Author Archives: Karla Jo Wasion

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

to the mom of the man who killed the police officers

Mourn-with-those-who-mournI hear a mournful sound rising from the earth. The cries of grief and confusion coming from this nation are joining with those around the world suffering their own losses. Yesterday, we felt another wave of grief when we heard the news from Baton Rouge.

Hatred is on a rampage.

As I read of the deaths of the police officers, my heart was so heavy and immediately went out to their families. But that same heart skipped right over the death of the man responsible. Right over him. As though his death didn’t matter. As though there should be no mourning for him. And then God whispered Romans 12:15 to me and now I want to turn around and go back. I want to go back to Gavin Long’s mother and sit with her, comfort her. Mourn with her. Instead, I will say this to her.

 Dear Corine,

I’m so very sorry for your loss. I’m a mama too, and I have only my imagination to tell me what kind of pain you are enduring right now. I know that when you brought your baby boy home from the hospital, the choice he made yesterday was not one of your hopes and dreams for him. I know that one day he went off to kindergarten and you probably cried. I know that he once held your hand crossing the street, ate your food with gusto, laughed, smiled, made jokes, cried. I know you were proud of him, worried over him, and wanted nothing but good for him. I know that he was once your little boy and that in some ways he remained your little boy. And I know that regardless of the circumstances, losing him must be the most pain you’ve ever known. I’m so sorry. I pray that you will know the comfort of God in this hour. I pray for His mercy to settle upon your heart and somehow ease the pain. I pray that you will sense His nearness, because He promises to be close to the broken-hearted, and surely you are that. I pray for you, and I mourn with you. 

And I pray for us. That this self-destruction will come to an end. That hatred, fueled by fear and anger will not win one more day. Enough is enough.

always

1 corinth 13 7

Always. Big word.

Love always protects. It doesn’t have bad days that make the hearts of those around us fair game to our anger, self-pity or our need to be first.

Love always trusts. When everything shakes. When everything hurts. When nothing and no one can be trusted. Love trusts the goodness and the sovereignty of God. Always.

Love always hopes. It doesn’t wring its’ hands in anxiety, it waits with expectation that God will be good no matter how hopeless things look.

Love always perseveres. It doesn’t walk away when things get hard. It keeps on keeping on because it knows it will be worth every struggle, every tear, every bit of dying to self it had to do.

Love never fails. It doesn’t fall away, back off or back down. Love holds its’ position at all times. Love never fails to be love.

But here it is. We will not know this kind of love as long as we are the center of our lives. While it’s about us, we will not experience an always kind of love. We will have to fight and scratch and beg to get something that doesn’t even come close. And we will settle for close enough. We will settle for love that protects on good days, trusts until it feels insecure, hopes until things look hopeless and will not stick around for the hard parts. Love that fails to always be love.

We will not only settle for receiving that kind of love, but giving that kind of love.

If we want to know this always love that changes everything, changes us, changes the atmosphere, changes lives…Jesus must come first. Our lives will have to be about Him always. After the worship service and sermon are long over. When no one else is watching. When we feel like everything is under our control, going well, coming together. When we are criticized. When the money runs out. In sickness and in health.

Jesus can’t just be our everything when our everything else is going wrong.

When what we do, speak, live, is for Jesus, we will know His always love and it will overflow from us into a world that has settled for so much less. They may never know the dying we had to do to always love them. They won’t know how hard we had to wrestle our flesh to the ground while asking God to make us like Him. That’s ok. They’ll know what God wants them to know.

There is an always Love pursuing them, and they don’t have to settle for less.

 

let me tell you

 

I remember the loss of my honor. In a desperate attempt to capture love, I surrendered something I could never get back. It didn’t take long to figure out that love had nothing to do with it. But I was just a teen-aged girl who had never been told that true love waits. It doesn’t use empty words to cajole and convince. It doesn’t prey on insecurities. It doesn’t seek its’ own pleasure at your expense. It waits. It honors.

In the years that followed, I discovered love that became angry when mixed with alcohol, love that left bruises both inside and out. I found love that held a magnifying glass over my every flaw and failure.

No one told me that in all my searching for love, I had found all that it is not.

And now I know but maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re still out there turning over every rock looking for the thing that will fill the empty space. Let me be the one who tells you. You are not pursuing love.

Love is pursuing you.

 

Because Jesus is love and fills the empty space all up and doesn’t promise what He never intends to give and He will never take away your honor.

Love sacrificed Himself for you so let me be the one who tells you that you will never be the sacrifice for His own pleasure. 

No matter what you feel, or what they’ve told you, the Love that is pursuing you is not mad at you. You don’t have to look away and that  isn’t eggshells under your feet, it’s holy ground because He is near, not angry.

And I know that you know all your failing and all your sins and let me be the one who tells you — you don’t need to get better and get it right. You need Him. Because Love covers it all in His own blood and chooses not to remember what you can’t seem to forget. 

isaiah 43

So let me be the one who tells you. Your soul wants love because your soul wants Jesus. And when you stop chasing after what love is not, you will find the Love that is pursuing you.

He will not dishonor you

He is not self-seeking

He is not easily angered

He keeps no record of wrong

 

“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Luke 19:10
“…I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have continued to extend faithful love to you.” Jeremiah 31:3
“And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.” 1John 4:16

 

 

every cut is the deepest

1Corinthians 13:4

 

“to be patient in bearing the offenses and injuries of others; to be mild and slow in avenging; to be long-suffering, slow to anger, slow to punish.” (Strongs)

musical notesI wanna know what love is
I want you to show me*

Lyrics to a song from my younger years. Lyrics that describe my younger years and by younger I mean all my years.

And while I was searching in all the wrong places and all the wrong people, it was here all along. Ancient words that tell me that true love is not of this world. It is other than. More than. Better than.

“God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.” (1John 4:16)

I wish I had known. Maybe if I had known that God is the very thing I spent so much of my time and dignity trying to find, I wouldn’t have spent so much. If I had known, things would have been different.

But now I know and it is different. So very. But not enough. It is not enough, because I have been acting  like Jesus, or at least trying —

to be patient in bearing the offenses and injuries of others; to be mild and slow in avenging; to be long-suffering, slow to anger, slow to punish.

And acting like Jesus exhausts me because it’s me. Because my strength, patience, and kindness are all feeble and not enough to be what love is. Acting like Jesus requires a lot of me.

Being like Jesus requires heart surgery.

And you know, every cut is always the deepest. God makes no superficial cuts. Deep is what it takes to remove a heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh. Deep is where He finds the bitterness, not the bearing, of offenses and injuries, the desire to get even and the flashes of anger we think we’re hiding as we passively punish those around us with our silence or thinly veiled words. The word of God is sharp and when it cuts it exposes the truth. I am not love.

Love was wounded for my transgressions. Love made a way for me to draw near to God, not just to bask in His presence, but to be transformed in it.

“For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…” Romans 8:29

My destiny was never to act like Jesus, but to be like Jesus.

Lord, Your cut is deep, but keep cutting. I will continue to act like Jesus, mostly. Because acting like Him is better than not acting like Him. But I will lay here, under Your word…

until what has performed for You has become conformed to You.

 

*Foreigner – I Want to Know What Love Is. For all those my age, good luck getting it out of your head today. And you’re welcome.

encountering God

at the well“Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, worn out from His journey, sat down at the well. It was about six in the evening.  A woman of Samaria came to draw water.” John 4:6-7

“Meanwhile, Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. Then the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire within a bush.” Exodus 3:1-2

My point this morning is this:  both Moses and the woman at the well had an unexpected encounter with God, while they were going about their daily routine. Neither of them were in the middle of any kind of religious activity when God showed up. They were simply doing what they did every day.

We don’t have to pray that someone will come to church so that they can encounter God. We can pray for those we love to have God encounters right where they are, doing what they do everyday.

Is there someone you know who desperately needs to encounter God? Pray that He will show up, right where they are, during their daily routine. Pray that they will encounter Him in such a way that their lives will never be the same.

It happened too many times in scripture for us to believe that it won’t happen today. Jesus went through Samaria on purpose, even though most Jewish travelers went around it to avoid encountering Samaritans. I believe His encounter of the woman at the well was planned, and purposeful.

In other words, no one accidentally encounters God.

battle strong

“First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all those who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.  This is good, and it pleases God our Savior, who wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” – 1 Timothy 2:1-4

I’ve tried staying out of it. Just stay low and go on with my life as though nothing was hitting the fan. Give no opinion, stay out of the ring, rise above. But between me and God, there have been questions. Lots of them. Because oh, I have opinions. Big ones. I also have enough years on me to know that no matter how glassfirm my opinion, how right it seems, how important it feels…it isn’t. It is simply an opinion. One person’s answers to life based on seeing things through a glass darkly. So I began to ask God His opinion.Continue reading “battle strong”

our crowd

“When He saw the crowds, He felt compassion for them, because they were weary and worn out, like sheep without a shepherd.  Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few.  Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.” Matthew 9:36-38

refugeesI thought about the refugees this morning when I read this passage. Our crowd. Many of us see one thing while Jesus sees another. The crowd is a crisis, a reason to fear, something to debate from a safe distance.

Weary, worn out, wandering people move the heart of Jesus. He is not afraid they will move in and take over. He’s not closing His borders to keep out the bad apples in disguise.

He sees a harvest of Gospel-ready people and feels compassion toward them. And far from telling His followers to “Be careful. Consider the implications. Keep yourselves and your land safe. Don’t get too close.”, He tells them to pray for people who will go to the harvest.

We know what it looks like. We know the risk. We know what could happen. But we are His people. His Church. We can trust that He sees what we can’t see. We can’t all go, but we can all pray for God to provide workers for this harvest. We can open our wallets and give the funds required to send them. We can stop choosing fear and start looking at how Jesus is responding to worn and weary people who have no shepherd.

And then do that.

[P.S. – I know many people who are going to engage the refugees with compassion. If you want to know how you can give to help them get there, contact me.]