I'll never forget the first time a pastor confessed his struggles with lust to me.

I was probably 19 and I had been wanting freedom from that particular sin.

So one day with one of my pastor slash mentor slash brothers in the faith,

I followed the advice of James 516,

confess therefore your sins to one another and pray for one another and you'll be healed.

I told him what was going on in my life.

He said back to me something along the lines of I understand I've been there. As simple as that

was, it was earth shaking. His vulnerability drew me in. It made me strong. It gave me hope.

And hope is one of the most powerful things you can give to a person. Vulnerability is what makes a good friend a good friend.

It's what makes a leader someone you want to follow.

Vulnerability draws others in and it makes them say, wow, me too.

But there's a dark side of vulnerability, a side nobody talks about for fear of it becoming real.

And that problem, that dark side is vulnerability opens you up to losing.

One of my favorite types of films are thrillers.

In them, the director creates vulnerable moments that cause the beloved character to suffer

some sort of loss. We become invested in these

characters and so when they lose, we lose. When they feel vulnerable, we feel vulnerable. You can

almost feel those moments coming when a change in the angle of the movie or a change in music

or a change in a scene or change in a scene or a change in place makes

us know something bad is about to happen. It often helps to read scripture like a movie

script, but a real one, of course. Look at the scene where Jesus and his best friends are having

dinner and Jesus tells them one of them is going to betray me, betray him. This is and his best friends are having dinner.

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