#5.4: The Word Alive

The following month, my mom, sister, and I were scheduled to all meet at Lysa TerKeurst’s Word Alive conference at the Museum of the Bible in DC. (This is the same conference I was telling you about previously where Lysa spoke about being shattered to dust.) A conference that is described more like an immersive, hands-on journey into God’s Word rather than just a lecture.

I wouldn’t know the significance until a couple of months later (and actually looking back now, I literally have goosebumps), but during the conference, olive oil was passed round to each of the conference participants to hold as Lysa recounted her experience in the Holy Land about what she learned from the olive tree. 

These are her words:

“Jesus often met in the shadow and shade of the olive tree.

The olive grove mentioned above is the Garden of Gethsemane. In this garden is where Jesus, just before his arrest said to Peter, James and John, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” (Mark 14:34).

Jesus knew the crushing heart feeling. He felt it. He wrestled with it. He carried it. And I don’t think it was a coincidence the olive tree was there in this moment of deep sorrow for Jesus.

The olive tree is such a picture of why our hearts must go through the crushing times.

First, in order to be fruitful it has to have both the east wind and the west wind. The east wind is the dry hot wind from the desert. This is a harsh wind. So harsh that it can blow over green grass and make it completely wither in one day.

The west wind, on the other hand, comes from the Mediterranean. It brings rain and life.

The olive tree needs both of these winds to produce fruit… and so do we. We need both the winds of hardship and winds of relief to sweep across our life if we are to truly be fruitful.

The crushing times are necessary times.

Another thing to consider about the olive tree is how naturally bitter the olive is and what it must go through to be useful. In October if you were to pick an olive from the tree and try to eat it, its bitterness would make you sick.

For the olive to be edible, it has to go through a lengthy process which includes…washing, breaking, soaking, sometimes salting, and waiting some more. It is a lengthy process to be cured of bitterness. If we are to escape the natural bitterness of the human heart, we have to go through a long process as well… the process of being cured.

The crushing times are processing times.

The final thing I want to consider about the olive is not just how bitter it is, but also how strong and hard it is when picked straight from the tree.

If you are harvesting olives for oil, you must pray for a soaking rain to come if you hope to get oil from the olives. It needs a hard rain of at least 2-3 hours so the water can make it all the way up the roots, through the tree, and to the olives. Then the olives can be picked and preserved.

And the best way to preserve an olive for the long run? Crush it and extract the oil from it.

The same is true for us. 

The Biblical way to be preserved is to be pressed. And being pressed can certainly feel like being crushed.

But what about the verse in 2 Corinthians 4:8 NIV where it says, “we are pressed but not crushed”? Let’s read verses 8 and 9 in the King James version: “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;”

This was one of the biggest “aha” moments for me standing in the shadow of the olive tree: crushing isn’t the olive’s end.

Crushing is the way of preservation for the olive. It’s also the way to get what’s most valuable, the oil, out of the olive. Keeping this perspective is how we can be troubled on every side yet not distressed… pressed to the point of being crushed but not crushed and destroyed.

The crushing times are preservation times.

But here’s the thing I must remember as I think back about my time with the olive tree:

When the sorrowful winds of the east blow, I forget they are necessary.
When I’m being processed, I forget it’s for the sake of ridding me of bitterness.
And when I’m being crushed I forget it’s for the sake of my preservation.
I forget all these things so easily. I wrestle and cry and honestly want to resist every bit of this. 

Oh, how I forget. Maybe God knew we all would. And so, He created the olive tree.”

Yes, He did indeed. Oh how these words resonated so deeply with me.