Author Archives: Karla Jo Wasion

His presence shook the mountain and do we even know what it is to be shaken by the very presence of God? That was my first thought as I opened this chapter. And then I kept reading and and found myself undone by the fourth verse:

“You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself.”

He is always bringing us, inviting us, calling us to Himself.

From that first moment when He drew Adam’s face to His to give him the breath of life, He has been drawing us. It occurs to me that I’ve always thought it was me wanting His nearness while all along He wanted mine.

That shakes things in me up a bit.

Come, follow Me.

Come to Me all who are weary.

When I am lifted up I will draw all men to Myself.

Draw near to God.

Seek My face.

Return to Me.

Words spoken by the God who is always inviting us to Himself and I haven’t seen it until now.

God had Moses remind the people that He had rescued them and brought them to Himself and He reminded me that He did the same thing for me. Rescued me from the dominion of darkness and brought me into the Kingdom of His Son. (Colossians 1:13) Because that is who He is and that is what He does and sometimes I start thinking He is reluctant toward me and I don’t even realize that my vision of Him has been blurred.

I’ve been looking at chapter 19 for days. Hearing the thunder and lightning in my mind, wondering at such glory. And just like He taught me, I searched for His heart in this place and I found it in something He said and now, in the darkness of 5:30 a.m., I’m weeping at what I found. What I knew but had forgotten.

He has brought me to Himself and this is where He wants me to stay. It is the constant invitation set before me, to come to Him. To know that the first calling on my life is to Him. Always to Him. Apart from Him I can do nothing and the beautiful truth is that God does not want me to be apart from Him. He is ever drawing me, never pushing me away. And I am aware that it is an intellectual truth I’ve known, but a spiritual reality that I have doubted.

When God set His people free from Egypt, He did not carry them to the promised land, He carried them to Himself. And then He led them all the way to the place He had promised them. And my goodness, could the picture be any clearer? Their rescue is my rescue and their journey is my journey because their God is my God and His heart for them is the same heart for me.

Before He called me to anything, He called me to Him, and I have no desire to ever get over it.

Word had been sent that Moses’ father-in-law was on his way, bringing Moses’ wife and two sons, who had previously been sent home to Midian. I find the picture of his arrival interesting.

“So Moses went out to meet his father-in-law and bowed down and kissed him. They greeted each other and then went into the tent. Moses told his father-in-law about everything the Lord had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians for Israel’s sake and about all the hardships they had met along the way and how the Lord had saved them.”

It feels warm, this relationship between Moses and his father-in-law. And almost like at last Moses has someone to talk to, to tell everything that had happened. A friendly face, someone who wasn’t just complaining. But the most interesting part is the way Moses’ humility is so evident. He is the man God chose to confront Pharoah and facilitate the exodus of well over half a million people from slavery. Yet, he sits with Jethro and tells him everything the Lord did, how hard it’s been, but how the Lord saved them. In other words, Moses made the story about God, not him.

I wonder if today, we have built a culture that is built more from the perspective of what we, the Church, have done rather than what God has done. One might think it is simply semantics, but culture has a way of seeping into our hearts, as we all know. Just a thought. I have a lot of those.

But I think the main subject matter of this chapter is that Jethro changed how Moses led the people. Through following his father-in-law’s sage advice, Moses took the load he carried and disbursed it among many different men. Needs were met more efficiently, Moses avoided burnout, and it just worked better all the way around.

We should have a Jethro in our own lives. Someone to tell us that everything can’t depend on us, that we aren’t alone so we need to stop acting like it all rests on our shoulders. We need someone to say stop being dumb and share the load for pete’s sake. Because I tell you what. There are too many people leading the Church today who are crumbling under a weight they weren’t meant to carry. And that turns into leading in the dark. Leaders who keeps things to themselves to minimize the risk of exposing their weaknesses or failings. They ask God for the strength to lead, forgetting that His strength is not meant to keep us from needing others. Going it alone is not the precedent that’s been set for us in scripture.

Jethro understood that if Moses did not share the load, it was going to harm both him, and the people he was leading. It was wisdom for then and it remains wisdom for us today.

We really are better…

The Lord answered Moses, “Go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you. Take the staff you struck the Nile with in your hand and go. I am going to stand there in front of you on the rock at Horeb; when you hit the rock, water will come out of it and the people will drink.” Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. He named the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites complained, and because they tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (v. 5-7)

They were thirsty, feeling desperate again. So again, they turned on Moses and I just have to say, somebody give that man a raise, right?

Here’s what they said as they complained: “Is the Lord among us or not?”

And I start counting how many times I’ve thrown my head back and asked “where are You, God?” when desperation has set in and I’m wondering if this circumstance is gonna kill me. When my thirst for relief has become so great and I fear He won’t come through. As though there has ever been a time when He did not come through.

But true to form, God gave them what they needed, and He did it with flair. Water from a rock. I bet they never considered that as a possibility. I wouldn’t have. Part of our desperation and doubt come from seeing no logical way that God can come through for us. Logic and faith are not friends.

God doesn’t work within our boundary of what is possible. He provides what is needed in ways we would never have considered, and this is why we cannot trust ourselves when our mind is telling us that nothing can meet our desperation. God can always meet it.

But now let’s talk about the Amalekites. It’s the first time since leaving Egypt that the Israelites have come under attack. Can you imagine how that felt? Having never experienced people coming, unprovoked, to kill you – all of you. I think of the fear that hundreds of thousands must have felt that day, especially the women and children.

Amalek was Esau’s grandson (through a concubine). The Amalekites in the scriptures are his descendants. They lived in the desert Negev, the area we know today as Palestine.

This is a quote from a critical essay written for The Christian Century: “Amalek is Israel’s persistent enemy. The Amalekites provide an explanation for the irrational and intense hatred for Jews that echoes through human history. In Jewish history the Amalekites—a tribe with genocidal intentions against God’s people—came to symbolize all those who sought to eradicate the Jewish people, from Titus to Hadrian, Khmelnitsky to Hitler. ”

As far as I can tell, this battle is the beginning of the war against the Jewish people that has continued to this day. Believe it or not, I took from it a couple of things that apply to our lives today, because you and I also have an enemy that has been bent on our destruction since the beginning of time.

“The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim.”

The Amalekites came for them and the devil comes for us. I once heard a man make this statement – “I don’t bother the devil, so he doesn’t bother me.” He couldn’t be more wrong. When we ignore the devil, he still comes. When we act like he’s not a big deal, or even worse, that he doesn’t exist, he still comes. The question is not whether he comes, but what will we do when he does.

We learn a few more details about this particular battle in the book of Deuteronomy.

“Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and attacked all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God.” (25:17-18) 

They first attacked the weak, the ones weary from the journey. I dare say, oh that we would feel protective of our own weak and weary ones. This includes our children, our sick, our addicted, and our overwhelmed. We need the strong ones among us to circle up sometimes so that our brothers and sisters who are struggling don’t become prey to the enemy, who has no integrity in war.

One last point, and then I think we’ll call it a day on this chapter.

Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.”

The staff. A symbol of God’s power and authority given to Moses. He lifted up the authority of God over the battle and when he grew too tired, he had people to hold his arms up for him. Notice that they did not take the staff and hold it up themselves, they simply held the arms of the one who carried the staff. I find that interesting, don’t you?

{I wonder if a leader’s weariness is not the time to step in and take the staff from them. Maybe that’s when we come alongside them and hold their arms up.}

The authority and power of God, held out over that battle, is why the battle was won. Not because the Israelites were stronger. Man, that’s something I could chew on for days.

I’ve loved sitting in this chapter with you, seeing what God might want to show us. I’ll see you in the next one.

Chapter 3: “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.”

They cried out in their slavery and God saw it and heard it and He set them free.

Chapter 14: “As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?“

They cried out in their fear and questioned why they had been taken out of Egypt… the land of their slavery… where they had cried out for deliverance. But still, God parted the Red Sea and delivered them from their fear.

Chapter 15: “So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What are we to drink?”

They crossed the sea God parted and they sang and danced, until they got thirsty. So God gave them an oasis.

Chapter 16: “In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

After having their fill of water, they were hungry. But rather than trust that the same God who rescued them from the Egyptians (twice) and led them to water for their thirst would also feed them, they did what they do. They complained, and believed what fear was telling them rather than remembering what God had done for them. But God responded with bread in the morning and meat in the evening.

More and more I am convinced that we are no different from the Israelites. We too tend to listen to fear lie to us despite evidence of God’s faithfulness to us.

We rejoice in God’s deliverance, until we see the enemy coming.

We sing and dance when He parts the sea for us, until we get thirsty.

We gladly drink from still waters, until we get hungry.

We will see, as we continue reading, that God eventually came to call their fear and grumbling unbelief. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And just like then, the price of unbelief today is just as steep.

From what I can tell, God is not opposed to laying down a track record of faithfulness for us, but having done so, He will expect us to trust that record.

Lord, help us choose faith every single time. Help us put a stake in the ground right where we’re at, as the place we will discard our fear and trust Your track record of faithfulness to us.

They left the Red Sea and the lingering melodies of their songs and followed Moses into the desert, where they encountered bitter waters in a place called Marah (which means bitter).

They had been three days without water and when they finally found what they were looking for, it was too bitter to drink.

{When, at last, we find what we were sure we needed, only to discover that it isn’t what it appeared to be, what flows from us becomes bitter as well. But God knew what His people needed so He turned the bitter waters sweet and it’s important that we know that He’s the only one who can do that for us. Turn our bitterness to contentment. Give us peace when we thirst. Lead us out of our wilderness.}

This is what we want, isn’t it? To drink deeply from a place of trusting God. To know that He is good and that He saved us because He is loving, and that He is so very able to lead us to what He has promised us.

We don’t want to be bitter. We don’t want every disappointment to feel as though that’s all we’ll ever know. Like every valley means there will never be another mountain and every year will bring more hope deferred. But many Christians are living bitter lives right now. Some of them walk away, some keep doing the routine of religion while they slowly stop missing Him. Bitter people become hopeless people.

But there is no hope like the hope I know. Because those who hope in Him will never be disappointed, and valleys strengthen me like no mountaintop can and my thirst is meant to drive me to Him so that He can satisfy it.

Whether it shows up the way I want it to nor not, I know He is good. I’ve tasted of it too many times in too many ways to believe otherwise. I’ve learned that there is no place that can bear the weight of my expectations other than Him. No other person, place, or thing can be my hope.

My disappointment can be turned into contentment, my thirst can be satisfied, my pain can find comfort, and bitters waters can be made sweet.

By Him. Only Him.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the Old Testament is full of songs. The Hebrew people naturally went to song to celebrate or lament. Their enemies had just been destroyed, so of course there was a song for that.

First, Moses and the rest of the people began to sing and, me being me, my first thought was “how did they learn a whole song so fast!?” I mean. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Moving on.

The first part of the song declares what God has done, with words like “Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea.”, and “In the greatness of your majesty you threw down those who opposed you. You unleashed your burning anger; it consumed them like stubble.”

{Maybe some other day we can talk about why we don’t sing classic songs like that anymore. j/k}

The last portion of the song speaks of what God will do.

“The chiefs of Edom will be terrified, the leaders of Moab will be seized with trembling, the people of Canaan will melt away; terror and dread will fall on them.”

“You will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of your inheritance—the place, Lord, you made for your dwelling, the sanctuary, Lord, your hands established.”

It was a victory song, filled with imagery that came from holy imaginations, and emotion that came from people who watched God do something so big, so miraculous, that the only thing they could do with it was sing about it.

Today I’m wondering why I have no song. I sing the songs that others have written (nothing wrong with that), but I have no song of my own. Not because God has not done mighty things in my life, but because I choose not to sing. Instead, I let words that others have written suffice as my song.

Today, in the middle of the fifteenth chapter of Exodus, I found a longing to sing my own song to the Lord.

And that’s why I just can’t get enough of the Word of God.