I’m about to get real…and honest. If you’re looking for a nicely packaged, sweet-smelling pretty Christianity, you won’t find it in this post. I’ve actually been wanting to write this post for awhile but couldn’t quite put a solid structure on it. But thanks to a couple of articles that have come across my radar awhile back and an article and unfortunate discussion thread I saw today, I was reminded of this post that sat as a draft for a couple of months. So I thought it was time to address something that I experience on a regular basis and know that pollyanna puffy cloud or otherwise trite formulas don’t quite cover it.
I came across this article a couple of months ago from the Resurgence blog, Jesus Over Shame. Jen Smidt writes of her battle with shame that she finally stuck a flag in the ground and marked that territory with Jesus.
If you are carrying the weight of shame, Jesus is calling you to give that burden to him and rest in the new identity he has given you. Because of shame, you may feel unqualified to speak truth into areas where you have influence. Whether you’re a Bible teacher, a neighbor, an employee, or a stay-at-home mom, you lead others. Don’t allow shame to silence you, but instead live in the freedom of Jesus’ grace, which eradicates shame. Don’t use shame to motivate yourself or those you lead. Point people to Jesus, who conquered shame.
Christian, from this day forward, choose Jesus over shame, every time.
That’s sounds quite simple, doesn’t it? After all, Scripture tells us that “there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ” (Romans 8:1). And we must take serious that our sin debt has been paid by the one time sacrifice on the cross (Heb. 10:13). And my personal favorite, “he has cancelled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands” (Col 2:15). In Christ, we are certainly new creations (2 Cor. 5:21). Continue reading
I find this all too common – shaming to the glory of God. Well, of course it’s not to God’s glory. In fact, I’d take a gander and say it is to our own to show we have the upper moral ground. Shaming happens when you highlight deficiencies and then show the other person how they are not measuring up. It happens on issues of Christian liberty and demonstrating the superiority of doctrinal positions, as I highlighted in the article. Shamed based preaching usually involves some condemning statements to motivate people into doing something because the preacher feels they aren’t doing enough.
Shame. What comes to your mind when mentioning that word? It’s a word that needs no definition for all of us have experienced it in varying degrees. Inadequacies, deficiencies, past and present failures…all bring that curtain of shame down on us. The problem, I think, is that when it strikes, instead of identifying it appropriate to what it is, we ride the wave of where it takes us.