Surface Shame and Live Free
What is your experience of shame? Usually we don’t recognize the ways shame affects us. It lurks well under the surface of our lives stealthily affecting our decision making and actions.
Shame can be defined many ways, but let's think of it as humiliation or distress that attaches to a person’s identity as result of wrong or foolish thought or behavior. These thoughts and behaviors can be our own or those of another toward us.
Adam and Eve were described in the Garden as naked, yet without shame before God or each other. (Genesis 2:25) However, after their sinful rebellion (the Fall) all people throughout history have struggled with shame-infected identities.
Shame is closely tied to feelings and fears, primarily the fear of being found out as flawed, weak, a failure or morally wrong. It leads people – as it did Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 - to hide from each other and/or from God. We hide so we won’t be found out. The more shame we feel, the...
Helping One Another Align With God
Do you walk through life with your head held lower than is needed? Are you hindered or tangled up by accusations, misunderstandings and/or sin? Have you somehow come to believe that this marred, somewhat hopeless life must be all that God has for you? Deep down – often deeper than you'd like to go – do you feel harassed and helpless?
It might be that you have tried to address your “stuff.” Possibly you’ve acknowledged your need and/or errors to God, and even tried your best to change and walk in a better direction. Yet, somehow, you keep finding yourself back in the mud. The enemy may taunt you with Scripture, saying, “As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.” (Proverbs 26:11)
Often the way out of bondage is simple, but a little scary. We may need to involve others in the process. James encourages us to "confess our sins to each other and pray for each other so that we may be healed. The...
God's Ways Are Redemptive
One thing we can learn from political campaigns is that whatever skeletons a candidate may have in his/her closet will be brought into the public sphere. Things that person has done and things that have been done to the person will be exposed. Mistakes and bad decisions made will become fair game for media and water cooler discussion. It can be a very scary thing to be promoted in the public sphere.
Thankfully the Kingdom of God is different. It is redemptive at its core. The very things that have brought us shame and/or bondage, when meaningfully touched by God, become places of freedom, testimony and God’s glory. When God redeems an area of our lives, we are given fresh authority to stand and to impart to others, hope, courage and overcoming power in that very area . If you have been set free from an addiction, if you have received forgiveness and grace to change a sinful practice, if you have been healed in your soul or body – you have a new...
No More Fear Paralysis
When was the last time you failed? Was it huge or a small mistake, a breakdown or a collapse – or have you intentionally suppressed memories of your failure?
Most of us hate failure. Failing makes us feel ashamed. It threatens our identity – as if our identity could be built on consistent, flawless performance.
We need to remember, however, that failure is a significant and important part of life. The only way a child will ever learn to walk is by failing thousands of times. People of great accomplishment have a long string of failures to which they can very easily point.
Winston Churchill, widely regarded as one of world’s great wartime heroes, defined success as “going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
The best way to deal with a fear of failure is to press ahead, try some new things and fail a few times. You will find that the fear of shame associated with the fear of failure is ten times worse than the actual failure....
Are You Gracing and Facing Your Way?
When you have come up short, or have been "found out" about something, how do you respond? Are you inclined to feel horrible and hopeless, or might you look to deflect attention by finding fault with someone else? Cain, the third person alive on the planet, was similarly challenged, and he did not fare well.
Cain brought the first fruits of his crops to God as an expression of worship. His brother, Abel, brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. God received Abel and his offering, but He did not favorably receive Cain and his offering, and Cain became angry. God said to Cain, “Why are you angry? … If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” (Genesis 4:6-7) What a powerful message! Unfortunately, Cain did not heed the word of the Lord, and it resulted in a...
What to Do When Your Sin is Exposed
Most of us live in deep fear of being found out. We are scared of people knowing us deeply; our weaknesses, inadequacies, fears, doubts and sin. We are deeply ashamed of our condition. Yet, we all have darknesses – we are all very flawed, and our responses to our conditions are
peppered with brokenness.
Coming clean with who we are and what we have done can feel terrifying … apart from the grace of God. Letting others, God or even ourselves know just how corrupted parts of our souls are raises fears. We are afraid of being judged, condemned – or worst of all – rejected. So, we are tempted to deny or hide our “stuff.” We try to tell ourselves and/or others that we either didn’t do what we did, or that it wasn’t really sin when we did it. We often coat our motives with feigned good intentions. We perform these mental gymnastics because it’s too scary to admit the truth about ourselves … apart from the grace of God.
The...
