If we are not vulnerable, we don't have genuine connection. If we don't lay ourselves out there and say take me as I am, I'm all there baby. It's not really connection is it? The reality is, whether it's in your marriage, or whether it's in a really good friendship or whether it's with a sibling or with a parent or whoever, whoever it is. If I'm in genuine, real connection with them, I am vulnerable with them and they with me, and I love them just the same. And they meet me there because it's in the vulnerability that genuine connection is made. That's how we were created, but when we align ourselves with these groups or these roles, we lose ourselves. Because when we align ourselves with that, we're putting on those clothes and it makes us other than what we were created to be. I'm pretty convinced this is what Jesus meant when he said, according to Luke’s Gospel at least, in Chapter 9…If you wanna be my follower, you gotta deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. There's not a one of us who wants to do that. There's not a one of us to go, “Hey, let me deny myself, I'd really love to do that.” I don't think any of us woke up today thinking, “How can I deny myself today?” And yet that's the vulnerability to which Jesus calls us, is to say, "Take off those clothes. I get in relationship with me and do something about this life because it's in that life, that you're actually gonna find abundance, it's in that life that you're actually gonna find the true joy that you're looking for, it’s in that life that you're actually gonna discover fulfillment.” But we gotta take off all those clothes and we gotta find ourselves in Christ. I mentioned Brene Brown last week I'll probably mention or, again, this coming week because she is the sort of modern day guru about this vulnerability and she speaks it right in line with scripture. This is what I love about what she says. She is a follower of Christ, and she believes to her core that what she says sociologically aligns with her faith. So one of the lines she says is this vulnerability is not about weakness. This is what we think it is. We think it means I'm weak, that I can't do anything and I hand myself over. So if the vulnerability is not about weakness she says it's actually really about experiencing love because that's what real love does. Real love says, I love you just the same. That's the way God loves us. God loves us in the midst of all of our vulnerability. God loves us with all of our frailties. God loves us with all of our sin. God loves us just as we are, and that's the gift of God's love. And guess what Jesus says about this very same love in John's gospel in the 13th chapter, when he's down washing the disciples' feet and he says, "I command you to do this thing too, that you go love one another. He also says this, in Verse 35… People are gonna know you're my follower by the way you love. I render that and maybe you don't, but I render that means by the way you make yourself vulnerable to the world by the way in which you find your identity in Christ, to the degree that you're willing to let yourself out there whole hog and don't care what anybody else thinks. God thinks you're good. God thinks you're wonderful. God believes your beautiful. God knows that you are whole as you are and loves you just as you are. Therefore, what difference does it make what anybody else thinks? So stop trying to put on those clothes. Vulnerability.
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