My Jason and Katherine Story
HE’S ALIVE ALIVE ALIVE HALLELUJAH ALIVE FOREVER AMEN
I woke up singing this song because not only did Jesus live but Katherine LIVED!!
Jesus tells us in John 16 that we will have trouble. But take heart! He has has overcome the world.. He has overcome depression, debt, misery, loneliness, divorce, adultery, lies, sickness, cancer, diseases.. HE has overcome DEATH. Whatever makes you feel dead, trapped, chained, swallowed, overwhelmed, unworthy, bound, sick, suffocated.. He has overcome it all and in HIM, we can LIVE!
KATHERINE LIVED!
And the coolest thing about Katherine’s story is the miracle that according to doctors, medicine, the world she was supposed to die but God doesn’t make mistakes and Katherine lived! Through Christ, we can all LIVE!
Choose the world and choose death. Choose Christ and choose LIFE! Jason and Katherine tell their story best so I suggest you pre-order the book RIGHT NOW so you can have it on April 26 with the rest of the world!! Instead of retelling the story you will read in their book, I’m going to tell you my Jason and Katherine story and how their story has changed my life.
April 22, 2008, I was in the 8th grade. It was the year I felt called into the ministry. I didn’t know what that meant but I was going to follow Christ and find out because that same time of feeling called, for the first time in three years, I felt healed. I felt like I was going to be okay. Choosing Christ, meant choosing life and choosing to believe that I was indeed going to be okay and choosing HOPE in Jesus Christ’s plan for my life.
I started this blog to tell my ministry story. You can start that here! To tell my call. I don’t know why, I guess because it had been all over the map and I just wanted it recorded. It involved so many people and I wanted them to know. But what I haven’t told is my story to First Baptist. My current leg of this journey. And it begins with Jason and Katherine.
I grew up in a church that First Baptist started. My mom grew up at First Baptist but I had only gone once in the 10th grade. I was confident that I was going to start going then, but in that Sunday night service on November 1, 2009, I knew God wasn’t calling me there.
In January 2014, I heard that Jason and Katherine were speaking in Powerhouse- the student Wednesday night service- about 30 minutes before it started, and I couldn’t get there fast enough! I remember almost not going. I was late of course, but I got one of my girls and we went. After the service, I met the student minister and I remember trying to tell him I had most of his middle school girls in Girl Talk.
I heard Jason and Katherine speak again that summer in service when Ryan and Philann were speaking at First Baptist in Sunday School. Around that time, I knew God was calling me to full time ministry. Jason and Katherine had a huge pull in that time. Up to this point, I had tried everything else- nursing, teaching, child life.. while these are all ministries of their own, God was calling me to specific full time focus on ministry, nothing else. When I told my mom, I think of a daughter telling her mom she wants to be a stripper. It wasn’t a good time in our house. She called a meeting with a pastor. It wasn’t until after she had talked to Jay Wolf that I knew about it.
I was mortified.. “YOU TALKED TO THE PASTOR.. not only a Pastor.. but JAY WOLF, without me?? What in the world did you say this time?”
I told her we were going back immediately and that I was telling him my side [the truth ;)] of the story. Some time after the meeting, I messaged the student minister and asked him if he knew of any ministry jobs around the city. I had been talking to YoungLife and nothing was really coming through. Never in a million years was I looking for a job with him and two weeks later, I was sitting in staff meeting at First Baptist Church.
My mom didn’t go to First Baptist, Jay wasn’t her pastor when she did go there, her pastor was out of town and out of all the Pastors my mom could have chosen to talk to, she called Jay Wolf. Someone I have looked up to my whole life but I had never known.
Almost two years later, the Wolfs are my closest family and Jason and Katherine are impacting the world and my world. After Jesus Christ and next to Girl Talk, First Baptist Church is by far the biggest blessing in my life.
Jason and Katherine changed my life and they are changing lives all around them, all around the world. Today, 8 years ago, Katherine lived. She lived through a massive stroke at 26 years old when she could have died. As sinners, we deserve death. We should die for eternity but the minute we accepted Christ into our lives, that was our death. We died to ourselves and we will live for eternity with Him because Jesus Christ died the death we deserve so that we could have the LIFE only He could give. We all need HOPE and this is our HOPE! “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Pre-order HOPE HEALS today <<releasing April 26>> http://www.hopehealsbook.com