Empathy, Not Vulnerability

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear and champion faith. It emphasizes the importance of empathy over vulnerability, stating that empathy is love-based while vulnerability is fear-based. It encourages choosing to love and support one another, both in work and personal relationships. It highlights the need for God's grace and guidance to live a loving and courageous life. The ultimate expression of love is seen in the cross, and love saves eternally. The message concludes with the reminder that God loves us unconditionally and wants us to embrace His love. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of His word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to His perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Job 39.16 It deals cruelly with its young, as if they were not its own, though its labor should be in vain, yet it has no fear. How not to parent one-on-one? Dump them all in a pile and don't care for individuals. This is what the ostrich does, the animal referenced in our verse. Communal egg nest. Yes, they sit on them for incubation, but a large percentage of eggs don't make it. It doesn't have to be that way, but it is. And is this not what life in the world is like? A communal pile, and most of us don't make it. Mental health disorders, diseases, suicides, murders, strife, drugs, and more. It gets bad, and every year seems to get worse. It's full of fear. Fear of hurt, fear of loss, fear of resources, which makes us all feel vulnerable. When we feel vulnerable, we put on emotional armor to protect ourselves. The more we feel hurt, the more we feel vulnerable, the more armor we put on, and the cycle continues. There are those that see vulnerability as a positive, that fear is what is driving us to put on emotional armor, and vulnerability is what helps us avoid that. By being vulnerable, we are choosing to put ourselves where we could be hurt, but are willing to put ourselves out there, listen, process, and build trust with each other, developing the courage to move forward and change and grow by using vulnerability as a strength. I disagree with that. Life is not an arena where we get injured, although injuries can happen. It isn't a jungle where we battle for the right to grow up and gather sunlight, although competition can be vicious. We don't need vulnerability, which is defined as being capable of being physically or emotionally wounded, being open to attack or damage, the state of being vulnerable. Someone who is vulnerable is weak and without protection, with the result that they are easily hurt physically or emotionally. These are all negative things because they are fear-based. What we need is empathy. Empathy is the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another, of either the past or the present, without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner. Basically, you know what the deal is without being told what the deal is. Empathy means no guilt, no blame, no hurt, and no pain, hence no need for vulnerability. In fact, if you are feeling vulnerable, you need to be dealt with by the use of empathy. Vulnerability is a condition, and empathy is an action. Vulnerability is fear-based. Empathy is love-based. I've seen this in action in groups of people that have decided to choose the vulnerability angle as the way to solve their problems, and it just ends up being a disaster so many times. The reason is, is if you go around saying, I'm hurt and you're hurt and we need to be gentle and hurt together, you're basically sending the message that your workplace or your social club or whatever causes hurt, that you're going to hurt each other. But if we're empathetic to one another, we're actively trying not to hurt others because it hurts us to see them hurt. So we're supporting, we're lifting each other up, we're creating situations where we can head off strife and head off difficulty, where everyone becomes a winner, where it's not about, I'm hurt because you hurt me. It's about, you're hurting, let me help you. God is love. He does empathy like no one else ever has. He became fully human to first-hand experience everything, and then died in our place to make sure that we never needed to experience the punishment that we deserve. In fact, he thought of this plan before we had ever done anything, because he knows the end from the beginning. Jesus did it all for us. He did it because he loves us. And then he sent his spirit to guide us along as we grow together toward him. Instead of choosing to learn to be vulnerable, choose to learn to love. Love is a choice. It isn't an emotion, although it can be emotional. You can love with your mind and with your heart. You can choose it like you choose what pants you put on, but it's so much more than a choice. It's a lifestyle where love becomes the language of your thoughts and your words and your deeds. Jesus lived love, totally. As we work to be his disciples, we can't help but love. To walk in love, to nurture in love, to work and play and talk in love. Love is saying to everyone you meet, you have worth. Not because of performance, not because of what they are or are not doing, not because there is success, not because they're a failure, not because they're hurting, not because they're not hurting. They have worth because they have worth. You love them because you love them. Period. Don't we need more of that? Think about your workplace. If everyone supported everyone just because everyone had worth, wouldn't that be a happier place to work? What about your home? I mean, we're supposed to love each other, aren't we? We're family. But we don't always because we let our likes and our irritation at minor things get in the way of our love. Don't we need to nurture and care for everyone around us? Like we're one big family? I'm not talking about letting people walk all over you, but we're supposed to be supporting each other, seeking goodness, seeking comfort for them, seeking generosity. This is very alien to the human experience, which is why we can't do it alone. We can't do any of this without God. In our own nature, we're selfish. All of our emotions are about how things affect us. And then we get emotions about other people. Even if we are generous at times, kind at times, beautiful at times, we need Jesus' nature. We need his grace and mercy and faith and love and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and self-control. We need his spirit to inhabit us and guide us and teach us. You know what courage is? It's obedience in spite of common sense. Common sense is a human sense. Now, sometimes it enables us to have those wonderful moments of humanity and we can look to these people and what they've done and go, wow, that was a great human being. But common sense is still based on what we see, hear, know, and think. We need to be obedient to God. It takes courage to love. Courage that we gain only by being in obedience to God. Because we know that God's instructions are the best possible thing on an eternal scale. Essentially, it doesn't matter what happens during life. Not really. It's just a moment. What matters is what happens eternally. It takes courage to love. And love saves. God was looking at the eternal, not the temporary. Again and again, the Bible tells us to don't let your heart be troubled. Don't worry. It's just for a moment. It's just for a moment. It's just for a moment. Love saves eternally. Love opens the door for people to realize that God loves them and that gets them saved and into eternity. The most wonderful, beautiful, selfless acts any human being has ever done pales in comparison to what we could be doing if we did it in Christ. In His love. Because without love, there would be no cross. So if we walk in love that was the ultimate sacrifice, think of what we can accomplish. The cross is everything and it is an expression of love. Without the cross, we don't get a resurrected Redeemer. Without Jesus, we don't have eternal life. Eternal life is love forever. We need that more than anything. So be courageous, be obedient, and choose love today. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Revelation 22. Jesus is coming soon. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending. In Him, there is life. He is the first and the last. He gave His life for us so that we can have life now and eternally. So we can enjoy the fruit of the tree of life whose leaves are the healing of the nations. We will see the Father's face, face to face. The Lord God will be our light. God loves us so much and He wants us there. He wants us there and He is coming soon. As we close, remember that you have birth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this, today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love. And no end to the things about you that He loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you just because you're you. 1 John 4 9-10 tells us, By this God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent His only-born Son into the world, that we might live through Him. And this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin. And it casts out our fear too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because He first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.