Shame can become yet another tool to teach us to lean hard.
But life goes on.
Yeah, I may have tripped and fallen flat, but I
don’t have to stay that way!
Satan wants us to stay in the mire. At every
opportunity he will strive to remind us of all the
blunders we have made. Or maybe you are
carrying the burden of another kind? Maybe
the shame you feel doomed to live with is
the result of others. The sense of shame that
comes from having been used and abused,
mishandled and cast aside. You didn’t fall in the
mud, you were thrown there.
Whether self-inflicted, or imposed upon, even
if we’ve been covered in the mud stains of
shame and feel battered and bruised, we can
make a choice. We have two options. We can
stay stretched out on the ground with our hands
over our head, afraid to face the world again,
wallowing in self-pity ; or we can determine
to not let the shame of our fall take away the
glory that God desires to have through our lives
in Christ Jesus. We can choose to not allow the
enemy to snatch away the desire to live our
lives fully.
Having been made in the image of God we
represent to the world just what He looks like. If
we are always full of sorrow and shame, then
that is the image the world will register. Who
wants to commit to a life like that?! The world
has enough trouble of its own. We are to be the
Light of the world! We are supposed to bear the
fruit of the Spirit as we live out days of joy and
love and kindness and peace.
But how do we gain the courage to get back
up again? To go back and start repairing those
crumbled walls? To rise up and see glory in the
midst of the shame?
A man’s spirit will
endure sickness, but a
crushed spirit - who
can bear it?
If every inventor had given in to the destructive
feelings of shame nothing would have ever
gotten off the ground. Inventors endure many
failures, many embarrassing endeavors, before
something of worth is produced. They face
rejection, criticism, and mocking; but they keep
at it because they know it will be worth it in the
end. Bearing shame is no different than any
other trial we face as we grow into the stature
of Christ. Just as anger, temptation, pride, etc.
can all become the things that destroy us from
the inside out, through surrender we can turn
our failures to God and He can turn those things
around. Only He can bring grace, glory, life
and peace to our hearts. God always has a flip
side to a situation.
Shame can also be a blessing in disguise; It
can cause our hearts to be stirred to realize a
greater need of the Holy Spirit within us. We feel
shame because of sin in our lives and so we
seek Him. We feel shame because of things that
have happened to us, through no fault of our
own, and so we must go to the Lord for healing
and affirmation.
The ugly becomes
beautiful, the
wound gives way to
health, the shame
gives birth to life
lived in sweet
abandon to a loving
Father.
The ugly becomes beautiful, the wound gives
way to health, the shame gives birth to life lived
in sweet abandon to a loving Father. Shame
can become yet another tool to teach us to
lean hard.
This process is not something we can just
determine to do. We must give it all to the Lord
and trust Him to “make everything new”.
We don’t have to live with shame.
Pray for courage to put your hand in His, to take
the journey up those rickety steps, back through
that lop-sided doorway, and work your way
with Him through each of those rooms that are
all paint peeled and caving in.
Waste no more time in letting the rain seep in,
damaging more and more of H