A new year. So crazy to say we are in 2011. Wasnt there supposed to be flying cars and space homes by now? Right. Well my life is totally different. I live in Florida and I start a nanny job tomorrow.
God brought me to Florida to be a support for my brother. He is going thru a rough time right now. Sometimes he comes home and is so sad. I wish that I could make all things right and make him happy. But I know that God is working in his life and God will get all the glory for it.
I wish sometimes I could crawl in Gods head and heart and see the bigger picture. I think it would make things come in to perspective. I don’t need to see details, just the right directions to go and decisions to make.
God has been moving on me this year. I have never been able to make new years resolutions. Just one thing that I work on all year. A couple of years ago, my goal was to be better at making eye contact. I have mastered that. This year my goal is to work on my relationships. OMG why did I make this my goal. It is so hard. I want to cry every few hours. I know its going go make me stronger. I just want to be consistent with my friendships and relationships and family and every ship that comes on my path. God has really been dealing with me the past few days on being vulnerable and transparent. I asked a few of my friends a question to see what they would say and there answers really let me see into their heart. The question was, Would you say being vulnerable is being weak. I wont reveal who said what but I want you to see the answers, so here they are.
1) being vulnerable means you open yourself up and its is possible to get hurt because your open not because you are weak in general.
2) Being vulnerable is showing your weakness so I say being vulnerable means being strong in your spirit.
3)Vulnerable:unprotected in a place/time where danger is not readily recognised-e.i. A child alone is vulnerable to harm, that is why we should watch out for them .a women can be more vulnerable to assault because of her lack of physical strength compared to a man
4) I would say that it can in some situations be considered weak.
5) If you are making yourself vulnerable for the betterment of another person then that makes you a hero. Like if you are rescuing a child from a kidnapping for example. But if you are vulnerable to continued hurts from the same person for example, then that makes you weaker. But Christ became vulnerable on the cross for out betterment and that made him and us stronger. And also, when you choose to love someone, you are becoming vulnerable.
6) No-that is not to say that the weak are not vulnerable. The strong can allow themselves to be vulnerable by acknowledging a weakness knowing that some will think negatively toward them.
Wow. I thought after I got my answers. I can’t tell you i went to sleep thinking about butterflies and rainbows. I think I bit off more than I could chew. I went to our first Wednesday service and John Bevere was the speaker and he was talking about the Grace of God and how if we were to fully live in the true grace of God, we have to go forth even in our weakness knowing that His grace is what bridges the gap between what we can do ourselves and what he wants to use us for.
So then I go to thinking. Being vulnerable is acknowledging your weakness and working with the Grace of God to bring glory to His name in situations that are put in your path.
2 Corinthians 2:1-4 is Paul writing to the church in Corinth. To me it shows him being vulnerable and honest with them. That tells me that 1) vulnerability is being completely honest. Not holding back even when it brings you pain. You can feel Paul’s love for the Corinthians as he is telling them that he is not going to visit them because he knows it will just bring them pain. I also see another thing in this short passage. 2) Paul is putting aside his feelings for the sake of the ones he loves. Can we truly say that we are selfless when it comes to our decisions about our actions towards one another. I know for me I make decisions based off what I am feeling and how I will feel after. I am learning everyday that I is truly not about me. How can I say that it is. Not to say that I shouldnt take care of myself but that I make sure that when it comes to a decision that has to do with someone else, I have to make sure that I am making this decision keeping in mind the other person and their feelings.
So after I asked the question about vulnerability, i got to thinking what if vulnerability equals weakness. So I quick search vulnerability in the bible and came up with nothing. I probably didn’t look hard enough. So I thought ok I will search weakness. So I came across several Scriptures. What I did was when I read the scripture I replace weakness with vulnerability. Just in my head. I had a revelation.
Romans 8:26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness(vulnerability). We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.
1Corinthians 1:25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness(vulnerability) of God is stronger than human strength.
1Corinthians 2:3 I came to you in weakness(vulnerability) with great fear and trembling.
2 Corinthians 11:30 If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness(vulnerability).
2Corithians 12:9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness(vulnerability).” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses(vulnerabilities), so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
2 Corinthians 12:10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses(vulnerability), in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
I think it’s intersting that most of the scriptures I found where in the chapters that I consider the love chapters.
My revelation was, I think its amazing that every time there was weakness(vulnerability), Gods grace and strength stood out. That when at the weakest point, trusting that God was the strength.
Being vulnerable is a self-sacrifice. You are giving up your most personal parts of your life and let people see you for who you truly are. One way I look at: You life is like a purse. All the contents in your purse can help you in your relationships. You meet a person and they have severe chapped lips. You know that you have chapstick in your purse but you have a phobia of germs. Are you going to look past your phobia and help them out? Or you meet someone who has been thru a rough time and you know how that feels, that why you have tissues in your purse so that if your hard times pop up again you will be ready. Will you share your tissues with that person, with the risk of running out of tissues for the next time you go thru a hard time? The whole point of Gods grace is that he has put stuff in our purse knowing that we will run out and that we have phobias, but asking us to trust him and lean not on our own understanding and lean on His grace. His grace is sufficient. We are called to be like Jesus, but only when we make ourselves vulnerable do we truly lean on His grace and trust that He knows what He is doing.
