a child. I saw a glimpse of it yesterday.

Amelia closed the door to our bedroom (always a good indication that she is up to something, perhaps even trying to hide something). When I opened the door, she quickly turned off the television. I asked her what she was watching. She was hesitant and then softly said, “A baby show, Mom, and I didn’t want anyone to know. Seven-year-olds don’t watch baby shows.” I nodded my understanding and then left her to her internal wrangling regarding the issue.

Somewhere between six and seven comes a struggle—a season of clarification between our baby days and our moving on to maturity. Biblically speaking, the number seven is a number representing completeness and perfection:

*God’s seventh day rest after six-days of creation (Genesis 1-2:4);
*Seventh year sabbatical rest of the land (Lev. 25:2-7);
*Feast of Tabernacles and Passover lasted seven days (Judges 14:12, 17);
*Pharoah’s dream regarding the land / seven good years, seven famine years (Genesis 41:1-36);
*Seven churches in Revelation (Revelation 2-3);
*Forgiveness requirements = 70 x 7 (Matthew 18:21-22).

And while I’m not obsessed with the numeric aspect of Scripture, I do think there is something to this “seven”. At the least, it intrigues me, especially as I walk through this day with my daughter and see her wrestling with the issue. She wants to grow up, yet there remains her inclination, a smaller preference for her former days.

As is goes with Amelia, so it goes with my own heart. To get to “seven”—my completion, my perfection and my final end—I’ve got to move past “six.” I think I’ve been stuck on “six” for a long season. I think we all could echo the same. Days when we desire to know the fullness of what our Father has intended for us to be, yet days when we can’t seem to get past the “baby” in us.

As Christians on pilgrimage to a better country, there is a sacred tension we walk between the celebration of our seven and the seemingly interminability of our six. We long for the arrival of the party, for the recognition of our completion, yet we’re caught in our current status of growth. These six years that belong to us—the lifespan between our birth and our death—seem long and laborious most days. When we look in the mirror, we see the witness of a six-year season that hasn’t always been kind but that is more than willing to carve its wrinkled remembrance. Like my daughter, we are looking for signs of growth indicating that our “seven” stands ready on the horizon and that our maturity has warranted our participation in the celebration.

The party is not long off, friends. Soon, each of us will move from our six to our seven. We will sit with our Host, look back over the scenes of our lives and, together with him, call it done, completed … a perfection that’s been worth the six years’ collection of steps to get there.

And if today’s celebration in my family is any indication of what our “seven” is going to be like, then there will be cake and presents a plenty, a song or two sung in our honor, and lots of wishes come true.

May you, each one, know this day that seven is on its way. The six we now journey is preparing our hearts for the seven that is soon to arrive. I look forward to sharing the party with you. As always,

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Through and Through

“Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21-24).

It was waiting for me in my inbox this morning. An email from my friend who is battling for her physical health from a hospital room that’s been her home for over a month now. Her life has changed dramatically in that time. She went into surgery with high hopes of gaining some relief from a tumor that was growing on her upper spine. What she received, instead, was partial paralysis in addition to her continuing fight against cancer.

Her hopes have changed over the past month. Today she lingers with the prospect of a wheelchair and a return home very soon. I imagine it to be enough for her in this moment—to get home to her family and to bask in the warmth of some normal, if only for a season.

She’s journeying down a long and uncertain road right now. A “through and through” kind of work in her own heart and life that doesn’t seem fair. That hardly seems necessary. That rarely feels right and good and pure as it pertains to the life of a saint.

And while I would never want to “explain away her pain” as some part of her purification process … as if there is something in her that “needs” the lesson of a difficult suffering … I do know this, as it pertains to the life of a saint. To the lives of all of us who know Jesus and are walking ever closer to seeing Him face to face.

Our process of becoming like Jesus is a “through and through” process. A word in the Greek language (holotelous) meaning “All, or the whole, completely or entirely.”[i]

The opposite of holotelous is monos meaning “only, alone, without others.”[ii]

Thus, our sanctification is a collective work, not a partial or solitary experience. It is an entire work. A completed work that can only be accomplished through the faithful hands of a peaceful God who seeds our lives, as we go and all along, with the flames of holy fire with a holy end in mind. He is a God who is after far more in us and through us than we are willing to concede at the time of our salvation.

Surrendering our hearts to the way of the cross—to the road of a crucified life—is a costly decision. It means that we willingly submit our flesh to the purifying flames of a holier notion … a better becoming that would otherwise be left undone should we have chosen otherwise—to stay as we are rather than who we are meant to be.

When we say “yes” to Jesus and his cross, we say “yes” to our Father’s “through and through.” Rarely do we understand on the front side of our “yes” what that will look like in the seasons to come. A good “ignorance” I suppose. God grows us in our sanctification. To receive it all in a first moment with Jesus would be too much. Perhaps, would be too hard. Too difficult of a cloaking at the point when our tender hearts cross the line from flesh to faith.

A “through and through” kind of work is a gift from a gracious God who understands that the more we come to know him … that the more we grow in our understanding of just exactly how long and wide and high and deep his blood was shed … the more willing we become to surrender our flesh for the same. When we finally come to the place of a deeper knowing of Christ’s love for us, then we are willing, like the Apostle Paul, to surrender it all—our flesh and our now—for the sake of our completed end.

It’s not easy. It’s not always fun. It’s never predictable, and rarely does it ever make sense. But in God’s hands and through God’s love, of this one truth we can be sure.

It’s always good. It’s always right, and his work in us is always for us. For Him. And for a kingdom’s sake that exceeds our momentary grasp at understanding.

There is coming a day, when our “through and through” will make it through to the other side. God will push our flesh through an invisible barrier, and in a moment’s pause, our faith will be made sight. We will have the glorious truth of our difficult now laid out before us in a way that makes perfect sense and that will leave us panting a breathless “hallelujah” for the process that we walked to get there.

Hold onto the good, weary pilgrims. Hold onto the promise. His name is Jesus, and he is faithful to complete in us that which he began in us over 2000 years ago—perfection. A “faultless to stand before the throne” kind of finish because of his willingness to bow before the throne on a cross.

Oh, what wondrous love is this? It’s a love that calls us to a “through and through” kind of faith. May we all have the good sense and the willing “yes” in our hearts to take up our cross and follow faith through to the threshold of our finish that will birth the truth of our beginning again.

A beginning that lands us at home, at rest, and face to face with the One who created us with such sacred splendor in mind. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus. As always,

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Copyright © March 2009 – Elaine Olsen

[i] Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary NT (AMG Publishers: Chattanooga, 1992), 1039.
[ii] Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary NT (AMG Publishers: Chattanooga, 1992), 996.

 

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