Author Archives: Karla Jo Wasion

I love Jesus and His Church. His Word is Truth, His heart is good, and His return is sure.

Genesis 39—He’s With Us Either Way

{The story of Joseph resumes, and the buying and selling of humans is nothing new.}

“Now Joseph had been taken to Egypt. An Egyptian named Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and the captain of the guards, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him there. The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, serving in the household of his Egyptian master.”

Son of Jacob. Grandson of Abraham. Hebrew royalty, so to speak. Favored son of his father. He was no down and out. This ain’t a rags to riches kind of story.

It’s a God was with him story.

The Lord was with Joseph. With him as everything he did succeeded. As he found favor upon favor, being put in charge of his master’s house. As he experienced the blessings of God over everything he had.

And when Joseph underwent the temptations of a woman throwing herself at him, God was with him. With him in the false allegations and his fall from Potipher’s grace. With him in the prison. With him in the loneliness; while he was missing his father’s house.

We are well to remember that Joseph didn’t know his story as it unfolded. He couldn’t skip to the end and see the redemption that was coming. There was nothing easy about Joseph’s story, but there is something so good in it.

We’ve all had, and are having, hard stories. But when we learn to believe that God is with us in the hard places, we will also learn that just because something is hard, it doesn’t mean it isn’t very good.

But here in the middle of our story where we can’t see how it all shakes out, or the redemption that’s coming, we are trying to figure out the God with us parts. And sometimes, maybe we get confused. Like, we think that surely God is with us when our church is full and everyone likes us. Or when people are getting saved at our altar calls and the sick are healed at the laying on of our hands. When our marriage is good and our job is good and our ministry is good and it’s just raining goodness.

But not when we’re binge eating again because we still haven’t learned how to stop eating our emotions. Or when we fight with our spouse for the third time this week. Not when we barely make eye contact with people because we just don’t want to have to engage one more time today. Not when we have crawled into a hole with our depression and just don’t have the strength to crawl back out.

When our water gets shut off because we can’t pay the bill. When our character is being questioned. When none of the dreams we had are coming true. When this sickness won’t leave, or the diagnosis is a shock to our system. When the loss feels like it might break your heart so hard it will never recover.

Those aren’t the signs that God is with us, right?

But this is what He really said…

“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.” – Isaiah 41:10

“Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.” – Deuteronomy 31:6

“Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” – Hebrews 13:5

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” – Psalm 23:4

“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” – 1 Corinthians 3:16

The evidence that He is with us is simple. He said He would be, and He doesn’t lie. His faithfulness is all the evidence we need.

Let’s lift our vision higher. Stop measuring God by earthly standards. He is with us, always. Redemption is our story and heaven is our home. Whether you are in the penthouse or the prison, look up. God is with you.

Our Tree of Life: Suffering and Redemption

It was late. I needed to sleep but couldn’t get my brain to agree with my body. It’s become that thing that I do. Go to bed and not sleep. Lately, my brain’s aversion to sleep has been leading me to the secret place and middle of the night sessions with the Holy Spirit. This night was that kind of night.

Suddenly, a picture showed up in my mind. A tree. Large, lush, very green, and full of fruit. It was the tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.

And then I saw the cross and Jesus hanging on it. And suddenly, scriptures came across the screen of my mind.

“Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” – John 6:53

“Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written: Everyone who is hung on a tree is cursed.” – Galatians 3:13

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” – John 14:6

 “…that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” – Philippians 3:10-11

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” – Galatians 2:20

And these thoughts pole vaulted into my brain –

The cross is now our tree of life, and Jesus is the fruit of that tree.

We no longer have access to that original tree of life. The one that came without suffering. The one that required no death.

Ours is a different tree.

We must be reminded of this tree and what it means, beyond “Jesus died for my sins”. We must take of the fruit of this tree in order to know life. We must partake of what Jesus suffered so that we too can obtain His resurrection.

For most of us, our suffering looks different than His. None of the people in my immediate circle, or in any of the circles near me, are being killed for the gospel. But there is certainly that suffering taking place in other parts of the world, and for those ones I pray Godspeed and mercy.

But here, in my world, there are other sufferings, as the death to our flesh is called for on a daily basis. A laying down of our own will in order to fulfill the will of the Father. A death to dreams and wants and our 5-year plan for our lives. The tearing down of idols that seems unending as the light continues to expose what has been hidden in us. A giving of ourselves when we would rather keep, remaining when we would rather leave, being emptied of our own selves so that we can be continually filled with Spirit of God.

Letting mercy triumph over judgment in our own hearts toward those around us. Giving grace that hasn’t been earned. Showing compassion, not just for the least of these, but for those who are against us. Speaking mercy instead of condemnation. Dropping stones that feel like justice in our hands.

Please tell me you’re getting this, because I can go on all day.

The cross is not just the place Jesus died a long, long time ago. It is where we die every single day. It is our tree of life.

And I have said all of that, to say this:

Oh, what a God! He looked through time and knew that we would go astray. Knew we would leave Him and claim our lives as our own. So He made a way before we even knew we needed one.

When He set flaming swords in front of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden, He knew there would be another tree, in the fullness of time, and it would bring eternal life to all who would partake of its fruit.

To taste the suffering of the cross is to taste the redemption of the tree of life.

I find it all a little mind-blowing.

Genesis 38—Women Are Scappy & Sometimes God Kills People

In the middle of Joseph’s story, there is a detour that is chapter 38, about one of his brothers, Judah. He had a son named Er, who married a woman named Tamar. Er died, and then his other brother died, leaving only Judah’s youngest son, not of marrying age.

Tamar. She could teach us girls a thing or two about survival in a harsh world. She had strategy instead of self-pity. She took a risk because it was necessary, not trendy. She was strong and she was bold. It wasn’t a cause or a headline, it was who she was and what she had to do.

Her father-in-law, Judah, had promised her his youngest son, with no intention of keeping that promise. He left her as a widow in her father’s house out of fear that his last son would die as the first two did.

Those first two sons were evil, and God killed them, but perhaps it was easier to think it had something to do with their proximity to Tamar.

{Maybe we would all like to think that bad things happen because of someone else.}

Tamar waited. For a long time, she remained in her father’s house, waiting for a promise to be kept. And then she took a risk. Did something scandalous. Pretended to be a prostitute and slept with her father-in-law, unrecognized by him. He promised her a goat in return. Overwhelming generosity was not his strong suit, apparently.

She demanded security until the goat came. Not because she was excited to get a goat, but because she was a smart chick with a plan. He gave up his signet ring, his cord, and his staff. Bad move, Judah, bad move. It will come with a hard lesson.

Tamar is now pregnant by her father-in-law. When he finds out she’s pregnant, not knowing that he is the father, he orders her to be burned to death. And then Tamar delivers the coup de grâce – the signet ring, cord, and staff of the man who got her pregnant. He repents in shame, and the story concludes with Tamar giving birth to twins.

I don’t know about you, but I am left wondering why this story was given to us. What did God want us to know from it? I don’t know those answers, all I can do is share what I learned from it –

First, women can be scrappy. We have a limit to how far we can be pushed before we come out swinging, and if it means survival, we will dig deep. We will risk and be scandalous and we will beat you at your own game if you give us half a chance. And in a world where women have been treated as property, used and discarded, oppressed and dismissed… this instinct for survival is often our ace-in-the-hole. But my point in all of those words is this: we are God’s creation and this ability to rise up and come back, to be strong and courageous and fierce, did not develop over time. This is how we are made.

We cannot use it as a source of pride, nor should we pretend it’s not there. It isn’t feminism. We are not better than men, and in many ways, we are not even equal. We cannot do everything they can do, and they cannot do everything we can do. That’s not how God set it up. But we are also not less than. We are not things to be owned, traded, or sold. We are co-heirs with Christ. We are part of the whole that is the image of God. We are strong and we do hard things and we will fight hard, for our own survival, but also for our families and our communities, because that is how God created us. On purpose. We don’t have to insist the world acknowledge it for us, we can simply walk it out.

Second, sometimes, God kills people, and we need to stop pretending that He doesn’t. Both of Judah’s sons were evil in God’s eyes, but perhaps not in anyone else’s eyes. Judah may not have been able to see the evil in his own sons’ hearts, but God could, and the scriptures tell us God killed them for it.

Can we be ok with that? And if we can’t, then can we acknowledge that our inability to be ok with it doesn’t really change anything? I know the need to explain it all is strong, but honestly, sometimes the best explanation is simply that God is God and we are not. We can either trust that He is good and right and just and merciful, or we can choose to believe that our own sense of right and wrong and justice is where the bar rests.

I choose the former. And I choose to let it reaffirm that I serve an all-powerful God who is the God of both heaven and earth, who sees all and knows all and does what is right whether I understand it or not.

A God who has created me to fight when I need to, for myself and for those I love.

Genesis 37—It’s An Act of Faith to See Things Differently

Joseph, the favorite son of Jacob is now entering center stage and his story tells us it’s not always a pleasant place to stand. So right out of the gate, I’m going to throw this out there…

We are part of God’s plan of redemption. Just because the place we are in is unpleasant, perhaps even painful, does not mean that it is not a good place in the plan of God.

His brothers thought he was boasting about dreams of them bowing down to him. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t, but either way, it was not what it seemed. Those prophetic dreams were not simply of Joseph ruling over his family, but of Joseph being positioned to save his family.

Jacob believed his favorite son had been killed, but it was not as it seemed. The blood on his tunic did not mean Joseph was dead, but that his brothers were covering up their own sin. His son was not only alive, but being positioned by God to bring repentance from those same brothers so they could experience forgiveness.

Those dreams Joseph had didn’t tell the whole story. He would come into a royal position of power and yes, his brothers would bow down to him, but it would all come at a cost. Because things aren’t always as they seem.

In Josephs’ story we see a boy who becomes a man in the house of Egypt, a man who clearly had the favor of God on him. Until it looked like he didn’t. In the very next chapter, he went from the penthouse to the prison in a day.

We tend to see our circumstances through a particular lens and that lens is almost always focused in on us. Our suffering is ours and it hurts and it can feel unjust, or at least unfair.

It is an act of faith to see it differently.

Joseph comes across as a boastful 17 year old brat. The favored son who rubbed it in the faces of the sons who were not favored. But that is not why Joseph went through what he did.

He was part of the plan of redemption, both his mountaintops and his valleys. Even his brothers were part of the plan. Think of what needed to happen in order for Joseph to end up as second in command in Egypt.

  • He had to have been sent to check on his brothers that day.
  • When he didn’t find them where he thought they were, he had to keep going, rather than just go home to tell his father he couldn’t find them.
  • His brothers had to hate him enough to want him dead.
  • Two different brothers had to intervene to thwart the plan to kill him.
  • The Ishmaelite caravan had to come by when it did, and they had to decide to sell Joseph as a slave.
  • That Ishmaelite caravan had to be heading to Egypt.

The rest of the story is for another day and another chapter, but you see the point I’m making, I’m sure.

All is providence, not coincidence.

We have a God who is good, who is always for us. We know that His plans and His purposes are not only good, but they cannot be thwarted. He is in the details of our lives. He sees, He hears, and He knows. His arm is mighty to save. He is a God who saves whole families, because He is all about the generations. He knows the beginning from the end and in the fullness of time, He moves. He is a God of redemption, and His plans are redemptive in nature, and victory is always His. He does not know defeat. Ever.

So. Take a look around you. Hold your pain and your fear and your shaken life up to the light of all that you know of God.

I am believing that my current struggle and pain are part of something that is bigger than me. It doesn’t really make it less painful, but it does make it less about me and more about God. And that is what I’m after. Less of me, more of Him.

What about you? What are you after? Are you able to view your current, or past, circumstances from the lens of what God is doing in the bigger picture? Have you seen how something you’ve gone through was used to accomplish something in your life or in the lives of others?

It’s a hard perspective to grasp onto, I admit. I don’t always do it well, and I bet Joseph didn’t either. Our pain is our pain and sometimes only hindsight can see it as any good. I’d love to pray for you around this topic, so you can either drop it in the comments, or contact me via my contact page, and I promise, I will pray for you.

You Are Not Just One of Many

Jesus departed with His disciples to the sea, and a large crowd followed from Galilee, and a large crowd followed from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, beyond the Jordan, and around Tyre and Sidon. The large crowd came to Him because they heard about everything He was doing. Then He told His disciples to have a small boat ready for Him, so that the crowd wouldn’t crush Him. Since He had healed many, all who had diseases were pressing toward Him to touch Him. Whenever the unclean spirits saw Him, they fell down before Him and cried out, “You are the Son of God!” And He would strongly warn them not to make Him known.

Mark 3:7-12

Imagine this scene with me. Imagine you are just a person in the crowd, a person who needs a touch from Jesus. You heard He had gone down by the lake, so you head that way – you and everyone else. You’re just one in thousands coming for Him, trying to get to Him. Pushing, shoving, reaching for Him. You’d count yourself lucky to even get close.

Can you hear the sounds? People yelling, trying to get His attention. Begging, perhaps, so desperate for their healing. And in the midst of the crying, the yelling for His attention, is the sound of those with demons crying out in loud voices “You are the Son of God”. 

And there you are. One of many. Can’t quite get to Him. Unable to get your voice to rise above the noise of all the others who have come for Him. Unseen by Him. Unheard by Him. Just someone lost in the crowd of many someones.

Ever have those moments? Do you still feel like that sometimes? Just one in a crowd of many. Unheard. Unseen. Can I tell you something?

The truth?

If you have submitted your life to the Lordship of Jesus, then you have been crucified with Christ and you no longer live, but Christ lives in you. (Galatians 2:20)

No crowds. You don’t have to shout above the noise to be heard by Him. He hears every whisper, every thought, every unspoken desire of your heart. He’s here, right here. You don’t have to try to push your way past someone else to get to Him. Because He came for you. His death was Him coming for you because that’s the only thing that would rescue you from eternal darkness and give you eternal life with Him. 

He wants to be with you, so He came for you.

The crowd is gone and there you are, standing in front of Him. Just you and Him. What will you do? What will you say? Maybe nothing.

Maybe just let your heart feel the moment of being alone with Him. Let it be thankful that He came for you because He wants to be with you, and now you and your heart are alone with Jesus. He sees you. He hears you. He’s not going anywhere. So maybe today your heart can just rest from striving to get to Him.

Today, let yourself live in the truth instead of the lie. He is with you and in you and for you. You are not just one of many, you are who He left heaven for, who He died to rescue.

You are His.

Grounding the Planes

Been having trouble sleeping lately. It’s like, the minute I lay down, my mind turns into O’Hare Airport, with thoughts landing and taking off in every direction. At first, it was occasional, but lately, it’s just become my thing. And I don’t want it to be my thing. I also don’t want to take sleep aids, because I can develop an addiction to just about anything and I’ve had my fill of craving things that aren’t good for me.

But, I stumbled across something the other day, and now it’s underlined and had a highlighter taken to it.

Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you. (Psalm 116:7)

I want to learn to let this one thought interrupt every other thought. I want to learn to settle my soul with it. To teach my mind to lean into the truth of it.

I don’t think David was telling his soul to rest because once upon a time God had been good to him. I think what David knew was this…

God has been good, and He is being good, and He will always be good to me.

It is what I have most in common with David. The always present, never-ending goodness of God. I’ve also had abuse. Sickness. Grief. Pain. Depression. All the things a fallen world offers us.

So the question becomes, for me, which is greater? What will bring rest for my oft times frantic soul? Will the fear and anticipation of more of what hurts bring peace to the war in my mind? Or will it be the truth that no matter what happens, no matter what comes next, God will be good, because God has always been good to me?

For You, Lord, rescued me from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling.
I will walk before the Lord
in the land of the living. (Psalm 116:8-9)

He has done all of that and more. He entered the darkness of my life with the brilliance of His light and changed my course, forever. He cleansed me with His blood, forgave every single sin, removed my hard heart and gave me a soft one. He showed me what true love looks like, what mercy and compassion can do, and He continually reminds me that I have a home and this earth is not it.

So I’m working on grounding the planes in my mind with these truths. Remembering His goodness. Reminding my soul that He is with me in all things and He will always do what is good and what is right and I have nothing to fear. Calling my soul to remember what it believes about God rather than what it can imagine about what might happen.

I want to encourage you to do that too. Even if your mind isn’t an airport at night, we are all prone to fearful anticipations, to what ifs and what abouts. To wondering if we’ll make it through the worst case scenario presenting itself in our life. But we can do battle against all that and we can have victory in that battle. We can call our souls to rest once more.

We can remember God’s goodness to us at every turn. We can declare to our souls that He has been good, is being good in this very hour, and will be good forevermore. To us. To you. To me.

Are you with me?

Marriage Matters: The Motive of Prayer

Me

I had been asking God for so many years to change my husband. Begging God, really. But I saw little movement over almost two decades. Makes a girl weary, you know? Finally, God made a change, and that change was in me. 

During the very difficult beginning of our restoration season, God allowed me to see things through a very different lens. It was the lens of heaven, seeing my husband with eyes of love and compassion over his brokenness. Seeing him as God sees him…as a child of God, hurting, and in great need of the Father’s healing. For his sake, not mine. And that is where the change came. In the motive of my prayer.

I realized that all those years I wanted my husband to change so that my life would be easier; so that I wouldn’t have to deal with his anger, his pride, or his control. I wanted him to change so that I could relax and maybe be happy for a change. 

You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. (James 4:3)

This was the verse that God first used to address my prayer life, specifically my prayers for my husband. This is where I began to learn that motives matter to God, and my motive in prayer was me, more often than not. 

As my view of my husband changed, so did my motives. As I saw what God saw, my heart broke for my husband more than it broke for me. And when I began to pray out of a genuine desire to see him free, to see him know the deep love of His Father, to know his worth – the changes I had prayed for began to happen. Little bits at a time for sure, but they were there. 

Discovering that God, not my husband, is my source of happiness and peace was a shift I needed that enabled me to begin to pray with Godly motives rather than selfish ones. 

If you are weary in prayer for your spouse, or anyone else for that matter, let God call out your motives. It will be hard, but so very worth it.

For more on my marriage restoration – visit here.