You Are Not Weak

I often wonder if we are just fooling ourselves in The Church. We say that we want “authentic community”. We say that we value transparency, honesty, being real and coming as you are. Yet almost every day,  I talk to Christians that have spent most of their Christian life being dishonest, fake, hiding, posing.

Why? Why do we say we desire for the Christian life to be about one thing yet live as though we can never attain it?

As I have talked to both men and women; single and married; divorced and remarried; there is a reluctance to live out what we say we believe.

I think there are two reasons for our reluctance.

-Lack of friends…real friends.

-We are afraid of being perceived as weak.

I get it. This was my life for 15 years.

I had a bunch of people I considered friends. I had a ton of people in my life that thought I was their friend.

They were my friends and I was their friend to the degree that I allowed the relationships to develop. But even though I had “close friends” I didn’t have one person I truly trusted with the darkest, most vulnerable parts of my life. I lived my life in loneliness and isolation…even from my wife. I preached about marriage. I taught on authentic community. But I never took the risk to actually develop it in my own life. I think we have grown accustomed to living this way and very few of us have true, authentic, deep friendships.

Secondly, if we do share these parts of our heart, people will think we are weak and incompetent as a Christian. I had a fear that if I admitted weakness, my friends would see me differently. If I admitted weakness the people in my church would lose respect for me. If I admitted weakness my wife would stop loving me. If I admitted weakness, then I wouldn’t be able to control the spiritual perception I had spent a lifetime building.

I feel God prompting me today to speak into your heart: You are not weak.

• Confessing your pornography addiction is not weak
• Admitting you have an eating disorder is not weak
• Asking for help as a parent is not weak
• Realizing your marriage is in trouble and seeking professional help is not weak
• Confessing hidden lust for a co-worker to your spouse before it becomes an affair is not weak
• Forgiving someone that betrayed you is not weak
• Telling the truth about your drinking problem is not weak
• Talking to a friend about sexual abuse you experienced as a kid is not weak

• Exposing the dark parts of your heart is not weak

Somewhere we bought into the lie in the church that walking with Christ means pretending like we have it more together than we really do.

I want to encourage you to step into the area of your life God is calling you to be vulnerable. You may have convinced yourself that asking for help, admitting sin, confessing struggles is a sign of weakness.

Actually that way of living is the most courageous way to live. You will experience God and His presence in ways you can’t imagine.

You are not weak.