Blog – Page 29 – Karla Jo Wasion

don’t look back

They told her not to, but she did it anyway.

“But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.” Genesis 19:26

We read the story, that one line that is her legacy, and we wonder “what was she thinking?”. What was back there that compelled her to look, to disobey? Home? Her place of comfort? The place where she had made plans and dreamed dreams?

Perhaps it was the same things that compel us to turn our heads and look behind us. Fear of the unknown. Longing for what was comfortable, familiar. Frustration, because we had made plans in the place behind us, we had dreams back there.

Or maybe we look back because, as bad as it was, it was all we knew. Because we can become quite attached to the pain of what is behind us. Even bondage can be preferable to freedom if freedom means walking into the unknown. The Israelites proved that when they continued to look back at Egypt.

(To walk in freedom without looking back, you have to trust the One who set you free.)

The danger of looking back is the same for us as it was for Lot’s wife. We run the risk of being frozen in place, unable to move forward. We stay fixed on the past, on what is behind us and we miss out on the life that is in front of us.

Lately I have found myself looking back. Not with longing or regret, but with the mindset that what is back there can meet my needs. God has been good to not turn me into salt. Instead, He has called me forward with the promise that all I need is ahead of me, not behind me.

What is in front of me is, for the most part, unknown. Who is in front of me is not. God is in front of me, calling me to keep moving into life. To dream new dreams in new places, to take new territory. To learn of Him in new ways. To discover His provision goes before me into every new place He calls me to walk.

Perhaps it’s time for you, as well, to face forward. To turn your eyes to what is in front of you, trust God, and discover that He has life ahead of you.

Exodus 14:11-12; Exodus 16:3; Exodus 17:3; Isaiah 43:18; Luke 9:62;

a few thoughts on a good friday

I got up this morning after not enough sleep, made my coffee and sat down in front of the crucifixion. The story is familiar and strange, breathtaking and gut wrenching. Bloody and beautiful.

It is His story and it is mine, but we see it through different eyes.

“But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.”

He sees prayer. I see betrayal.

“Jesus replied, ‘Do what you came for, friend.'”

He sees a friend. I see an enemy. A traitor.

“Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see Me.’”

He sees brothers. I see deserters and cowards.

His story and mine, all tangled together. I am the one He came to save and He is the One who came to save me. I had sin, He had blood and now there is blood where there used to be sin. Our stories dance together and look nothing alike.

His eyes and mine see it all so differently.

I see sinner, He sees daughter.

I see shame He sees the cross.

Seen through different eyes, our stories come together and it’s Friday. We meet at Golgotha, each bringing what is needed to the cross.

My nails, His hands. My sin, His blood. My anger, His love. My weakness, His strength. His provision, my need. His death, my life.

His story and mine all tangled together

in a beautiful bloody kind of way.

I will never be the same. He will never change.

It’s a Good Friday.

Luke 22:31; Matthew 26:50; Matthew 26:56; Matthew 28:10

today, live

“I just haven’t figured out what I want to do with my life!”, she said as she sat across from me. A beautiful young woman of God, with a number of options in front of her, feeling the pressure of the “plan”.

I am learning to listen more than speak, so I nod in understanding while the words well up in my heart. I knew they would probably spill out here. Here, I would say all the words I didn’t say in that moment.

Shhh. Don’t. Don’t become pressurized by the need for a plan. I know that’s what it seems you should do, have some kind of plan for your future. I know we live in a culture of savings plans, IRA’s, 401(k)’s and dream homes. I know your contemporaries have already named their future children and decided where they will retire. I know that you are young but not getting any younger and that thing called ‘future’ is hanging heavy over you. I know all of that, but I know so much more than that. Listen to me for just a moment.

The plan for your life is already in motion. It is God’s plan and it began before you did.

Stop scanning the horizon searching for your future. It is where it should be, held in the hand of God. You will not change what is in His hand by squinting into the distance, worrying and stressing over what you should do.

Stop straining. Relax. He has given you today and today is the plan so today, just live.

Today, breathe in the moments of His plan. Today, take the bread held out to you and give Him thanks and break it and give it away. Today give out love like there is no tomorrow because tomorrow has not been promised but today is here.

Today you are His and under His care and following His steps and tomorrow they may lead somewhere new but where are they leading you today?

Today you are here, so here is where you should be. The plan is working. The plan is just fine. Tomorrow it may look different but tomorrow is over there, where you cannot see it and worrying about it won’t open your eyes to see what can’t be seen yet, now will it?

Today, live. You are following Jesus and today Jesus is here.

So, beautiful one. Here is your plan: follow your Savior. He knows where to take you, and how to get you there. He left none of that up to you. Your future is kept by Him, not planned by you.

Yes, those are the words I would say to her. Because I am older now but once I was younger and I too felt the need for a plan.

I could never have planned what God planned.

And now, as tomorrows come so much faster than they did then, I see things differently. I see that I missed too many todays because I was worrying about too many tomorrows. Opportunities to love, to forgive, to be healed, lay unused at my feet because I was looking for what God had in His hand.

I have lunch planned with a friend this coming Thursday. Next week may not happen the way it’s written on my calendar. Life will probably not happen the way you have planned.

So today, live.

^“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'” – Jeremiah 29:11

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” – Matthew 6:34

believing for wonderful

Different. Wrong. Abnormal. Words that describe how I have felt most of my life.

The struggle to feel right, or normal. Always, every day, in every circumstance, I felt different, somehow wrong inside. I never fit in anywhere. I didn’t belong. I was just small when someone did things to me they should not have done and told me not to tell and something inside of me shifted sideways and I never again felt what most people want to feel. Normal, right, okay…whatever words you want to use, I never felt any of them. I still don’t, but most people wouldn’t know it. It’s like walking around with a low-grade fever all the time. You’re the only one who knows there’s something wrong.

I never understood it, never knew what it was, I just knew it was there. It was how I lived my life. And it wore me out. But God knew and God cared so He reached out and touched something and it all came rushing out like dirty water. It came rushing out and when it did He named it shame and I knew, just knew, He was right.

And because He is good He had begun preparing me before any of this surfaced. He laid my eyes on Psalm 139:14 and something in me caught its breath as He asked me “when did it stop being true?”. I was still turning it over and over in my hands and in my head days later when the rushing like dirty water came up and out.

“I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

…and I knew the words I had laid my eyes on were a sword I was going to have to pick up. Because it cuts through shame and it severs the lie right out of any heart that is willing to believe with a let-go-and-fall-back kind of trust. Because it never stopped being true, not for a moment. Not before, and not after the thing that broke something inside of me. Nothing I did and nothing that was done to me turned Psalm 139:14 into a lie. Nothing.

fearfully. yare’. ‘in a wonderful manner’, or ‘wonderfully’…

wonderfully made. palah. ‘to be distinct, be separated, be distinguished, to be set apart. To be wonderful’.

(And I laugh as I see ‘wonderfully made to be wonderful’, and then I try not to cry as I hear Him whisper…)

“Beloved, you have wonderful all over you.”

(And you should laugh and then try not to cry because He’s talking about you and not just me.)

I am a work of God and therefore I am wonderful, and I will say it and say it until it rings true in my heart. Because wielding the sword is not done well unless it is done often. Over and over, until the lie is dead and truth lives in its place.

I will praise Him for what He has made.

I don’t know what you are dealing with or what broke something inside of you. I don’t know if you carry shame or if it is something else that makes you feel somehow wrong inside. I don’t know what lies you are believing.

Not good enough Not pretty enough Not smart enough

Unlovable It’s all your fault Not normal

Unacceptable Failure Tainted Used Wrong

Bad Stupid Broken Too much Too little

And it all goes down easy. We take it in and live our lives by it and never break a sweat. A lie is spoken and it sounds just right to us so we take it and claim it and we let it call the shots.

But the truth is turned over in our hands, peered at from every angle, almost with suspicion. And when finally we choose to believe that truth, it’s hard and we weep because we want so badly to believe it and it’s probably true for others but not for me, but we must choose. We must, no matter how hard, no matter how suspicious it seems, we must choose to let go and fall back into ‘fearfully and wonderfully‘ made. Because we want to be free.

Our hearts can easily memorize a lie but must work hard to remember truth and this is life in a fallen world.

It takes great effort to live by the truth.

Over and over…until you know this full well…

You are a wonderful work of God.

“For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.”

Psalm 139:13-16

from disgrace into grace

Five women sitting in a living room, taking turns reading from Nehemiah. We are studying that book because in the rebuilding of a wall God can speak much about rebuilding lives. And in that second chapter, starting right there in that 17th verse, something speaks to me.

‘Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.”’

Disgrace. (It rhymes with shame.)

Nehemiah saw his broken city with broken walls, and women see their broken lives in much the same way. And in the time it took to inhale that 17th verse something grabbed hold and won’t let go.

The only way out of disgrace is to step into grace.

And I find myself stepping in, in more ways than one. As I sat on that couch in that circle of women, I had no idea that God was searching something out in me. Something that caught my heart by a painful surprise.

Later that night something was said that pulled a trigger and a dam broke open and disgrace spilled out, and I learned that scar tissue won’t hold a wall together because grace is the mortar of God’s rebuilding.

I discovered, as I tried to stop the flow of pain and tears and years of pent-up shame, that the city walls begin to fall into ruin when a little girl is held to a secret as hands go where hands aren’t supposed to go. Shame makes a little girl feel alone and somehow ‘wrong’, and in her attempts to feel ‘right’ again she runs as hard as she can away from her pain, only to discover she has just been running with her pain. Until one day she falls in a heap. Disgraced.

But God. He knew where she would fall and He made sure it was at the feet of Grace.

(Because sometimes the only way out of disgrace is to fall into Grace.)

For days now God has been pulling away scar tissue and putting grace in its place. And for once, I understand His timing. Because the women who are studying Nehemiah are the staff at Grace House. And this is where God has me now, about to step into full-time ministry to women with broken walls. To cities in ruin. And I needed to know that God doesn’t rebuild with scar tissue, but with grace.

faith has to move

It came to me as I stood on the chair, almost cutting off my head in the ceiling fan blades. Maybe not cutting off really, but the thwack of even a dull fan blade would have hurt. Anyway, that’s when it hit me. Right up there on the chair, in my little prayer room, as the woman on my couch looked on with a deer-in-the-headlights look on her face. And who could blame her? I’d have that look too if I was her and not me.

Faith is moving.

That’s what came to me as I stood on the chair trying to demonstrate trust to the poor woman on my couch. I stood there and pretended to fall back because I need visuals most times and I hoped she appreciated my attempt, awkward as it was. The look on her face never really changed, so I couldn’t tell.

Faith moves, even when we are “being still and knowing that He is God”. Because being still is movement too, I think. It takes a lot of trust to stay very still when you want to hide or get busy fixing this mess. Being still is still falling backward, as long you know that He is God.

Faith is trust and trust falls backward into the waiting arms of God, knowing He will be there. It knows and it falls back and God always catches faith.

Faith reaches for the hem of the garment, falling backward into the Healer’s arms. “Take heart, daughter…your faith has healed you.”

Faith follows, crying out for mercy the whole way. “Do you believe I can do this?”. Blind men see because God always catches faith.

Faith steps out onto water and it speaks to mountains and it walks through the fire and all of it is letting go, knowing God won’t drop you.

I listened to the woman on my couch, heard her hard story, and her brand new, shaky, trying-to-believe faith that was keeping the needle out of her arm. As she talked, I could feel myself getting overwhelmed. It felt like that time last year when God said “Pack” and I was looking at 28 years of stuff and thinking there’s not enough boxes on earth and where do I begin?

So faith reached for my Bible and He caught me there and said “tell her about love”. Because her life had been just so hard and when someone has been kicked around that much you have to start with the love that died for her before the needle ever left her arm, before she stopped being for sale. She needs to know that we don’t fall backward into anger or disappointment or “shame on you”. It’s love that has arms out to catch us.

And every little movement is faith – the reaching, the leaving, the following, the coming through the roof for your healing. This is the falling, the trusting, the letting go and believing He will catch you and not drop you.

Faith must move.

Because faith that stands still, unable to move, unwilling to even shift its feet? That’s not faith, that’s fear and there will be no falling backward in that. And every so often I have to repeat it to myself, God doesn’t catch what isn’t falling.

Today, let your faith move.

Reach for Him.

Speak to a mountain.

Come through the roof to get your healing.

Step out of the boat.

If you don’t have enough, give anyway.

Share the gospel.

Go.

Love.

God will catch you.

Matthew 9:22; Matthew 9:28-29; Matthew 14:29; Matthew 17:20; Romans 5:8;

the prayer that changed my prayer

“For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles—”

This is Paul’s opening to chapter 3 of his letter to the Ephesians. And then he goes off-roading a bit, with the explanation of his calling to preach to the gentiles. This is why we have to connect Paul’s prayer in chapter 3, not to the 12 verses above it, but to the ending verses in chapter 2.

So it would look like this:

“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.”

“For this reason I kneel before the Father…”

His language points back to the Old Testament and the building of the temple…the dwelling place for God’s glory.

And then he prayed for power. Power to trust Christ so He could dwell in their hearts. Be at home there. Settle down and ‘dwell fixedly there’. (Vines Expository Dictionary)

He tells them that they are rooted and grounded in love. The words speak of a foundation. The foundation for the gentiles being included into the family of God was love.

{We, you and I, are laid upon that same foundation. Love is why we are His.}

He prayed that God’s power would enable them to grasp the dimensions of Christ’s love, how truly expansive it is, and to know that love.

And I heard God speak to me words that began a quaking in me.

“How wide, high, long and deep was the chasm that sin created between you and Me? I want you to intimately experience the love that poured into that chasm, filling it completely and beyond, until it was a chasm no longer.”

{This grasping has me gasping for air.}

..and to know this love that surpasses knowledge.

gnōsis. It is the general knowledge of the Christian religion.

{Take what you think you know about the love of Christ, throw it as far as you can and see where it lands. His love will go beyond it. That is love that surpasses knowledge. It is beyond what we can know with our minds, no matter how much we investigate and study.}

He LOVES more than we can KNOW.

Power for faith. Power to grasp love. Power to know love.

{Everything needs the power of God. Everything.}

Why was he praying for all of this?

So that God, and His glory can fill the temple…the Church…you. me.

Paul didn’t pray what he prayed because it sounded good, and maybe had a shot at being answered.

{He prayed what God breathed.}

But it is God’s next breath that has changed my prayer life.

More. IMMEASURABLY more. Exceedingly above and beyond more. More than I can ask. More than I would even consider asking, could imagine asking.

My prayers do not set the boundaries for God. They are not His finish line, they are His starting line.

Ephesians 3:14-21; Ephesians 2:19-22; 2Timothy 3:16

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The only way out of disgrace is to step into grace.

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God will catch you.

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My prayers do not set the boundaries for God. They are not His finish line, they are His starting line.

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