Vulnerability

“Say it again with me. Serve the vulnerable. I believe with all of my heart that one of Jesus's, so to say, his best moves and the moves that he brought to humanity, I like to say it, his superpower was serving. And don't you know that he says even of himself, look, the Son of Man didn't come to be served, to be waited on, he came to serve. So we, as we have Jesus in us, he's already compelling us to go and to serve the vulnerable. I was asking Selvin and Mark earlier, who are the vulnerable?”

“But also, also there's other times that he comes and he tempts us at our very, very lows. notice that Jesus was hungry, right? He was weak. He was vulnerable. And sometimes Satan tempts us when we're hungry, tired, vulnerable, when we're grieving loss. And in verse two, it says this, after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry. He's at a place of vulnerability. Notice, Satan didn't come the first time.”

“But there is one other thing about opportunity that I want you to know, and that is opportunity is vulnerable. It's vulnerable. What I mean by that is we either use it or lose it. We seize it or we waste it. And in every one of our lives, one of the most important things that we must do every day is to realize that the opportunities we have today are vulnerable. And if they're valuable, then we must do everything that we can to give our time, our attention, and our energy to it.”

“And that's not just because I'm a pastor. That's because I'm a person just like you. And you've struggled with those things.”

“Intimacy means this, into me you see. So there's a Hebrew word for that, yadah, to know me. Right. And so Jesus wants us to know him. And so a part of my role as a husband is to be so clothed in the righteousness of Christ that I can be vulnerable and transparent for her to know me and she can be vulnerable and transparent towards me as well because of the grace of God. So we're on the same team.”

“And I think about the consequences in our witness in the world, the consequences of our testimony and the impact of our lives for the gospel. Lord, the stakes are just so high. And Lord, we're vulnerable. We're vulnerable to the wisdom of the world. And so, Lord, give us the heart and the mind of Christ. Help us to identify the wisdom of God versus the wisdom of the world.”

“In James' world, these would have been the most vulnerable. They had no way to really fix their condition. And so they were reliant upon others just to live. So this represents the most vulnerable people. But it was never just meant to be orphans and widows in their distress.”

“The reality is, is that we know where we're vulnerable. We know where we are susceptible. I once heard a pastor preach this and he used this method called HALT, H-A-L-T. That stands for hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, right? We know these are the places and these are the spaces where we're vulnerable to sin, don't we?”