Category Archives: Blog

uncomfortable goodness

The goodness of God makes me uncomfortable. Suddenly, the desires of my heart are being met and I discover a new fear hiding within me. Every few days it crawls out of the deep place in my heart and stops me mid-dance, whispering that God’s goodness is not free. Not for me. Convincing me that there must be a catch. There must be a hard lesson coming.

God is good. His word proclaims it, and my life proves it. So what is this fear that kicks at my feet while I’m dancing for joy? Why am I waiting for the door to slam? Why would God be this good to me? There. That’s the real question slamming against the sides of my brain. Why, God?

Maybe I had prayed enough, repented enough, been kind enough to strangers. Maybe I really was good enough to earn the favor of God. Or maybe my pride is quickly sucking up all the oxygen in the room. Stupid theory #1 was quickly abandoned.

So here I sit in God’s goodness and I’m squirming with a sort of weird discomfort. Because I can’t find the reason. And I can’t find the reason that I need a reason. It’s all quite maddening. And this exposure of my heart is like a fly that continually dive bombs a really good nap. I’m trying to enjoy this goodness (before it disappears?), but my heart is naked again and I want to yell at God to stop doing this to me.

Because I’ve been here before – heart exposed to the One who formed it. Light goes deep and I remember long ago mouthing the words uttered by King David,  “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.” This exposure is what I had asked of my ever faithful God, because my own heart was as much as mystery to me as His. And cleansing doesn’t happen to hidden things.

In my discomfort I asked “Why are You being so good to me?”.

In His cleansing He asked His own question. “To whom are you comparing Me?” Light comes far too swiftly for dark to get out of the way.

I live in a world where, just like love, goodness needs a reason. It is a cynical, un-trusting world, and while I am in it but not of it, sometimes I view God through it. Which is a blame-the-world way to say that I am often cynical and untrusting toward God.

The fear, the questions, the wondering…all of the discomfort once again comes back to one thing. What do I really believe about God?

Somewhere from the back of my mind I hear a familiar refrain: “If something seems to be too good to be true, it probably isn’t true.”

And so I return to my place of refuge. In this place, He will speak truth and the lies will bow down. My exposed heart will be comforted and cleansed.

“Then Moses said, ‘Now show me your glory.’ And the Lord said, ‘I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you…'” (Exodus 33:18-19)

Moses wanted to see My glory. I answered by showing Him My goodness. Goodness is not something I do, it is who I am.

“They will tell of the power of your awesome works, and I will proclaim your great deeds. They will celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness.” (Psalm 145:6-7)

My goodness is not meager. Not doled out in drips.  It is abundant, poured out, celebration worthy goodness.

“You are good, and what you do is good.” (Psalm 119:68)

I am good and I do not change, and my goodness extends to everything I do. It is not tied to circumstance. I will not be good today, and not good tomorrow. Your circumstances may change. Storms will invade your life. Trials will come. Difficulties will arise. You dwell in a fallen world, but I am not a fallen God. No matter what happens, I will still be good. To you.

“I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me.” (Proverbs 8:17)

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)

My goodness is not trickery, nor is it fickle. It is a part of the promise. When you seek Me, you find Me. When you find Me, you find My goodness. 

In utter desperation I have sought God…and found the only thing that is not too good to be true. Abundant goodness. Worth celebrating. Worth proclaiming.

“I will sing to the Lord,
for He has been good to me.”

To me. Because He is God. Because He is good.

my etch-a-sketch life

1 Chronicles 28:1-9

The gathering was massive. Thousands of men had been summoned to listen to their king.  As I often like to do, I placed myself among them to hear and see as they did. I was among men who loved, served and fought for this man, King David. If you are at all patriotic, you can imagine with me the atmosphere of this gathering. So I listened, but soon I was no longer back there, so long ago. I am right here, right now and my heart is hearing what it needs to hear.

“I had it in my heart to build a house as a place of rest for the ark of the covenant of the LORD, for the footstool of our God, and I made plans to build it.  But God said to me, ‘You are not to build a house for my Name…”

What will I do? How will I respond when the picture I had for my life changes? How hard will it be for me when the plans I’ve made get scrapped?

What if…

I don’t get to live comfortably, surrounded by pretty things and signs of financial success?

I never get to write that book, build that ministry, retire with a nest egg, retire at all, play that stage, get that job, have that child or find that spouse?

What if life suddenly looks different than I thought it would?

What if my identity in Christ and my eternal destination…all of the spiritual truths concerning me and my life, are the only things that are unchanging? What if everything else is in an etch-a-sketch?

(What if I discover that I often get those two confused?)

How tightly I grip the plans that lie in my own heart may determine my reaction when God ditches them for the plan in His heart.

A number of years ago, God shook my etch-a-sketch life and it exposed my heart. Fear. Pride. Self-reliance Self-everything. Unbelief. Anger. All there, hidden beneath my plans and my piety. God was ditching my plan for His, and the process was painful. God wasn’t hurting me, it was my response to the change in plans that brought the pain. I cried, I grieved, I kicked and I pouted, and I gave in to fear many times throughout the process. I struggled to believe that what God was doing could be good, let alone better than what I wanted. As it turned out, I could not have been more wrong.

That kind of shaking can also expose a person’s true perspective of God. We may discover that we really believe Him to be angry, or at least very stern, and always looking for a reason to bring some painful discipline our way to teach us a lesson. That He is, at a minimum, very disappointed in us.

What if God shakes away our plans, not only because He has something better, but because He is going after something deadly in us? What if what God delights in is not teaching us a lesson, but us? 

God once again has His hand on my etch-a-sketch life. How will I respond this time? What if I choose to believe what is written in stone?

“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)

What if I loosen my grip, open my hand and let my plans fall out, because He opens His hand to show me scars that say “I love you”?

“The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17)

What if I choose to believe that God has a song and not a whip? That He is delighted, not disappointed?

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.” (Isaiah 43:1)

What if “fear not” is really possible, because He is mine and I am His?

What if I choose to dance rather than mourn? Sing rather than weep? Trust instead of fear?

“I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me.  I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.” (Jeremiah 32:40-41)

What if that is God’s heart…written in stone.

the full wage

Matthew 27:11-50

I caught glimpses of the disciples’ faces as I imagine them to look. Seeking them out, dispersed among the crowd, I saw their pain and confusion. Suddenly, it was all careening out of control, going way too fast. He had warned them, but they hadn’t understood. Still didn’t. They could only watch and hope that somehow this was all going to end well.  I wish I could tell them what I know of these familiar, far away events.

The pain of that thought stops me, as my eyes turn to my heart. Is that what this has become for me? Familiar? I push my way to the front of the crowd, my eyes searching for His face now. Finding Him, my heart desperately whispers above the shouts of the crowd calling for His death. “Jesus! Is that what You have become to me?” The pain in my heart rushes at me all over again and my eyes spill tears as they look at His. “Is that why I’m here, back at the beginning with You? Searching for unfamiliar?”

So I follow, determined not to lose sight of Him, wanting to see. Not something new but something that has been there all along. Unfamiliar. The whip comes down as His eyes watch me watching. And He is silent.

Our eyes are locked as the thorns cut into His flesh and the spit hits His face. The staff they used to mock Him now comes down upon His head again and again. I want to look away. And He is silent.

I walk with Him up the hill, precious blood already flowing. The noise is deafening as the crowd follows and the nails are driven in. And He is silent. Also deafening.

I find His silence disturbing. Offense, injustice, lies…this scene has it all. Why are You so silent? Why do You not fight back? Why do You not lash out at the ones who are hurting You? Why are You so unlike me?

It grows dark as I watch Him labor to breathe. And then. Finally. The cry erupts from His beaten body. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. I see His eyes. He is watching me watching Him, as though He is willing me to remember.

“…you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

“The wages of sin is death.”  

Death. Separation from God.

The full wage must be paid.

The whip and the nails You took in silence. But the final wage, separation from God, brought forth Your cry and You called it forsaken.

This. This is unfamiliar to me. That I shall never have to know the pain of the one thing that broke Your silence. That the full wage of my sin was more than a crucifixion.

My heart is full, heavy, as I move to the ground beneath where He hangs and I lie down under the crimson flow no longer so familiar.

And He meets me here in this place with one final gift for my aching heart.

“You were worth the full wage.”

He has wrecked familiar.

Thank You, Jesus.

taking the cup

Matthew 26:36-46   Mark 14:32-42   Luke 22:39-46

They were gone now, and the garden was quiet. Jesus had been arrested, His disciples scattered. As for me, I am compelled to remain here, allowing what I had seen and heard to seep into deep places.

His words still hang in the air among the trees…“My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.”  

“…not as I will, but as You will.”  As I watched Him, the words echo familiar to me. They have flowed easily from me over the years. “Not my will, but Yours be done!” “I just want God’s will for my life.” “Lord, have Your way!” I see Him there, on the ground and I hear my voice speaking out those words. And I see Him there, on the ground sweating blood and I hear my voice. And somewhere inside of me something is tearing. Something hurts. Something that was hidden in darkness is backing away from the light coming in…but it’s too late.

“The words come easy, but there is no battle being waged for them. You say the words, but when your flesh resists you surrender to defeat. You say the words, because they are part of the Christian vocabulary of magic words spoken because they are the ‘right’ thing to say. You say the words, because you believe that My will looks like your will. You say the words. You want My will but you wants yours too. You say the words and then let the cup pass.”

I followed Him here, and He exposed my heart.

in the dirtEverything in me wants to lay on the ground where He had been, to press my cheek into the dirt still wet with His tears and sweat turned to blood. I want to capture it all, this war between flesh and Spirit, and hold it tightly somewhere inside of me. Because I want it to change me.

I listened as He asked for the last time…”if it is possible, may this cup be taken from Me…”. I heard no response. Maybe He did. Maybe His Father spoke words of comfort and strength to Him. Maybe He heard nothing because sometimes the silence of God says everything. Either way, it was done. He took the cup and set His face toward Golgotha. Death for Life. Victory was secured.

I followed Him here and I learned. “Not as I will but as You will” are the words of battle. Jesus didn’t enter Gethsemane and surrender His will so that I wouldn’t have to. He did it so that I could. He overcame so that I could overcome.

Death for life. Not a drink to be sipped. It is a cup to be taken hold of with both hands and swallowed down. It is hard. Agony. Weeping and falling face to the earth in surrender.

It is the prelude to victory.


the things of God

He was in our midst. Listening. Watching. Whispering. None of us saw him there, except Jesus. Jesus heard. Jesus knew. 

“From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.  Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to You!”  Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. ” Matthew 16:21-24

We like to wonder. We wonder if Satan knew from the beginning that Jesus’ death would bring about his defeat. I’ve sat in on numerous discussions of wonderings. “No, he couldn’t have known. He is not omniscient.” “He knew. That’s why he was trying to kill Jesus ahead of time, to stop Him from going to the cross.” “He probably knew some things, but he didn’t know the whole plan.” We wonder, and then we move on.

But today I couldn’t move on. I stood there listening to Jesus address the unseen one speaking through Peter. Whether Satan knew the whole plan or not, Jesus had just announced part of it. Satan knew that it was the will and the plan of the Most High God for Jesus to go to Jerusalem, be killed and then be raised to life.

And surely Satan knows that any plan of God’s will not end well for him.

And so I wonder. What has Satan tried to stop in my life? What part of my destiny has he overheard, and whispered “No!”, because he knows that my destiny fulfilled will not be good for him?

How has he tried to convince me that sacrificing myself on behalf of someone else isn’t in my best interest?

How many times have I been persuaded that doing the hard work of dying to my own needs and wants isn’t what God requires?

Dying to self. Loving the the one undeserving of love. Showing mercy instead of judgment. Praying for the one who hurt me. Doing what is right instead of what is easy. Fighting for a relationship I would rather walk away from. Turning the other cheek. Giving when I have little to give. Pushing through when I’d rather give up.  Being open and vulnerable when I would rather hide and self-protect. Believing for the impossible instead of settling for the possible. Choosing brokenness and humility over my pride.

Picking up my cross. Losing my life for Christ.

The things of God and the things of men.

And in the midst of God’s people, there is one who is whispering “No! Never!”.

May I, may we, the Church, learn to discern. And may our voice be heard echoing through the realms of darkness…

“Get behind Me, Satan!”

it’s not about clean hands

Matthew 15:1-20

This is my continuing journey through the gospels, standing among the disciples of Jesus, watching, listening and discovering Him anew.

There we were, surrounded again by hoards of people. Well, Jesus was surrounded. The people weren’t there to see us or touch our clothes. Good thing, since I think most of us were still stunned by the whole “He walked on water and oh my goodness He really is God’s Son” worship event that had taken place earlier. Our minds are blown and life is so different now and we’re just trying to keep up with this Man that everyone wants to touch.

So yeah, there we were, and here they came. You couldn’t miss them if you tried. Everything about them was intended to say “I am above you, get out of my way”. Pharisees. All dressed up, heads held way too high, making every attempt to not actually touch any of the unclean, common people. They came with a bone to pick with Jesus. “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!” (Matthew 15:2)

I nearly bit my tongue off to keep from laughing at the topic of their confrontation. Hand washing? Really? That’s what has your robes in a bunch? Yes, yes it is. The great rule (tradition) of washing up before supper had been violated and someone had to answer for that. So Jesus would answer. I leaned in close so I could hear Him give it to them.

And give it to them He did.

“Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’  he is not to ‘honor his father’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites!” (v. 3-7)

I suppressed a giggle and the urge to high-five my Savior. Which is good, because in a minute I wasn’t going to be in the mood for a high-five.

He called the crowd to Him and began to teach them…

““Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’  For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean.’”     (v. 17-20)

Suddenly I was alone with Him, encountering truth as He spoke to me…

“Karla, clean or unclean isn’t about your hands, it’s about your heart. Unclean comes from the inside, and eventually, it shows up on the outside. Because unclean doesn’t stay hidden safely away inside where others can’t see it. It comes out. People have different names for what makes them unclean. I give it one name.”

“I have a problem with my thought-life.”  “You have a heart problem.”

“I need anger-management.” “You have a heart problem”.

“I struggle with sexual issues.”  “You have a heart problem”.

“I need to learn to control my tongue.” “You have a heart problem.”

You can wash your hands all day everyday, but what you have is a heart problem.

But remember…

“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” Ezekiel 36:25-27

Stop staring at your hands. Bring Me your heart.”

i learned a new word today

“Now when He saw the crowds, He went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to Him, and He began to teach them…” (Matthew 5:1-2)

So I went too, because I want, need, crave His discipleship. At first, I just listened to the cadence of His voice because, frankly, I had heard these words before.  The temptation was there to just move on. But something was pushing at my brain, clamoring to get in.  I kept listening, making Him repeat every word over and over because something was there and it wanted in. And then a list started forming in my head. Books. Drugs. Alcohol. Men. Marriage. Children. Church. Gifts. Purpose. Calling. (Stay with me, it will all make sense eventually. Hopefully.)

And then the door flung open and there it was. On this mountainside, Jesus turned “happy” on its’ little head. My list has a title – “My Search for Happiness”. And the whole world has a list because those who bear the image of their Creator are on a continual search for “happy”. So here, on this mountainside with my mysterious Friend, I felt the ground shift ever so slightly. I put Jesus on repeat, slowed down His voice and just listened.

“Blessed [happy]are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.

Happy happens when you know full well that you have no power, no authority what so ever, apart from Jesus. There’s no revelation, no movement, no healing, no freedom, no salvation…nothing in you. So you continually have your hand out to God. And in that place…knees to the ground, hand out, fully aware that you have nothing…He gives it all to you.

A spiritual beggar has more power and authority than any other person on earth. And that makes them happy. Happy to be poor in spirit, because when they walk in that, heaven comes down. Healing happens, for real. Darkness is overcome, for real. People are set free, for real.

I listened to Jesus today, and realized that I know too many words. Calling, destiny, gifting, purpose. Good, useful words, except when they spell happiness. When they eat away at my spiritual poverty, they become dangerous.

My search for happiness started early, as a little girl who discovered the wonderful escape route of books. The search looked different as I became different, and you would think that it would have stopped when Jesus found me. And actually, it did, in part. I have a deep joy in me that nothing can touch, thank You Jesus. But I’ve still looked for “happy” and simply exchanged words like “drugs and alcohol” for “calling” and “purpose”.

The disciples went to Him as He sat on the mountainside, and He taught them. I was there. I learned a new word.

Poor

 

 

 

 

**Disclaimer time:  I know that the Beatitudes are speaking, at least in part, of those who will receive salvation. But I have asked Jesus for more. For deeper. I believe that the word of God is relevant to me every day of my life. If it is only referring to salvation, then these verses in Matthew would no longer be relevant to me, because I have salvation. So today’s post is simply what I heard Jesus speaking to me, for me, today. I’m not trying to make up a new doctrine.