BEING VULNERABLE Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord Psalm 130:1 Help Lord! --------------------------- Have you ever poured out your heart to someone, only to be met with indifference? Have you ever explained how deeply you love them, only to be told in a cold voice that they don’t love you back? We think the solution is to NEVER be that vulnerable again. But God asks us to be this vulnerable all the time – with Him and with others – if we want true joy. In other words, the thing we think is the worst possible thing, is actually the best. Here’s what I mean: In John 12, you find John’s account of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with perfume at a dinner party in front of all the other guests: “The house was filled with the fragrance.” Mary wipes Jesus’ dirty feet with her hair. Mary displays the vulnerability to God to which we are all called. If you read the Psalms, you’ll find that they’re full of desperate honest vulnerable cries for help. ”I think of God, and I moan, overwhelmed with longing for his help.” Psalm 77:3. ”O God, why have you rejected us so long?” Psalm 74:1. ”Rescue me from the mud; don’t let me sink any deeper.” Psalm 69:14. ”I am exhausted from crying for help; my throat is parched. My eyes are swollen with weeping, waiting for my God to help me. Those who hate me without cause outnumber the hairs on my head.” Psalm 69:2-4. ”From the ends of the earth, I cry to you for help when my heart is overwhelmed.” Psalm 61:2. ”My heart pounds in my chest. The terror of death assaults me. Fear and trembling overwhelm me, and I can’t stop shaking.” Psalm 55:4. ”As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God.” Psalm 42:1-2. ”My heart is breaking as I remember how it used to be.” Psalm 42:4. ”Why am I so discouraged? Why is my heart so sad?” Psalm 42:5. ”My heart beats wildly, my strength fails, and I am going blind.” Psalm 38:10. David and Mary know the secret to living an abundant life lies in becoming vulnerable to God. Judas criticizes Mary for wasting money that could have been given to the poor, but Jesus praises her for doing “a good thing.” See Matthew 26:6-13; Mark 14:3-9; Luke 7:36-50 (it’s probable the Luke account is of a different anointing). Jesus had earlier also praised Mary for sitting at his feet listening: she chose the “only thing” necessary, Jesus said. Luke 10:38-42. Similarly, David spent so much time alone with his sheep on the hillside as a young boy, that he stormed onto the battlefield armed only with a slingshot because He trusted the “living God” to help him defeat a giant named Goliath. When you spend this kind of time alone with God, you learn that God looks down on humans with love and understanding: “He made their hearts, so he understands everything they do.” Psalm 33:15. We, on the other hand, don’t understand our hearts. We can see evil in others, but we have a lot of trouble seeing it in ourselves. That’s why God asks us to pour our hearts out to Him. He knows that if we do so, He’ll expose our hearts. He doesn’t expose them to condemn us but rather to heal and transform us. It’s also why God asks us to read the Bible. The Bible is called the Living Word. It cuts between bone and marrow. The Bible exposes our heart. Here in John 12, for instance, the vulnerability of Mary is contrasted with the greed of Judas who steals from the disciples; the flightiness of the crowd who worship him with palm branches only to turn on him and scream “crucify him” a few days later; the religious leaders’s desire to kill Christ out of envy; and peoples’ fear of admitting they believed in Jesus, because they “loved human praise more than the praise of God.” In other words, the light of the gospel exposes the human heart in its greed, infidelity, jealousy and weakness. But the gospel doesn’t end with our darkness. It exposes the darkness in our heart for the very reason that God wants to give us His light instead. The only requirement is our honesty, vulnerability and humility. The only requirement for receiving God’s help is asking for it. That’s why David can cry out to God with such vulnerability. The only way to receive help is to admit our need of it
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 19:59:11 +0000
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