1 Corinthians 4:5

Try to imagine this. 

Rob Wiley is preaching a sermon on "Vulnerability in the Church". He stands in front of the congregation and says, "Today we will be passing out post it notes and you will write on the post it note what you struggle with,  sins you struggle with, or everyday struggles. After you write that, we will be putting them on our foreheads for everyone to see."

If you are anything like me, you would probably be thinking... "Absolutely not. I will not participate in that. That is way too vulnerable for me."  Obviously this would not happen in the real world and this needs to not be taken too literally ... But it's still fun to imagine this.  How would you react if Rob told you to do that? Would you be hesitant or would you be okay with that?

I think most of us would feel quite hesitant when being asked to do such a thing. As I can imagine, putting the sins we struggle with on our foreheads would be hard for most of us.  It wouldn't be in our nature to put the sins we struggle with on paper for everyone to see. Imagine if we all listened to him though and participated. I feel like if everyone participated, we would all look around and realize that there is no reason to judge another person or judge what they struggle with. Here's my list to put what I am saying into action:

And yes, that post it note is way oversized. 

I feel like many people would look at me funny because I am a girl with the word pornography written on my forehead. And it's true. I struggled with that for 7 plus years. But God has REDEEMED me and set me free from that lifestyle of destructive sin. I think that if we participated in this activity, we would realize that we are all sinners in need of a Savior. We are all broken people, who just struggle differently. God looks at all of our sin the same. He doesn't measure sin based on how bad it is in our society. Sin is sin in His eyes.

 I believe that after the sermon, we would feel more comfortable around other people in our church and we would even be able to connect with others on a more individual level. We would look around and think, "Wow, I didn't know that about him/her." This would totally spur on conversation between people. I really believe that our church would look drastically different because of this. We would be more vulnerable about what we are struggling with, and what we are going through, because the truth would be exposed and there would be no more hiding. Our sins would literally be exposed for the people around us to see.

 And as Christians (if you're anything like me), you don't want your sins to be written all over you. You want other people to see you as the Christian who has it all together, or you want to be known the "good girl".   I personally think that this is why some of us don't connect well with other Christians. We want to be the one who has life figured out, who everyone loves, and we want others to think of us as having our lives together... which will never happen, just so you know. We need to let some of our guards down and just be who we are.

Also... (this is kinda a side note).  Imagine the people that walk into our church for the first time. They would see the sins we struggle with written on our forehead, and I almost guarantee they would feel comfortable about coming to our church... (or they might think we are just plain weird because we have post it notes on our forehead). The would most likely feel welcomed and would feel like they could connect. But you get the picture, and this is obviously not taken literally.

I'm not saying with this post, that our church can't connect on this deep of a level already. I just thought this analogy was pretty great. Like I said earlier, I feel like Christians can sometimes feel like they have to have it all together. Which is absolutely false!!! We need to be open and bold about what we are going through with other Christians- those who are like minded! We need to have at least one safe person that we can share our hurts and our struggles with. Let's be vulnerable my friends.  The sins that we are either hiding in secrecy or not sharing with anyone, need to be brought the the light.

1 Corinthians 4:5 "The Lord will bring to light the things hidden in darkness."