#AtoZChallenge: Vulnerability

One of the most difficult things to be is to be vulnerable. If there is one thing that we most often refuse to be - besides wrong, or humble - it’s being vulnerable. And yet, all great art requires vulnerability allowing people to look into your soul. Though “great art” is a strange thing to call worship leading, it’s the same principle. (Remember what I said about beauty?)

People respond to honesty, raw honesty, the kind of raw vulnerability that cries out to God for help from the depths of their soul. It’s what you find in the Psalms when David and the other psalmists cry out to God - in loss, in victory, in sorrow, in joy. It’s being honest about your struggles and open about your pain. You don’t need to tell the congregation your life story in detail - but they need to see your openness before God. They need to feel your emotions, even if they don’t know the details behind it.

They don’t really need to know anything you’re not ready to share either. But what they need is to see you there - on stage - with your heart bared before God, allowing Him to move in you. They need to see your passion, your tears, your joy. At times, it feels like a performance. Can I cry on cue? Can I look ‘enraptured’ on cue? But you’re not meant to put on a show. There is no right or wrong time to do any “worship moves”. You’re meant to model to the congregation what it looks like to come before God in spirit and in truth, in openness and abandonment, to allow Him to work in you in music and song, in the middle of worship, in freedom.

It is only in being vulnerable - seeing our true selves as we are - that we can really come to God in truth, as He requires — and free others to worship Him in like manner too.

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About the book:

Jane Hays has been told all her life that it’s dangerous to be out in the forest past sundown. At fifteen, she’s quite sure that it’s all old wives’ tales... yet, why does her village bar the gates every night? Why do they even have gates? When she is caught in an unexpected rainstorm on her way home, Jane ignores all the warnings and seeks shelter in a cottage in the middle of the forest. Soon, she is caught up in a world of magic and beauty – and in the storm of the Fairy Queen’s wrath.

The Fairy Queen is out for blood. There have been intruders – human intruders – in her domain and she will stop at nothing to find them and kill them. After all, it is only fair. She is only seeking retribution for the death that humans leave in their wake.

But Jane isn’t all that she seems to be. And the events of the night aren’t as innocent as they appear.

A tale of magic, fairy creatures and family, Coexist is a novella for the young and the young-at-heart.

Get Coexist on Amazon or Smashwords. Check out Book Depository or Createspace for paperbacks!