Sex Before Marriage

07 April Vulnerability Teaches Us to Trust Page 101 "Each time we make ourselves vulnerable and find someone there for us, we come to a new level of safety and trust." Living Clean, Chapter 5, "Fellowship" Working Step Five with a sponsor can feel like baring our underbellies. We summon up enough honesty, humility, and courage to admit the exact nature of our wrongs. Despite our conviction that we're doing the right thing, sharing our inventories can make us feel exposed. Being vulnerable can be an unnatural state for addicts; it tears down our hardened defenses. Sharing our inventory is an act of trust. For many of us, this may be the first time we reveal ourselves completely to another human being. Whether we have years clean or days, we find value in sharing our struggles and our victories with fellow members. Being real and sometimes raw creates opportunities for others to connect with us. Sharing from the heart simply resonates. We're often humbled by t...

My Pastoral Ponderings Skip to content   Posted on  April 4, 2021   Rolling the Stone Away: My Easter Sermon on Mark 16:1-8 Very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?”  MARK 16:1-8 That first Easter morning, when the women made their way to the tomb, they had just one question on their minds:  “Who will roll away the stone for us?”  For it was a very large stone. It would have taken about twenty men to roll the stone away, given what we know about tombs at that time. So these three women knew they didn’t stand a chance.  They wanted to anoint their beloved Savior’s dead body. It would be their last act of love toward the one who showed them such love. But how? As they headed to the tomb that morning, that was foremost on their minds. Apparently, they were not thinking about whether the guards would let th...