Anyone who knows me knows that I do all the question asking… don’t even try to get me to do the answering. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t cry in front of people. Anyone who knows me may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything on any social media for almost year now. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t show my artwork to anyone. Anyone who knows me knows that vulnerability is not a gift of mine…
Why?
These are some of the lies I’ve been believing:
- Your problems are too small and petty for anyone to be concerned about them.
- People have enough on their plates; don’t add your troubles to them.
- You’re not worth worrying about.
- It’s fine if you just ignore your hurts and concerns; talking about them makes them bigger deal than they need to be anyways.
- It’s okay to not be known deeply.
- There are 7.4 billion people on earth… it’s prideful to think that you matter.
- Jesus was never vulnerable.
- It’s okay for other people to cry, but you shouldn’t; you’re fine.
- No one can hurt you if you don’t give then the means to; it’s safer to stay closed up.
- If you let your friends know you are struggling, hurting, or upset, they aren’t gonna think God gives peace and comfort, and you will give them a wrong view of God.
- No one cares; don’t make them.
- God is going to take care of you; you don’t need to ask or expect people to.
As you can assume, these lies form a poor, polluted mindset about what it means to be a child of God and a brother/sister in Christ. Writing and posting this blog may be the most vulnerable thing I’ve done in quite a while. My prayer is that by discussing and publicly walking through these issues that I – and I’m sure many of you – have with vulnerability, that we may become free from them.
Here are some truths God has shown me to counter these lies:
Lies 1 and 2 defeated: We, as brothers and sisters in Christ, are called to care for each other. By presenting someone with the opportunity to help and encourage you, you are presenting them with an opportunity to be obedient to God and to be blessed through it. Life, especially the Christian life, is not meant to be lived alone.
“Carry each others burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).
“The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him’” (Genesis 2:18).
“Two are better than one, because they have good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can pick him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not easily broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).
Lie 3 defeated: My friend Hannah is the first person to tell me I am worth worrying about. I told her worrying is useless and counter productive, and she responded by saying, not when worry translates to prayer.
“Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (James 5:16).
Lie 4 defeated: Sin, shame, pain, and guilt thrive in the darkness… bring them to the light. What isn’t revealed can’t be healed.
“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them” (Ephesians 5:8-11).
Lie 5 defeated: We cannot remove or work through our junk, brokenness, graves clothes alone. People have to know what that stuff is to help us remove it. In John 11, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, but even though he was alive again, he was still in his grave clothes. Ryan McDermott, a Floridian Pastor, defines grave clothes as anything holding you back from everything God has for you. In verse 44, Jesus turned to Martha and Mary, Lazarus’ sisters, and told them, ‘Take off his grave clothes and let him go.” Jesus did not tell Lazarus to go into the house or into privacy to take them off himself, nor did Jesus take them off for him. Instead, he told the people that loved him to take them off for him. Lazarus had to be vulnerable to the point of being completely naked in front of the people that cared about him most before he could be clothed in what God intends for those who are alive in Christ to be clothed in.
“’Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to [Martha and Mary], ‘Take off his grave clothes and let him go’” (John 11:43-44).
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes… Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet filled with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:10-17).
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience… And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Colossians 3:12-14).
Lie 6 defeated: Every person on earth is cared for, known, and loved by our Creator. We matter.
“Cast all your anxiety on him because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).
“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet their heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:26).
“For you created me in my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:13).
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all God’s people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses all knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19).
Lie 7 defeated: God – the Creator and Sustainer of the world – became a baby, the most dependent and vulnerable state of being in this world. Jesus is also called the Lamb of God. A lamb is pictured as one of the most vulnerable animals in the Bible.
Timothy Keller says this when talking about some of the gifts God gives us. He says, “In the gift of Christmas, the unassailable (unable to be attacked), omnipotent (possessing all power) God became a baby, giving us the ultimate example of letting our defenses down.”
“All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel – which means, “God with us”’” (Matthew 1:22-23).
“Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!” (John 1:29).
Lie 8 defeated: In John 11, Jesus wept with Mary and Martha over the death of their brother Lazarus. Jesus knew that minutes later he would be raised from the dead and would be alive and breathing again, but he still hurt for them and sympathized with them. Jesus wasn’t too strong or too manly or too put together to have a heart for the hurting and to show it. It’s okay to cry for yourself and for others.
“Jesus wept” (John 11:35).
Lie 9 defeated (my fav): You may keep yourself from getting hurt by putting up walls against the world and people, but by doing so you hinder your ability to truly love.
C.S. Lewis speaks to this saying, “Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
Lie 10 defeated: Where you are weak, he is strong. It brings glory to God to show reveal your weaknesses.
“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).
Almost all of these these things I have learned, have been learned through people. Bringing me to the truth that defeats the 11th and 12th lies: God uses his people to love and care for his people. Over this summer my friend Holly would tell me to let people in. That was never something I thought was okay or safe or smart to do.
“The Lord said, ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt… So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt’” (Exodus 3:7-10).
“Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: ‘Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim the message I give you.’ Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh… The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth… When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened” (Jonah 3:1-10).
“Then Joseph said to his brothers… ‘I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you… to save your lives by a great deliverance’” (Genesis 45:4-7).
“Therefore, as we have the opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers” (Galatians 6:10).
Let your walls down, and let God work. <3
