So I’m habitually going to early service downstairs, then Reveal service upstairs, every Sunday.

This gives me an opportunity to enjoy two amazing praise bands every week.  It also gives me an opportunity to hear two messages.  This morning, the messages I heard synced up amazingly.  David, downstairs, preached with our new confirmands in mind, and encouraged them to be rebels for Christ.  Becky, upstairs, preached about vulnerability.

That’s two sides of the same thing.

Speaking up for Jesus is difficult.  It’s an immediate and merciless world, and there are few things you can do to be more reliably set upon than to tell people you want to talk to them about Christ.

We, to our great detriment, tend to associate vulnerability with weakness.  In fact, vulnerability has much more to do with making ourselves receptive to the purest emotional experiences.  It is a purity of channel, much more than it is a position of submission.

Until very recently I did not openly identify as Christian, mostly because I didn’t want people making assumptions about that.  I do embrace the label now, precisely because I want to be a witness for Christ who is sufficiently intriguing for people to ask me about it.  “How can you be a Christian and believe the world has been around considerably longer than 6,000 years?”  Ask me about it.  “How can you be a Christian and accept and embrace gay people?”  Ask me about it.  “How can you be a Christian and…?”  Ask me about it.

I think that being a true witness means being uncomfortable.  I am trying to teach myself to embrace those encounters, not dread them.