“And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” – 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 (NASB)

If you think you are ready to take the plunge and release all control of your life over into the caring hands of God, then you better be ready to be completely vulnerable. Being vulnerable requires rigorous honesty with yourself and with another. Being vulnerable feels like being naked in front of a stranger – suddenly someone is seeing you for all you really are and not for who you want them to see; all the shame, fear, sins, and messiness are out in the open. There is no more hiding. It sounds dreadfully painful and unreasonably uncomfortable. Yet, God told Paul repeatedly, “my grace is sufficient in your weakness.” Being vulnerable feels like weakness, but vulnerability is power.

What keeps us from being vulnerable? Fear keeps us from being vulnerable. Fear also keeps us grasping for control. When we are scared or worried, we instinctually tend to try and control the outcomes so our fears or worries won’t come to light. However, when we try to control a situation, a circumstance, or a person, we will also end up losing, and that loss may actually bring about our fears. The message of God’s sufficient grace is that in your vulnerability and surrender, there is power and strength. And that in this power, we will be able to face everything bad, uncomfortable, offensive, and difficult – “for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

I was asked to give a list of the things I’m worried about, but the catch to this list was I had to admit that I had no control over the outcome of these worries. I started naming out the usual things like career-path, money, and paying off debts. But the further I got in my list, I found myself having to make a choice: do I be honest, or do I just keep things at the surface? I decided to be honest. I put down I worry about my kids. I admitted I could not control what happens to them in life. Then I wrote down my wife and my marriage. This was getting much more difficult, because I had to be vulnerable with myself. I admitted I had no control over my wife, our marriage, or what might happen to us in the future. But then, I wrote down an unusually strange thing for me to say. I said that I worry about being loved and fully known. I fell speechless and tears filled my eyes. I had no control over the outcome of this very real and very human fear. To be fully loved and fully known is at the heart of all we are, and all we desire. What if I had to live the rest of my life and no one really and fully knew me – who I really am not who the world says I am. Who I really am underneath all those layers of façade. To be known is to be loved. To be loved is to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable to be surrendered.

Being vulnerable is modeled by God Himself. In His love for us, He surrendered everything in order to show us grace – His all-sufficient grace. You will not have to look long at the life of Christ to find His heart of consistent surrender. His every action was an open act of the vulnerability of God’s own heart. Now He gives each one of us a chance to come and know Him fully just as He has fully known you (1 Cor. 13:12). Knowing God means being vulnerable with Him and surrendering to His sufficient grace.

God’s grace is sufficient in my vulnerable surrender. In my surrender, God’s power is made perfect in my life. This was what Paul was really talking about when he said he could face down insults, distresses, persecutions, and difficulties. It was that all those things we fear, from what people think and say about us, to our relationships, our money, our jobs, our health, in all those things we can find strength not because we are powerful, but rather because we are powerless and Christ is powerful. Perhaps we should make a living out of boasting in our weakness, or rather I should say, of being vulnerable with ourselves, others, and God… “For we have overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony” (Rev. 12:11).