Why Is Vulnerability So Hard?Sample

One of the biggest obstacles to developing healthy relationships in our lonely world is vulnerability. I want to help you navigate and overcome that obstacle today.

So here's the big idea for this plan. If I sum up what we will learn over these five days, it would be this quote from Jeff Henderson: "The relationships we want are on the other side of conversations we're avoiding."

The sense of connection.

Healthy relationships.

The knowing and being known.

Those relationships are what we want and crave in our souls. But they are on the other side of conversations we're unwilling to have.

This struggle with vulnerability does not go back to the 1970s or the 1950s. It began in somewhere other than Europe, America, or even this millennium. The beginning of this struggle goes back to Genesis 3.

In Genesis 2, we meet Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In the middle of Genesis 2, God gives them a command. He says, "You can do anything in this garden except for one thing. You cannot eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

At the end of chapter 2, we read that Adam and Eve were naked in the garden. You could also say they were vulnerable, but note that the Bible explicitly says they were "without shame." Everything changes when you turn the page and begin reading Genesis chapter 3. Verses six through ten tell how humanity moved from naked without shame to hiding and ashamed. In those verses, humanity began struggling with vulnerability with each other and God.

You may struggle with vulnerability not because of the family you grew up in (although that may be part of the struggle). Maybe you grew up in a family that didn't show emotion and where nobody was comfortable being honest. Perhaps you had an unhealthy dating relationship in your teens or 20s, in which a person you loved deeply hurt you. You may have moved away from a place where you had many friends, and now you live somewhere new where you know no one, and you're starting over.

The reason why you struggle with vulnerability is because Genesis 3:6-10 happened. Sin entered the world, and everything changed. I know that we often turn to Genesis 3 and "The Fall" when we're trying to explore the story of salvation and how we became estranged from God because of sin. That is a huge part of this story and 100% true.

However, we often need help understanding how this passage explains the difficulty of our relationships. Genesis 3 describes why we struggle to be vulnerable with each other and why the connection we long for rarely happens the way we envision.

After the fall, we started a pattern we've been repeating for thousands of years.

What is that pattern? I will show it to you on day 3 of this plan.