When I have the privilege of receiving prayer, I always count it a blessing. Time for God to do more things using other people as reinforcement and encouragement; Thank you Jesus!
I sit and wait for the fulfillment of each part of the prayers, asking Father what it is that He wants me to learn, know, understand, actively work on and or say about each thing. This last time, I got home and we had a minor emergency which did not cost a minor sum of money. So walking through the last few weeks had some added extras that I didn’t anticipate, which disjointed my process of actually processing the prayers a little.
It didn’t disjoint the process for God however, isn’t it funny how sometimes the unexpected turns into something glorious?
So. Every now and then I come up against a certain kind of vulnerability or defenceless pain in myself. It is part of the fabric of who I created myself to be. Piece by piece, it is being surrendered out of me. As a child I saw vulnerability as weak, undesirable and contemptable, and chose very deliberately to cultivate emotional strength and my own moral code as a personal value.
Actions like these of course, lead to the ultimate defencelessness. Being defenceless against attack from within and from all kinds of darkness, because the tools of real strength, the understanding of being loved completely by Father God and therefore being totally secure in Him (among others), are completely missing.
I believe there is a significant difference between the way we have been taught to think about vulnerability and the way it really is.
We persist in understanding vulnerability as raw-edged and pain-filled. I am coming to believe that it is not meant to be like that. We are equating vulnerability with being defenceless, and the two are not the same.
In the name of being “vulnerable”, I wonder if we have taken on many more wounds than we needed to, because we did not understand our security in the Father. I also wonder how many wounds we may have avoided giving because of the same.
Our strength lies in our ability to lay back and float the whole of ourselves in the endless strength that is our triune God. From that place, everything can be simultaneously out there in the public eye and hidden in safety, untouchable, healed and healing.
Who I was, my past behaviours, my past actions, are visible for the world. There is no secret that will not be touched by the light of day, we cannot hope to have our darkest selves kept hidden from those we love or those who may look at us for inspiration one day. It’s just not a reasonable expectation, especially in this day and age.
However, If I am truly ready to be vulnerable to God, then, there is nothing that He does not liberate me from, that does not get touched by His Glorious Light and does not become light.
But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. Ephesians 5:13 (NIV)
To become vulnerable is not to become defenceless, because God Himself becomes our defence.
Surrender is the process of allowing ourselves to embrace vulnerability.
Anything that needs to be dealt with is perfectly positioned, already soaking in the Holy Spirit, until He says “It’s time…” and breathes on the change He wants to make for our good and His Glory.
It also means that everything that we are now and everything that we were made to be is Hidden in Security. Bound up in the Fastness of God. The only place impenetrable, and yet, we are there.
Think about Surrender, Vulnerability and being Defenceless in the context of the celebration of Easter.
If Jesus was any more man than God, the pain of betrayal may have caused him to strike out at his attackers, to speak a curse – even unintentionally. If He had any number of childhood wounds, and if they had hooked his behaviour or His thoughts, then the whole process may as well have been called off.
When Jesus sat in the Garden, He made a choice for the ultimate act of vulnerability. His surrender, His choice in the face of all He knew of the possibility and probability of the all-consuming pain to come, while it put Him in the place of ultimate vulnerability, it did not strip Him of any of His defences.
He was able to choose within the security of His relationship with the Father to allow Himself to be washed forward on the tide of the events that were to unfold around Him over the next days.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. Isaiah 53:6-7 (NIV)
Surrendering to vulnerability made Jesus the most powerful person in the history of the Universe.
God Bless You Very Much
Anita