"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable." C.S. Lewis
Now isn't that true? The only way to never be emotionally hurt is to never be in any kind of relationship. To never care for anyone more than yourself. This promises us something that we as broken people desperately want. To never be hurt again.
We build up walls to keep us safe. Or so we think. Our walls may keep the "bad guys" out but it also pushes all who care about us enough to see us healed away as well. We may be able to become unbreakable but at what cost? We forfeit our redemption for the chance to become impenetrable. We push God away as well. God wants to redeem us and heal us but only if we ask him to. When we try to do it on our own; when we try to heal ourselves all we become is even more hurt.
It is impossible to live without your heart being wounded at least a couple of times. But what if, despite this er could still live as though we've never been hurt before? To love and love despite love's risks? This may not be a particularly safe or comfortable way to live but I promise you that it would be worth it.
I think that as Christians we have the authority to speak things into other people's lives. I also think that each of these things that we can pray into others' lives has to be authorized into us first so that we can give it away.
Let me explain... In order to prophesy we have to fist be given the gift of prophesy right? Well I think that it's this way with prayer a little bit too. I can speak blessing into someone else's life because God has spoken blessing into mine, I feel like I can speak to people about some hard topics because I have earned the right to speak out on it because I have gone through hard things too. Likewise I don't usually feel like I have the right to authoritive-ly (If that's a word) pray into someone else's life about something that I have never had touch my life in the way that it's touching theirs. I can still pray, it's just not the same type of prayer in my mind. It's like I can pray for the situation with power still but I'm asking rather than commanding.
Please don't misunderstand me here either. I'm not saying that we need a fancy anointing for each type of prayer or anything. I'm just saying that God has given me the power to fight for certain things in a way that's just right for me.
And that's just it. We are all warrior. God has given us power! Power to speak hope into other people's lives! We can't feebly beg God for something, only half-expecting. We can come to God with our requests boldly because we are children of the Most High God! We have been given the authority to give the gifts that God has given us to a hurting world.
I feel like it isn't always seen as a good thing. Like innocence is really just a code-word for oblivious. I feel like sometimes our culture tries to say that we are supposed to be guilty and that's what we should grow up to become. Personally I want to be innocent. I believe that we can't pretend that everything's all okay but I don't want to be called guilty.
How can I change that? How can I affect and change the norm? I think that the world needs a little more innocence. Innocence that can take the place of our shame and skepticism. Innocence doesn't mean being perfect and undamaged. I believe that I am innocent; and boy am I broken... I sometimes feel like I have reason to be skeptical or bitter. But I don't want those things! I want to be innocent and unbroken. To be innocent means to be willing to forgive, to be willing to trust, and try again. To be willing to possibly make a fool of yourself but for all the right reasons. It is my wish to be innocent.
I don't think that innocence means being ignorant or oblivious to the world's problems. I think innocence is found in being unjaded. (Yeah I made the word up =D ).
Jesus was truly innocent. He never sinned, and he had the other kind of innocence too. He didn't ignore the world's problems, he embraced them. He lived the the mess-ups. He hung out with the poor, the sick,the people that no one liked or wanted to be. He was unjaded enough to put faith in these people. He gave responsibility to Peter the loud-mouth. He didn't hide from the world, he came to love it and to heal it. In order to nurse someone back to life you have to get close to the wound. Jesus came into our broken, hurting lives in order to heal us.
Jesus came to give us back our innocence. He came to take our guilt, our shame, and our skepticism. He died so that we could have new hearts that could take head to what God is whispering (and sometimes shouting) to us. He came so that I could find reasons to trust in others when I had already been let down. He came to teach me that while the world is certainly not perfect, he is. Jesus is the person that I can lean on and never ever be disappointed.
