It's So Much Better His Way
It’s the last day of the year and I’m not sure how that happened. I’m not ready. I don’t have my lists made yet, my house is still dirty from Easter and I have a lot of weight to lose before tomorrow. Happens every year.
December 31st is always a hard day for me. Inevitably I look back over my year and think “what the heck did I do all year? What did I accomplish?”. This year it would look something like this…Continue reading “2014 ~ a good year for God and house plants”
Before there was anything there He was, hovering over the darkness. Breathing holy breath while all that was not, waited to become. Waited for His command.
With His words the brush of a skilled artist He began to create. Light rushed in at the sound of His voice. Then the waters obeyed and with a surge they parted and the sky was born. He gathered them and named them seas and land came forth as it was told. With every word of His mouth that which was not came to be. And it brought Him pleasure.
He chose light to separate the darkness and scattered the skies with the stars He had named. Having touched the hand of God they still burn bright in the darkness.
And then the creatures came to be blessed by their Creator and life was in motion and He was pleased. Pleased, but not satisfied.
God bent low and in His hands took dust from the ground and formed a man in His own image. And lower still, He came face to face with the man and breathed him to life. And from the man He took a bone and made the rest of His image and now, He could rest. He had made a place for His image bearers to dwell and care for all that He had created. He would walk with them and they would know Him. He would love them and care for them and be their God.
I am endlessly fascinated by the story of creation. The power of the voice of God to call forth that which does not exist. The pleasure He took in creating. The intimacy with which He made those who bear His image. His very breath bringing man to life.
The power of the One who makes something from nothing.
But you see, He separated the darkness but He did not extinguish it. Not yet. So the liar crept out of that deepness with a lie on his lips and death and despair came with him.
Because the lie has power too.
So I think of those six days on my days when the lie has found my heart and doubt settles like ancient dust across my soul. On my nothing days when the lie is on repeat.
“You are nothing of value. You have a nothing life. Nothing you do matters. Nothing will ever change. Nothing will make this go away. There is nothing you can do about it.”
Those six days are more than a story, more than a topic for debate, more than just the beginning. They are the sword that has far greater power than the lie that pierces my faith. They speak truth to the nothing lies.
God made everything from nothing.
And that ancient dust finds no place to settle on the soul that chooses truth. It makes no difference what kind of nothing I’m facing. My God will make something of it. Something good. Something that pleases Him. And I remember that He took a woman who had nothing to offer Him and He gave her everything in exchange for her nothing. And it brought Him pleasure.
Those six days matter to me.
Dearly Beloved,
I am praying for you. I don’t know why you feel the way you do. I don’t know why your mind is dark and your heart is heavy. I wish I could fix it but I can’t. I am not your healer. So today I approach the throne of grace with boldness on your behalf. Because your Healer is on that throne and He is good and He is mercy and He loves you.
Beloved, you were not made to tread water, gasping to get the air you need as you go under again. This going under and barely making it through each day is not the destiny your Father has for you. Today I pray that He will call you to walk upon the waters that are threatening to drown you. And when He calls, I pray you will stand up and walk.
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
Dry bones are not your portion. That valley is not your home. So today I ask for the breath of God to blow upon your soul. I ask that life would stir in your bones and in your heart. Today I declare that the thief cannot have you, for you are not his to take. You belong to God and God breathes life and not death because He is alive and has called you to life. Beloved, God Himself is your portion and He holds your future and He is good. I pray that every scheme set against the life God has called you into will be brought down by His mighty hand. Today, I call out to dry bones to come alive.
“Contend, Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me.”
As David cried out, so I cry out. Because you see, I know that your God fights for you. You don’t feel it, may not even believe it, but I know it to be true. Because you are His and your enemy is His enemy and when He arises, that enemy scatters. So I cry out for you and I ask your Father and mine to rise up on your behalf and contend for you. I pray that His presence will be felt by the darkness, and by you, setting the enemy to flight and giving you rest in your Father’s shadow.
“He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.”
Today I am asking that the Healer of hearts will heal yours. I pray that the wounds that have led you here, to this place of despair, will be exposed to the Light and covered by the healing hand of God. I pray that whatever is holding you captive would hear the voice of your Savior pronounce freedom over you today and that darkness would be compelled to release its’ hold. Because the Son of heaven was sent for you and all authority was given to Him. That leaves none for the enemy of your soul.
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.”
So right here, before the throne of grace, I declare the truth of God. You are not defined by your feelings, but by God’s heart for you. You are chosen and you are holy and you are God’s. I pray that today you will break your partnership with the lies of the enemy that tell you anything other than what God has spoken over you. Beloved, you are not who you think you are, but who God says you are.
You were not made to despair. You were not made to feel hopeless. You were made to praise.
So today I pray that despair and hopelessness will be overcome by praise rising from the heart of His beloved. I pray that by the Spirit of God living in you, praise will erupt and lies will break and truth will overtake the darkness that hovers over your mind. Because praise is a weapon and it shuts the mouth of the liar and opens the heart of the downcast.
Dearly beloved….
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
John 10:10; Ps 35:1; Isaiah 61:1; 1Peter 2:9; Romans 15:13
“He reached down from heaven and took hold of me; He pulled me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy and from those who hated me, for they were too strong for me.”
Fear speaks. We listen. It drums away at our heart until we find ourselves moving to its rhythm of panic and unrest in our soul.
And with each beat, something becomes bigger than God to us. Deep waters become too deep. Our powerful enemy become too powerful. Difficult circumstances turn into too difficult. Pain becomes too painful.
Fear does not remind us that God is greater. Than what? Everything.
So today, I will remind my fear…
My God is on His throne and I am under His care. He created the heavens and the earth and He created me. He knows my every move, my every thought and my every need. My Father is good and all that He does is good. He is for me and not against me because I am His. This earth is not my home and it has nothing for me. My life belongs to Him and my eternal destiny is to be with Him.
My Savior is Jesus. No one else. My hope is in Him and Him alone. He is my deliverer and He alone sustains my life. No good thing does He withhold from me, and there is absolutely nothing that can separate me from His love. He is my shield, my shelter, my provision and my strength…now and until the end. He will cause all things, all things, to conform to His will and to work for my good, because I love Him.
He provides, He heals, He rescues, He saves. He sends and He calls and He remains with me. My life and my times are in His hands. He is perfect and His word is true and His faithfulness cannot be measured.
Mountains melt and the seas obey and the sun rises and nations fall because He is in control of His creation and His power is unmatched.
The waters are not too deep. The enemy is not too powerful. My pain is not too painful. There is nothing in my life that is too anything for my God.
My rags have become robes, my sin replaced with righteousness. His death has become my life and His hope anchors my soul. My weakness is great but His mercy is greater.
He is my God. He is great and He is powerful. He alone is God and there is none beside Him. Nothing is His equal.
Beloved, let us not allow fear to make anything bigger than God.
Dear Friend,
I prayed for you last night and before I could really say much at all He showed me a picture and gave me words.
“That horse was made to run, but he fights the narrow place that is the starting gate, because he can’t see beyond it.
He fights the narrow place because he can’t see that it is the gateway to what he was created to do.
He fights because he’s afraid of the narrow place.”
I thought about this picture and these narrow places that some horses and some people fight. What I think, my friend, is that it’s mostly about trust.
So I have to ask…do you trust God? Do you trust that in the narrow place what hinders you will be stripped from you because He’s preparing you to run? Because narrow means nar.row. Pride and fear and the need to control just don’t fit in this place.
Do you trust that even though it feels like the sides of this place are pressing you hard and there’s no room to move here, God is in this narrow space with you and He brought you here for a good purpose?
Do you trust that the gate will open? Because it will. And you will run, because you were made for it my friend.
And friend, there is someone else who is afraid of your narrow place. Someone who will do anything to keep you out of it.
Someone who watched as Jesus went into a narrow place called Gethsemane, and watched as He came out of that narrow place headed for the cross and nothing was going to stop Him and just look at what happened.
So you aren’t the only one fighting that narrow place. But you are the only one who will come out of the fight victorious.
Because you have God on your side. He is for you, not against you. His plans for you are good and His plans will prevail and you will live your destiny. He is before you and behind you and on every side. You will be victorious because the liar and his lies will bow to the Truth that lives in you and in the narrow place a stronghold will crumble.
You will go into that narrow place and there God will prepare you for what is on the other side of that gate and you will come out running.
Because you were made for this.
So anyway, just wanted to let you know I prayed for you last night. God showed up. It was good.
Love,
Your friend
She showed me her little clay pot that was a lovely shade of blue. I was surprised at how beautiful it was. Beautiful and cracked. Broken and whole. Jagged lines ran up and down and sideways all over it. It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened.
Because when something has been broken and put back together…it shows.
It was therapeutic for her. She took the pot and smashed it and it helped something inside of her. And then she found the pieces and glued them back together and that helped too. Sometimes, we need to see something broken and put back together to really believe there is hope, you know? Hope that we can be put back together. Hope that even though our brokenness shows, we are still beautiful.
I saw the clay pot with jagged lines and I thought of my own jagged lines and I know God’s voice and He spoke that day.
Trying to live this life on our own terms doing it our own way living far from God breaks our lives and our hearts and our very souls. And the prayer is that the breaking will lead to broken.
Because repentance is brokenness and it turns us from what is breaking us.
Brokenness is clinging to Jesus because we’ve discovered our greatest need is Him. Brokenness praises Him through pain and things we don’t understand because we know that no matter what He is God and He is good. Brokenness raises hands in surrender not fists in defiance and finally drinks in the grace that puts us back together with jagged lines.
And broken vessels are always amazed by the grace that makes them whole.
Life can break us hard but grace leaves us sweetly broken and grace makes us whole. I’ve had the breaking and I’ve been broken and I want to see beauty, not shame, in my jagged lines. I want light to dance from these places put back together by grace. Places where the light shines best.
Reading the words of John and I knew I was missing a point somewhere. So I did what I do when I’m stuck in this age. I went there to that age, to that mountainside. I put myself among the ragamuffins and I looked at what they saw and I listened to what they heard. And the point I was missing found me.
Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with His disciples. The Jewish Passover Festival was near.
When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward Him, He said to Philip,“Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” He asked this only to test him, for He already had in mind what He was going to do.
Philip answered Him, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”
Oh Philip. Come stand by me because we both see the same thing here.
You and I see impossible. There’s just too much here to fix. Too many, too much and not enough. Pockets and heart are both kinda empty so how on earth can these ‘too many’ hungry ones be fed? How can so many be helped when there’s not enough to give?
And sometimes we don’t realize that the testing of our faith is a test of Who we see in the midst of seeing impossible. And I have been overwhelmed of late. My eyes have been fixed on the crowd with their heads down and their hands out and my not enough keeps getting bigger.
And Jesus took a little boy’s not enough and made it more than enough but I’ve stopped offering up my not enough. Because just like ragamuffin Philip all I see is the hunger while I am right there in the presence of the Bread.
I see broken and hungry and lost and hurting but I don’t see an answer and Jesus is wondering if I see Him.
I am not enough for the sea of needs around me. I am not enough for the outstretched hands and hearts that clamor for filling. I am not enough to fix what is broken or heal what is hurting.
But every need I see is a need for Him, not me. That’s the point that found me on that mountainside as I looked at the impossible with Philip.
Five loaves and two fish was not enough. It will never be enough. But placed into the hands of Jesus it will be more than enough.
John 6:5-7
Karla Jo Wasion 