Vulnerable.
It’s a word that to most of the world automatically brings thoughts of weakness. War leaders have always looked for places their opponent is vulnerable, so they can exploit that weakness in battle. To many world and political leaders vulnerability is often referred to as areas that might keep them from being successful leaders.
For the longest time in my life I never wanted to be vulnerable. I never wanted to open up about my weaknesses, flaws and struggles because I looked at it as the world did…as a sign of weakness. I knew vulnerability meant the chance for pain and hurt to happen.
This past week my entire squad spent 5 days in Antiqua, Guatemala for our first ‘debrief’. It was a chance for all of us to transition from month one of mission work to month two, and come together and spend time as a squad. During our time there we had some opportunities to be vulnerable with each other, open up and share some things a lot of us had kept inside and buried for a long time.
I made the choice to be vulnerable. It’s a choice. It’s not an easy one but the first step to defeating darkness is bringing something into the light. I shared with my squad of 41 people my past struggles with pornography, having pre-marital sex with my girlfriend, some of the idols I have battled, the fact I lived for many years for the praise of others.
These things are not easy to share. In fact some of them have impacted my life for years, but there are a couple things vulnerability brings or allows. The most important one is healing. It brings about the opportunity for loved ones to speak truth into things that we’ve allowed the devil to have a strangle hold on.
Again, I’ll say it. Darkness flees when things are brought into the light.
So what does this new sense of vulnerability mean? That I should go out and yell my deepest struggles on subway trains? Not exactly. But the freedom brought by confiding with loved ones is incredible. If one day yelling my deepest struggles in public meant sharing the truth and freedom that Jesus Christ can bring, then that’s what I’ll do.
To all my friends and family back home, I hope this blog didn’t come across like I am at some crazy mission trip that makes you go out of your mind. What my trip so far is doing is breaking free some of the burdens I’ve had in my life and bringing about freedom that can only be rooted in Christ. I encourage all of you guys to do the same back home. Bring things into the light with those that can be trusted, because healing comes from being vulnerable.
We are just wrapping up our first full week here in Guatemala. Each week we are able to do a different form of ministry so I’ll have a blog up soon recapping week one.
Here are a few pictures from the past week. I’ll have a blog up soon about the actual tangible ministry work we are doing here in Guatemala.
As always thanks so much for all the support and prayers from back home! I miss you guys but am so pumped for the work the Lord is doing in and through me!
