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Northern New England Conference

Dee Casper

The Strength of Vulnerability

God in heaven, thank you for the privilege to pray.

I thank you to be in a place that is beautiful, but above that, Lord, I thank you to be in a place that values prayer.

And so I pray that as we reflect upon this topic and its connection to the importance of prayer, Lord, that you would speak to us, that you would do something in this tense, in this moment, that none of us would soon forget, for your glory.

So for many people, it could be a generational issue, it could be a cultural issue.

For many, the topic of vulnerability can be viewed as a topic of weakness.

If I find myself being vulnerable with someone else, that's me being weak.

If I'm asking help from somebody else, that's me being weak.

But I hope what we're going to see this morning is that Jesus is the greatest example of how 1 should live their life, and his life was 1 that was filled with radical vulnerability.

Jesus lived a life of radical vulnerability.

This is not giving you license to go up to everybody in your life and say, I'm an absolute hot mess.

You have no idea how many problems I have in my life.

Let me just tell you how many problems I have in my life and start giving gory details that should not be shared with anyone, right?

But there is a sense, and I wanna go through this, but there are some things that shouldn't be shared publicly, right?

We need to use discretion as secret sins, vile things, things along that nature.

And we don't want to, we don't want to develop this situation where we have dependence upon people either.

But there is a real sense in which many of us have refused the help that God designed for us to have in Christian community, let alone learning to be vulnerable with ourselves and with God.

Many times we think the topic of vulnerability is mainly just swirling around, all right, I just need to tell people that I need help, whatever.

I tell you what, the hardest person in the world for me to be vulnerable with is me.

To actually be honest with myself on who I actually am, where I actually am, and what I'm dealing with.

Which by the way is 1 of the reasons why God gave the Laodicean message to the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

But he didn't give it to the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

1852, Ellen White says, that was the first time that she diagnosed the Advent movement as being in a Laodicean condition.

That's 11 years before we were incorporated as a church.

And the only way you get through the Laodicean experience is by being vulnerable and humble enough to acknowledge the fact that you are not who you think you are emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and otherwise.

I don't care if you're great-great-great-great-grandfather mowed Ellen White's lawn, you need Jesus.

We can kind of pull the, you know, the Israelite card that, you know, I've got a clean paper trail all the way to Abraham.

How much history you may be surrounded in.

That's a privilege to be a Seventh-day Adventist Christian and to be raised 1.

That doesn't entitle you to anything different.

And so we all need Jesus, and we need to come to terms with the fact that we need Jesus.

And we're not going to find the healing and the freedom that we need in our individual experience until we learn to be honest with ourselves and with God in prayer.

And when it comes to the heavy, dirty, nasty stuff of vulnerability, where do you think you bring it?

Galatians 6, 2 that says that we should be willing to bear 1 another's burdens.

So the topic of vulnerability is not just that you need to learn to be vulnerable.

It's also an issue of, our churches need to be places where it's safe to be vulnerable.

That was the point of the church, was to be a place where we could bear 1 another's burdens.

But if we're shaming people for having burdens, no 1 opens up.

Right, if we broadcast people's sins and their shortcomings and their failures, there's some stuff you gotta deal with.

When it's public, when it's real, you have to administer church discipline, fine.

But Paul talks about this, I'm just ranting right now, but anytime a preacher sees they have an hour in 15 minutes, they think they can rant for a long time because that's like an extra 15 minutes.

That was trained by Matt Parra and that's dangerous.

So anyway, but you get in a situation that I chased the rabbit after chasing a rabbit, so I need to go 2 rabbits back.

So Paul in 1 Corinthians was telling the church, there's stuff happening in this church that's totally unacceptable, and you gotta deal with this.

A man has his own father's wife, you do the math.

So in 2 Corinthians, when Paul follows up with them, he says the punishment that was inflicted is sufficient for such a man.

But then he says you also need to reaffirm your love to him lest he be overwhelmed with too much sorrow.

So yes, the man needed to be disfellowshipped for doing something abominable, but he was not to be cast off as some dirty loser that no 1 should ever talk to or have any affiliation with.

Because he doesn't want our discipline to be done in such a way that causes people to be overwhelmed and overcome with sorrow.

So how we handle these things should be tactful, it should be directional, it should be redemptive.

Because if we're going through things in a way that leads them to believe that we want nothing to do with them, the problem is we're claiming to represent God.

So they may now be tempted to believe that God wants nothing to do with them.

You know 1 of the easiest places to hide from our own issues and refuse vulnerability?

Spiritual codependency is rampant in Adventism, I'm sure.

It's far easier for me to find my identity and fixing everybody else's problems than to look face to face in the mirror and realize I got stuff.

Someone told me this, because I didn't ask for this, but I'm becoming a public figure, and it's hard, man.

Like you're out, you're doing, giving, giving, giving, giving.

I'm traveling all over the country, but even tow trucks need tow trucks.

Right, Like we all need sacred and safe place for us to open up and be vulnerable, but it's hard because of the way in which we haven't done vulnerability well.

If you try to open up to 1 person and they burn you, it could ruin your ministry.

Thankfully, God has provided me with some very good people to have community.

I was just talking with 1 on the right here.

But we need to be providing safe and sacred spaces for our people.

But my point is, in ministry, that's 1 of the easiest places to avoid vulnerability.

We focus on helping everybody else without truly knowing ourselves or dealing with the things that are crippling us and holding us back.

No, no, no, I shouldn't think about me, I shouldn't focus on me, I should be thinking about them.

There's a reason they tell you in an airplane to put your mask on first before you put a mask on your kid.

You're not going to be able to help your kid if you don't put your mask on first.

So, there is this balance that we need to find when it comes to the topic of vulnerability.

And if we add on top of this our faulty core beliefs, that I'm not good enough, I don't deserve to receive help, it makes it even worse, right?

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The Strength of Vulnerability

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