Raising Faith | Elaine Olsen

Raising Faith (part five): Embracing Your Stones

June 12, 2008

“So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, ‘Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before they ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.’” (Joshua 4:4-8).

I gathered a stone tonight. The dry river bed that once boasted the flood waters of another season’s living hosted my night’s walk. I will carry this stone of remembrance with me for the rest of my days as a memorial to a year well spent within the classroom walls of school named Trenton, within a grade named third, within the lives of twenty-one pupils named mine.

As I sat in the bleachers and watched seven of those original twenty-one walk across that stage to receive their high school diplomas, my heart was tender with their memories. They entered my world during a season that I chronicle as the most difficult one I have ever walked—the Trenton years. Our pastorate was not a kind one. It nearly destroyed us as a family and left us with bleeding wounds that know some scarring. Now, a decade later, we look back and remember the good, and these children represent some of the very best of that good.

It wasn’t hard to love them, but it was hard to teach them, for I wearied long and tired on their behalf. Nighttimes were rarely my time because nighttimes were spent in preparation for the daytime to follow. My constant? Early to rise…late to bed with little rest in between. I breathed my job, and as quickly as the calendared thirty-six weeks arrived, they departed, but not without leaving an indelible impression upon my heart. When those buses drove off the lot on that last day of school, many teachers sighed their relief. I wept my sadness. No, it wasn’t hard to love the twenty-one, but it sure was hard to leave them.

My weary doing had marked me forever. We laid some stones that year. Made some memories and climbed some hurdles. These kids didn’t grow up like I did. They lived and breathed an existence that ended at the county line. Their world was small, and the bigness of mine entreated the dreams of their tomorrows. We crammed a lot of living into the nine months that we shared. And when, in the future, they wander back to remember their twelve years of classroom learning, I would be lying if I didn’t hope that my name would come up from time to time.

The gathering and the building of stones. That is what tonight was about…for them and for me. Some memories are worth our monuments, and these young adult men and women will always stand as one of mine.

Raising faith includes the building of such memorials. Taking the time to carve and to collect occasions as sacred, is a holy habit that God instilled within his children from the very beginning. He knew that they…that we…are prone to our forgetting. We pilgrim through life, sometimes with little awareness of God, until we reach a river’s edge that requires his participation. Steps forged in plenty and in peace rarely take the time to reflect on seasons past when God’s faithfulness superseded our doubt—when God stacked the flood ravaged waters so that we could pass through on dry ground.

We forget to remember. And when a crossing of the Jordan becomes our required portion, if the stones of our past remain ungathered—unmarked and uncherished—then faith has little anchor for the waters ahead. Thus, God commissions us to gather a few stones along the way.

To carry them within our hearts and to document them with our hands. To write them with our words and to capture them with our cameras. To shower them with our gifts and to wrap them with our hugs. To engage them with our time and to honor them with our commitment. To consecrate them with our laughter and to baptize them with our tears. To hold them with our tender and to remember them with our pause. To pick them up when the picking is good and to place them in our pockets as stones of remembrance for a season yet to come.

Life is hard, and rivers run swift. Rarely is a river’s bank the place of our constant abiding. Sooner or later, a walk through the water’s pulsing is required. It is in those times of testing when our gathered stones mean the most. When we can reach deep within our pockets to touch the past faithfulness of our God and to remember that a stone’s gathering awaits us on the other side of our obedience.

God never leads us through the Jordan without providing a few stones worthy of our collecting. Ten years ago, God allowed some raging waters to roll through our lives in Trenton—some literal waters named Hurricane Floyd and some darker, spiritual waters named trying and testing. It was a hard embrace and harder still, was the obedience to sow some sacred seed within its consuming rage. But just this night, I was given the privilege of tasting the fruit of some of those seeds. Seven of them to be exact.

And as soon as the tassels were turned, I made my way onto the riverbed that usually hosts football to gather a few more stones for the road ahead. Stones named Taimak, Lashonda, Allison, Amanda, Morris, Damien, and Argustus. These precious graduates are the rocks in my pocket this evening. I touch them with my hands, and through my tears, I build them as a monument of remembrance—of realizing that all was not lost in that season of hard. That the tears sown in my difficult have reaped a moment that softens its scars.

(Mother Willis, Taimak and Me-1998, Taimak and Me-2008)

(Damien, Amanda, Morris, and Allison – 2008)

All of us, every last one of us, will come to Jordan’s edge in our journeys. God will ask us to move out in obedience. Sometimes in the wet. Sometimes in the dry. But all times, with the promise that beneath our feet’s submission are some stones worthy of our gathering. The gift to each one of us in those moments is remembering to pause for their collection.

If faith is to be raised, then stones must be gathered. We will never leave a river’s walk without a trophy or two to carry home.

Home to our now. Home to our forever, when at last we lay our trophies at his feet…a monument for all eternity to the One who is faithful. To the One who is worthy. To the One whose stone is worthy of my pocket for always. And so I pray…

Make me a stone gatherer, Lord. Never let my hard obedience and your faithfulness to me in that hard, go unnoticed. Instead, pause my heart to sow some seed and to build some monuments that breathe the witness of your presence within the process. I thank you for my Trenton years, for they have given me some precious stones of remembrance for the journey ahead. With each touch and with every glance of their beauty, I will recall your faithfulness to me in that season and will finally make peace with my past. You are faithful, Lord. Yesterday. Today. Always. You are my remembered Peace. Humbly and with a grateful heart, I find my rest within the shadow of your Monument this night. Amen.

I’m so glad that you continue to take this walk with me through the Raising of my faith and the raising of faith of those under my influence. Today’s focus was embracing the stones of remembrance that come to us in our walk of faith. What are some of the stones that God has given you along the way? As always, I welcome your thoughts and prayers. I hope to post a last a final word on Raising Faith sometime this weekend. May God bless the reading of these words as only he can. Thank you for your faithful participation. Shalom!

Raising Faith (part four): Embracing Your Imperfections

June 10, 2008

“Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age, and he made a richly ornamented robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.” (Genesis 37:3-4).

I am bothered by Jacob’s love for his sons. His parceling of love and partiality toward Joseph doesn’t befit his patriarchal identity. This father of twelve should have loved better. More perfect…more even. But he didn’t. Some would argue God’s will in the matter. I would argue man’s will postured toward personal preference. Either way it feels wrong, and it tears at the core of every human heart who has known the second penchant of a parent’s affection.

Joseph’s brothers knew the positioning of a second love. And as so often the case when love is labeled, bitterness seeds a root, and anger grows a tree. It was a seeding that would cost Joseph his freedom, his brothers a deep sin, and his father a profound grief. If only Jacob had known what his preferred loving—his imperfections in parenting would cost him…would cost others…then, maybe, he would have chosen a better path.

Maybe I would.

Imperfect parenting. Guilty as charged.

That was the label I wore recently, as I lashed out at my sixteen-year-old son over a situation that required my intervention. It wasn’t pretty. In fact, it was out of control. Emotion won out over reason, and within the course of a moment, I had stripped my son of his ornamental robe and reduced him to a weeping that would later bring me my own tears of sorrowed repentance.

I screwed up. And while my involvement in the situation was necessary, it could have been handled differently. This is a familiar chorus that I have echoed over the past nineteen years. To chronicle my failings as a parent would take too long, require too much ink, and undoubtedly, would have most of you wondering why I am bothering to pass along any parenting thoughts at all.

I wonder that myself. In fact, if I am not careful in this moment, I could easily allow myself a quick dive into one of my frequently visited pits—worthlessness. But God reminds me that he is after something in this moment. God is after truth—a little salt and light and seasoning for the road ahead. He reminds me that there is no profit in pretend. No merit in the masking. No sacred in the secrets.

He simply asks me to live my life out loud and as real. And real, for me, has sometimes meant a hurtful wrong for my children. What I choose to do with that “real” harbors the seed for their tomorrow. Self-preservation always seeds temporary, but humbled confession always seeds eternal. And I want my children to grow eternally through me (mistakes and all), rather than simply in spite of me.

Thus, when humbled and needed confession becomes my necessary, the I’m sorry’s and will you forgive me’s find their voice. Never once have my children denied me their forgiveness. Never once has my Savior denied me his.

Instead of my imperfection becoming fertile soil for a bitter root, my Father tills it as a demonstration of his unimaginable grace. In laymen’s terms…God can take my screws ups and use them for his kingdom purposes.

Does that merit the sin? Not at all.

But God’s grace is a transforming work. The reality of our sin—the memories of all our regrets and wishes for a “do over”—well, it isn’t the final word in the matter. Jesus Christ is the final Word. And sometimes, our biggest imperfections become the eternal embrace of our Father who offers his perfected punctuation in the end.

“But Joseph said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.’” (Genesis 50:19-20).

The saving of many lives. Who could have known what Jacob’s imperfect parenting would harvest? God knew, and he knows the same where we are concerned.

I don’t know how this strikes you in the midst of your parenting today…in the daily grind of raising faith in the lives of your children and grandchildren and of those who live under your influence. It strikes me hard, but it gives me hope.

I cannot fully see the end of yesterday’s parenting mistakes. I remember some of them, but most have been forgotten, swept away by the love of my children whose forgiveness breathes deep and whose love reaches always. I will never parent them perfectly, but I will love them with the firm belief that…

If faith is to be raised, then imperfections must be embraced.

Not forgotten. Not unmentioned. Not pushed aside and tucked away in a drawer where pride and stubborn hold the keys. No, imperfections must be owned and acknowledged. They must be treated as real and as raw, for there is no profit in pretending. No merit in the masking. And if grace is to be tilled, then grace must be sown through our humble confession. I want my life to seed eternal. I want the same for my children, and so I pray…

Keep me, Father, from the imperfect parenting that perfectly scripts a disastrous result. Instead, make me a better parent through the transforming power of your Spirit within. And when I fail…when sin finds a root because of the flesh that remains…till my soil for a better seed that blooms eternal and that raises the faith of the generation who follows. I thank you for the immeasurable privilege to parent. Forgive me when I treat it as anything but your sacred gift to me. Amen.

Raising Faith (part three): Embracing Your Silence

June 7, 2008

For my mother…who taught me how to find my silence.

Nick, 1989

Colton, 1991

Jadon, 2000

Amelia, 2002

“When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2:7, 17-19).

“If silence is golden, Elaine, then you can forget it!”

Those were her exact words, scribbled as a forever remembrance on the pages of my ninth grade yearbook. My English teacher had penned me accurately. The spoken word has never been my struggle. Much like my father, I am comfortable with giving my voice a frequent stage.

It is the silence that begs my embrace. Those moments in life when less is more and words are few. I have spent the better part of forty years taming my “comfortable and frequent” with the language of an uncomfortable tongue. Necessity requires my participation, for what is sometimes most necessary is a quiet that ponders rather than a loud that preaches.

Enter Jane. The woman who taught me…who continues to teach me…how to find my silence.

elaine, 1966

My mother’s volume of words pales in comparison to that of my father’s. The contrast between my two parents is striking. My dad writes the books, while my mother edits his words. My dad sings the melody, while my mother voices her subtle tones of harmony. My dad tells the jokes, while my mother offers her laughter. It is a strange blending, his voice and her silence. But they are my blend, and for nearly fifty years, they have found a measured peace between their extremes.

I once asked my mother about their differences…about how two people with such opposing personalities find a lifetime’s balance. Her words were few, but painted a vivid portrait.

“When I married your dad, he was looking for a stage, and I was content to be his audience.”

My mother has been that audience for him. For my sister. For me and for my children. She sits in the shadows, at peace with the shade, all the while pondering our better. Never once has she defaulted in her privilege to parent. She simply fleshes out that privilege with a gentler embrace. She reminds me of another mother. A mother whose quiet surrender to parenting would cost her the tenderest tears of her heart.

Her name was Mary, and her heart was Jesus.

Who can fathom the depths of her mothering? Who can adequately script the sacred silence of her life’s pause? We are given but a glimpse of the road that carried her weight, but the few words that chronicle her place in history paint a vivid portrait and have much to teach us about raising faith.

Mary was favored for Jesus. (Luke 1:28).
Mary was troubled by Jesus. (Luke 1:29).
Mary asked questions about this Jesus. (Luke 1:34).
Mary accepted her Jesus. (Luke 1:38).
Mary comforted the family of her Jesus. (Luke 1:39).
Mary sang the praises of her Jesus. (Luke 1:46-55).
Mary traveled with her Jesus for nine months. (Luke 2:4-5).
Mary birthed her Jesus. (Luke 2:7).
Mary wrapped her Jesus. (Luke 2:7).
Mary treasured her Jesus. (Luke 2:19, 51).
Mary pondered her Jesus. (Luke 2:19).
Mary presented her Jesus. (Luke 2:22).
Mary worried about her Jesus. (Luke 2:48).
Mary searched for her Jesus. (Luke 2:48).
Mary celebrated with her Jesus. (John 2:1-2).
Mary introduced her Jesus. (John 2:2-5).
Mary sought her Jesus. (Luke 8:19).
Mary walked with her Jesus. (John 19:25).
Mary surrendered her Jesus. (John 19:30).
Mary continued toward her Jesus. (Acts 1:14).

Mary lived a life within the shadows of her Jesus. He was her stage, and she was his audience. His shade was her harbor, and his voice was her peace. Pondering and treasuring would be her heart’s silence, while preaching and dying would be his heart’s shout. And somewhere between the extremes of quiet and words, grace breathed its first breath…

“It is finished.”

Silence is indeed, golden, when silence harbors the seed of forever.

My mother harbors those seeds. For all of the times when her words are warranted…are justified for the voicing…my mother often keeps her silence. She lingers in her pause and cradles her pondering with a gentle and tender touch. She knows that her words hold power…for blessing or for cursing. Thus, she is careful with her voice.

For all of the reasons that I love my dad, I venture to say that my life would be a complete train wreck without my mother. She has been the balance to my life’s propensity for the edge. She has been the quiet to calm my raging seas. She has been my celebrator when others forgot to come to the party. She has been my comfort when others left me to cry alone.

She birthed me. She wrapped me. She treasured and she pondered me. She presented me to her Jesus, and she worried and searched for me when I journeyed my prodigal road. She walked with me to Calvary, and she shed her tears with my surrender. She continues her steps toward me because forty-two years ago, she realized that the favor of God rested upon her womb, and she accepted his gift as her sacred privilege.

My mother has pilgrimed through this life with few words, and yet her silence has been the soil that has seeded my saving. Raising Faith through the posture of a quiet and gentle heart has been her “comfortable and her frequent.” It has not been mine, as I seek to raise a generation of faith, but it is a posture that I am learning…a posture that is sometimes required for the breathing of seeds and for the growing of grace. And so I pray…

Teach me the patience of silence, Father, so that I can better hear your voice. Show me the necessity of a pondered quiet as it relates to the best interest of my children. Bring balance to my voice—strength for the light of the stage…strength for the shade of the audience. Let my words breathe golden because of their seeding within the silence of Calvary’s pause. Thank you for giving me parents who have taught me how to speak your language…through words and through quiet. Who can fathom of the depths of your wisdom?! Amen.

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May your find your balance this weekend between words and silence. Sacred seed can sow generously in both soils. God gives the wisdom for the planting. How is he teaching you in either direction? Shalom!

Raising Faith (part two): Embracing Your Voice

June 4, 2008

For my dad who taught me to find my voice.

What do cheeseburgers at a local hamburger joint, sippy cups, potty breaks, the movie Transformers, politics, church doctrine, and apologetics have in common?

Absolutely nothing if you are an outsider looking in. But if you are an insider—someone wrapped up within this crazy scene that I call my life—it makes sense. Cheeseburgers and God talk are an easy swallow at our table. Our family’s daily routine has always been fallow soil for the sowing of sacred seeds. No matter the occasion. Regardless of the location. Whatever our current, we are a family who puts voice to our faith.

Seldom is it polished. Rarely is it perfect. But thankfully, hardly ever has it been silent. We are a family of words. There is not a quiet one of us in the bunch. We embrace our emotions with reckless abandon and with the fortitude of warriors. We fight hard. We laugh loudly. We cry boldly, and we love unashamedly. Silence has rarely been our portion. For good or for ill, if we are feeling it or pondering it, we usually speak it.

It has always been this way for me. Early on, my daddy taught me to find my voice. His voice…his life…was meant for the stage. Dramatic flare has been his scripting. He spins and weaves a story like no other. I spent the nights of my young years being lulled to sleep by the wild imaginings of this man whose voice commanded my attention. Table time was always an occasion where the stories of his day would find their rest within my soul. Whether out in public or in the safety of home turf, I loved hearing my father talk. There was something true and honest and pure about his speech.

My daddy never lied to me. He lived his life out loud and in front. He was genuine in his pursuit and in his passion for God. The faith he talked was the faith he walked. Seldom was it polished. Rarely was it perfect, but always was it professed. And while there were a few who had a hard time swallowing his unedited life, I welcomed it. I continue to do so, for my father is still in the habit of taking the stage, and I am still in the grateful habit of giving him an audience.

Spoken faith. Embracing the voice of our story. Putting words to the faith that scripts our hearts so that others might chorus their harmony alongside.

It seems a simple thing…this sacred speaking, and yet we are prone to our listless and stammering tongues. To our forgetting and to our postponing. To our “saving it for another day” until we are better prepared—freshly polished and closer to our perfection. We wait for the appropriate without realizing that our appropriate is now. For whenever faith is the issue, speaking the truth of its story becomes our necessary appropriate.

To our kids. To our friends. To the body of Christ and to those beyond. Whatever stage boasts our presence, our story comes with us. And if silence is our portion, then faith remains as unspent. This is a tragedy for the kingdom of God because an unspent faith always yields empty and breathes shallow.

If faith is to be raised in this generation and in the generation to come, then faith must be spoken aloud.

We can never assume that our actions are enough. Faith, does indeed, come through the hearing, and hearing through the Word of God (Romans 10:17). No wonder God’s strong mandates for his people to impress their faith upon their children. To talk about it when they sat at home and when they walked along the road. When they lay down and the when they arose. He knew that they…that we…would be prone to its neglect. A faith not spoken is a faith quickly forgotten.

And with our forgetting comes one of the most unnecessary and tragic ends I believe to be recorded in all of scripture.

“Moreover, in those days I saw men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Amnon and Moab. Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah.” (Nehemiah 13:23-24).

When God’s people forget to remember his directives, when they refuse to live his requirements, their children are at risk of losing the capacity to speak their native tongue—the language of their Father. Instead, they assimilate their speech to the patterns of another people—a foreign tongue never meant for their taste. Sacred speak is replaced by temporal translation, and words no longer breathe with the lasting fullness of forever. They spend as casual and swallow as empty.

That was and still is, my friends, the danger of an unspoken faith. The world is quick to find its voice when we remain content to keep our silence. And I, for one, will not cripple my children with a language that will never speak them into the folds of heaven. No, I will give them my faith through my words in prayerful belief that the language of my Father will become the language of their souls.

It starts with cheeseburgers and questions and wishing wells and locked closets and fretful wonderings. In the simple of routine and in the complex of struggles. In all those teachable moments that present themselves in the seemingly ordinary, while begging the possibility of a shaping toward the extraordinary.

Raising a people of faith is possible; in fact it is probable when done with a voice that will no longer keep its silence.

And so I say to you today, as loudly as my words can type…

Speak your faith to your children. To your grandchildren and to your neighbor. Even if they are grown and scattered and seemingly past the point of receiving your words. Fear not the taunts of perfection and polish. Rather, embrace the sound of your voice, and let your words fall as fresh seed upon the souls in desperate need of learning to speak the language of our Father.

It is not always easy, but it is always good and right, and it is the mandate given to every last one of us as partakers in our Father’s kingdom. And so I pray…

Give me courage, Lord, to find my voice. Give me a melody to sing your praises. Script my tongue with the sacred language of your holy Word, and sanctify my mouth for your intended purposes. Let not my fear keep me from speaking the truth of who you are, and let not my weak and sometimes feeble faith be a hindrance to those I teach. And where I need some polishing and perfection, come and cleanse accordingly. Amen.

Copyright © May 2008 – Elaine Olsen. All rights reserved.

How is God teaching you to speak your faith to others? I welcome your comments and look forward to continuing our study together. Shalom!

Raising Faith (part one): Embracing Your Faith

June 3, 2008

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).

Forty-two years ago, I took my first breath. It was Easter Sunday, 1966.

My father stood behind a pulpit, voicing the good news of an empty tomb, while my mother cradled her pain, voicing the good news of an empty womb. I christened that day with my cries of arrival. Easter, in turn, christened my life with its cries of resurrection. We have companioned together for over four decades now…Easter and me. Every step I have taken…every moment I can recall…has been walked in the shadowing constant of the cross. I have had my moments of clarity along the way…of fully understanding and accepting the gift of the cross as my own. But from my beginning, an Easter walk has been my portion.

My parent’s named me accordingly. Faith Elaine. And while everyone calls me by my middle name, my first name is the one that scripts the truth hidden within my heart.

Faith.

My mom and dad had a big task ahead of them…this raising of “Faith.” It would not be easy, but it was always done with the understanding that parenting was a sacred privilege, rather than a necessary obligation. Over the years, they shaped me for kingdom living—a journey that was rooted in the truth of God’s Word and always in the fellowship of God’s people. And now, four decades later, I have been given the privilege of doing the same.

Beside my bed sits a gift from a ten year old son—a plaque that reads, “Mother, I am what I am because you are who you are.” I keep it close by as a reminder of the sacred privilege that I have been given to be his parent. He is nineteen now. There are three others who follow him. I have been a mom for nearly half of my life. Of all the titles that I have worn or could ever wear, this is the one that sticks.

It has not always been a comfortable cloaking. I didn’t take to motherhood with a natural tendency, as so many mothers do. It was a hard fit for me, and on many days…it still is. I am not an expert on parenting strategies, nor do I wear my motherhood mantle with ease. And while I might, on occasion, have a few tidbits of advice I would like to offer someone regarding the issue, I have learned to find my silence. Recently, however, God has challenged me to find my voice. To pen my thoughts on some lessons that I have learned and am continuing to learn about raising my children to become three men and one woman whose hearts will be forever written with the Easter story.

When I read the words of my son’s gift, I wonder as to the sacred shaping that has come to each of them through my hands and through my heart. Will it be enough to lead them to Jesus, or have my imperfections within the process scripted them for another road? What part do I play in their journey of faith? Am I raising a generation of children who will one day raise the name of their Creator before all men as the witness of their hearts?

That is my constant and abiding hope, and one reason why I have decided to tenderly explore this topic of…

Raising faith.

God thought the topic important. His Word is filled with the mandate. Over and over again, he charges parents and the community of faith with the responsibility of teaching and of raising up children to revere his name. In Biblical times, some did it right. Some did it very wrong, but all were charged with the task. Not a lot has changed since then. We are still teaching and raising. Sometimes right and sometimes wrong, but always with the sacred mandate to do it.

The “right” is always scripted with the story of a faith lived—a faith embraced and meted out within the hearts of those who find their rhythm with the heart of God. The “wrong” is usually scripted with the story of a faith forgotten, perhaps professed, but never fully embraced nor embedded within the hearts of those who almost always walk to the rhythm of a selfish drum.

I am the keeper of both hearts. I have done many things right. And there has been some wrong. But this one truth is truer than most.

If faith is to be raised, then faith must be lived.

Real, authentic living. In season, throughout all seasons. In pleasant and in heat. In plenty and in want. In laughter and in tears. In pasture and in famine. In triumph and in testing. In comings and in goings. In Sunday and in all days. Everyday. Faith…

simply lived.

Children, and those who have been given to us for influence, are not after our perfection and our fake. They are after our real. What they see is what they tend to believe. Indeed, what we are can be a precursor of what they become, and that, my friends, is a heavy cloaking to wear. We are not fully responsible for the outcome, but we would be remiss if we did not own our part in the process. A bent toward kingdom living is best birthed when kingdom faith is boldly lived. And so I ask you this day,

How is your faith living itself out upon the stage of your influence? Does your heart beat with the genuine pulse of our Father? Is your faith believable? Do others around you see the truth of God’s story lived out in yours?

Being uncomfortable with the question is OK. It is right and good to search our hearts in the matter. Staying uncomfortable with the question, however, is a tragedy, for in this one moment, your story of faith can alter its course. You can begin the steps of another direction—a truer path that fleshes out the matter in the light of God’s illuminating presence.

It is never too late to walk the road of faith. Let me write that again. It is never too late to alter your forever, and in turn, to alter the forever of those within your realm of influence.

For forty-two years, I’ve been making adjustments. And while my earthly pilgrimage began on an Easter Sunday, my missteps have sometimes landed me back at Friday’s tomb. I do not always live as authentic as my speak, but God’s grace has always lived authentic. It breathes genuine, and it is a grace that I love and accept because, as a parent, it offers me a plenty to draw upon when my children are in need of its comfort.

Raising faith. I have been doing it nearly half of my life. My parents have been doing it for over half of theirs, and my God has been doing it for always…for all of us. I wonder if he wearies with the doing. I know I do some days, and so I pray…

Raise me up, Father, to a better faith. Grow me so that I can grow others. You have marked my life with the story of your resurrection. Let me walk in the truth and grace of Easter’s embrace so that my faith becomes real in the shadow of Calvary’s cross. Let my life breathe as authentic to those you have placed within my keep. And when my children are grown and gone, may the sacred portions of my influence continue to live on in them as they shepherd young hearts toward an Easter’s end. Amen.

Copyright © May 2008 – Elaine Olsen. All rights reserved.

Thank you for joining me today as I begin a mini-series on a few things that I am learning about “raising faith”…especially as it pertains to parenting. We are all called to the task of faith building, even if our children are grown. Even if our wombs have remained silent. Please feel free to leave your comments along the way. I cherish your participation in my life at this time. Your thoughts and your dreams are welcome here. May God bless your day with his rich anointing and with an awareness of his love for you. Shalom.

Category Archives: Raising Faith