I’m so glad you’re here today because it could mean we are a lot alike in that we struggle with letting go of guilt and shame. It does the heart good, or at least it does my heart good to know that I’m not the only one struggling with this.
I wanted to share this sweet reminder, that the Lord gave me. I love when the truth of what I know about God sinks in a little bit deeper into my heart. In this case it broke off some pride I had about forgiveness and not the forgiveness we typically think of first, that of forgiving others. This was about forgiving myself.
I almost want to ask you to listen to this episode at a time when things are quiet and you’re in a personal space so that you can actively respond to what a share but I know that everyone has a very busy life and therefore that’s a hard request.
Whether you listen now or whether you use my suggestion later to process with God, I’m hoping to create an opportunity for you to hear God’s voice because I’m thinking you’re like me in that you already know the truth of God’s forgiveness and yet we still beat ourself up with guilt and shame. This proves there is some value in digging a little deeper, or simply lingering a little longer with focused concentration to discover freedom when it comes to forgiving ourself.
Again, the quiet space is not mandatory because I was driving down the road when God spoke into my spirit. The sweetness of the Lord had me in tears. I don’t want anything to happen to you should you be driving. Maybe pull over if the love of the Lord comes over you like it did me.
What I have to share today will keep pointing us back to the cross, something you may feel is a bit overdone. Not overdone with the reverence we have for the cross but possibly overdone with regard to how familiar you are with the message of the cross. Stay with me please because I can’t get to where I want to take us without going to the cross. And to be honest, as Christians it is always about the cross. It is the core of our faith. It’s what makes our faith different. The fact that we have a relationship with the Living God. An alive, active, engaged relationship. We can know our God and hear His voice.
There is the potential that some parts of what I’m going to delve into might feel a little abrasive because when God revealed my pride to me in the context of forgiving myself I hadn’t thought of it as pride. Additionally, I’m well aware that when people get too close to the things that we are sensitive about it feels judgmental but when God exposes us He does it in love and He’s inviting us into deeper relationship, where trust (in Him) is matured.
I want this message to be done in love so that is why I’ll be pointing you to God to have your conversation with Him. I want Him to reveal what He wants to set you free from. My goal is not to add condemnation to this conversation. That is satan’s speciality. God convicts but He never condemns, two different things. I want this conversation to be done in the same gentle, kind way that God did it for me. He didn’t call me out to embarrass me. He gently exposed my pride in order to set me free from it. It’s times like that when He takes us back to the cross, not to harm us, but to heal us.
I’m going to prompt you with an exercise and it’s based on the times when the devil tries to drag us back to a place that reminds us of our shame, guilt and regret.
I’ve worked through a lot of childhood trauma. I think everybody’s pretty clear on the fact that our family of origin sets the pace for our adult life and so it impacts our decisions. Those experiences help craft the lens through which we see people and the world. We make a lot of assumptions because our experiences do not have a full understanding so now we’re dealing with lies we believe, and it all creates the value system we live by.
Because no family, no person, no relationship is perfect and sinless, this gives satan plenty of opportunity to try and take us back to painful memories or experiences. We can all find ourselves in these familiar places of thinking defeating thoughts because satan has his successful patterns that he runs on us. It will always be his goal to to steal the truth of God’s word, because in truth there is freedom. Satan wants to kill our hope, faith, love, our relationships and at the very least destroy us from the inside out.
In times when a situation activates one of our coping skills or in any way that we’ve created a self protection method, let it be an instant signal for us that God wants to engage our heart about what we’re feeling. He’d love to hear your heart and be given the opportunity to speak His truth into whatever it is we’re believing to be true. In moments like that, meet Him at the cross. The place where He won the full victory over all of life’s failures and brokenness.
The things that primarily cause us guilt and shame are structured around something that we’ve done, that we’re responsible for. Our actions, our decisions, and our choices have brought us shame and regret. If we’ve repented for our sins then we can have assurance that we’re forgiven (because of the cross) and yet we play the shameful memory of our actions over and over in our mind and in our heart. It’s in this context of forgiven yet unable to let go that I want to create an opportunity for you to take a fresh look at the cross and reconsider something about God’s heart for you.
And real quick allow me to take a detour because I don’t want to overlook this aspect of guilt and shame. With regard to feeling shame or guilt, I’m not referring to times when someone has violated/victimized you. If you’re living with guilt and shame because you feel that what happened to you is somehow your fault, this message does not apply to your situation.
I’ll be talking about choices that we make and are solely responsible.
If you find yourself dealing with guilt and shame over something someone did to you, there is a measure of trauma healing that needs to take place because you’re not responsible for the actions of another person. In short, you can’t own another person’s choices.
While you are not responsible for what happened to you, if there is any responsibility to be had on your part it would taking responsibility to flip the script on satan. Make every effort to find the healing you need. Make life giving decisions to get what you need and don’t stop until you are free.
Just so I don’t drop you off cold in the middle of this episode, if you have a few minutes, disengage from your immediate To Do List and recline in the Lord, rest with Him. Just receive from Him. If you want to engage God, ask Him, Lord what step do you want me to take next so that I can process the guilt and shame I feel? Who do I need to talk to in order to find healing from these thoughts that are eating away at me on the inside.
Also, I will put links in the show notes for a few past episodes and in a couple of weeks there is another one coming out on October 20th. These episodes all take a look at the various healing ministries available to believers. My guest Eileen Love and I talked about Emotion Code Healing – it was broken into 2 parts (Part 1 & Part 2). There’s an episode on the Deliverance Ministry Healing with Karen King. Additionally, the episode on October 20th is on the Healing Prayer ministry with Frank Meadows (UPDATE – THIS EPISODE WILL BE DELAYED UNTIL NOVEMBER 22ND). So remember to come back on or after the 20th to find that one.
Coming back to our topic at hand, overcoming the guilt and shame that is based on our decisions and choices. Specifically the situation where we’ve repented for our sins but we are not able to forgive ourselves. Here’s a suggestion, my intended exercise on how to engage the Lord:
Find a place where you can be real with God. Intentionally invite him into your space, ask him to protect the conversation that you’ll be having with him. He’ll command His army to position themselves in the atmosphere so that you can say whatever is on your heart. God is going to protect your vulnerability. He never asks for a perfect conversation, He asks for a genuine one.
Once you’ve intentionally invited God into your space and He has secured the atmosphere I want you to bring to the forefront of your mind the thing that taunts you with guilt and shame. Expose it by speaking it out loud to the Lord. Father, every time this thing (tell him what the thing is not because He doesn’t know but He will only work on what you’re willing to give Him. He will not force anything from you or on you). Father, every time this comes to mind I block it out. I feel disgusted…whatever it is you feel, think, believe etc., talk to God.
Today could possibly be the first time that you’ve actually verbalized it. Maybe your shame and regret keeps you from talking about that thing that has left your heart battered and ragged, and exhausted. But you think about it. Your internal dialog beats you up over it when it surfaces.
Maybe you’ve been talking with God about it but you keep returning to it, like you’re still chained to it. Feeling like you have no control over it, no voice about it, no freedom from it? You just feel helpless to change it or make a difference.
You did what you did or maybe you didn’t do what you should have done. You said what you said or maybe you said nothing and you feel that you should have said something. Now you’re left with the emotional baggage, potentially physical ailments not to mention the mental battle. The good news? All that has the potential to change if you’re willing to be transparent with the Lord in the safety of the space He’s protecting you in.
Remember in Genesis 32 when God asked Jacob, “What is your name?” It was not that God didn’t know Jacob’s name but Jacob had a lot of trauma attached to his name. In Biblical times, a person’s name was part of their identity. Jacob’s name means deceiver and Jacob lived up to that. As a matter of fact, the reason Jacob is struggling with God in this verse is because he was getting ready to cross paths with his twin brother Esau and Jacob was responsible for not only stealing Esau’s birth right but Jacob also stole the final blessing from their father that rightfully belonged to Esau.
Jacob initially reaches out to Esau in an attempt to make peace with his brother. In response, he receives word that Esau is headed his way with 400 hundred of his men in tow. So now Jacob has come to God scared to death for his life and God asks Him, What is your name?
It might seem like a strange question in such a desperate situation. God wasn’t trying to shame Jacob. God was inviting Jacob into transparency, to be truthful with him. But why, you might ask? Because change only happens when we expose our fear, guilt, and shame. But not to just anyone but rather expose it to the One who defeated it. The One who can make a difference, the One who can turn it of your good. Guilt and shame left in the dark, bouncing off our heart and our mind, it only becomes bigger and bigger in our mind and emotions.
I can’t say this enough, when God calls us out of the dark places of our mind, he’s not trying to expose us for the purpose of embarrassment or to beat us down reminding us who the Almighty God is. Without authentic transparency we can’t connect to people. We’ll have a surface relationship at best. And let me just say here, not everyone is trustworthy with our pain so you should guard you heart in this area. But the God of the Holy Bible wants real, life giving, life breathing relationship with us. We can’t change what we don’t acknowledge. Change only happens when we expose our fears to the origin of truth, the fountain head of truth. Nothing stands against God’s truth.
Because God will not push Himself on us, He was inviting Jacob into deeper relationship. He was saying, son, will you get real with me about what you’re feeling/experiencing? Will you have the courage to expose your fear to me so that the thing you keep struggling with, that thing you keep running from, we can put on the table and we can talk about it and we can work through it together?
And Jesus says to us, my precious daughter, will you give that thing to me? Will you trust me with your pain? Daughter, do you believe that I love you and I have good things to give you in exchange for your nightmares?
When we take our pain to God and struggle well to discover His truths in the context of our deep questions He gives us the beauty of His presence and we are transformed by the revelation that accompanies His presence. Truth shows up every time God shows up and we don’t have to wait for the spirit to move we can invite Him in and initiate an intimate exchange. God honors our authentic struggle because He knows that it takes courage to be transparent with Him, to step beyond our human understanding and experiences and accept His invitation into intimacy.
So you’ve invited God into your space, and He has taken authority over the atmosphere, you’ve brought that thing into the Light of His presence and you’re letting anxiety flow out of your mouth. As you verbally process this brings a measure of release to your mind and body.
The next thing I want you to do is picture God with you. See His kind and caring manner. Maybe He’s holding your hands, looking into your eyes with gentle affection. Maybe He’s sitting at the table with you. I can guarantee you this, if he’s sitting at the table with you He’s sitting next to you and He’s got His arm around you.
In the safety and security of God, continue to purge your pain as long as you need to. Let Him know how you feel. What is your worst fear, your worst nightmare about that thing? Tell Him why you feel guilt and shame, or whatever emotion you feel. If you want, ask Him to show you where He was when this or that happened? He’s never left you so He was present.
He’s not afraid of anything you share. You won’t scare Him off. He won’t reject you. This space of transparency and pain all tangled together in what can feel like a terrifying mess, this is His speciality and I’ll tell you why. He doesn’t extravagantly attend to us knowing that He WILL heal us, He’s drawing us into the healing He’s ALREADY provided.
When we expose our fear and pain to him, healing and restoration begins not because a spontaneous healing happened in that He’s decided to now alleviate your guilt in that moment. But because you pursued Him in this context, it was engaged and therefore applied in that moment. It was already purchased on the cross you just hadn’t made it personal yet.
Whatever you admit, confess or reveal, all the emotion, regret, shame, it doesn’t have to be pretty, or nice or even godly. Real pain, deep pain is messy. After you’ve poured it all out and you’ve come to the end of yourself, I want you to hear your Father God’s voice. He’s calm, soft spoken, loving. He’s saying, my precious precious daughter, I’ll take that, and I’ll take that, and that too and give me that one. Give it all to me. Let it go. I’ve already settled these things. Let me show you.
Let Jesus lead you to the cross. Envision Christ scooping up all the emotion that you’ve been willing to expose and I want you to watch him lay your actions, choices, sins, onto His heart and then willingly lay on the wooden beams fashioned into a cross.
Bear with me, this is the familiar part that may feel a little overdone. But this time, make it personal by seeing it through the eyes of knowing Jesus is taking your place. See the roman soldiers drive an iron peg through his left hand, and an iron peg his right hand, then another iron peg through his feet. Watch as they hoist the pole into the air and drop the foot of the cross down into the hole in the ground. It hits hard and the iron pegs tear His flesh. They’ll pierce his side with a spear and the final drops of His atoning blood along with water, the living water of life, will spill onto the ground.
I’m not reminding you of this historical account because I want you to feel sorry for Him. This is not about pity. Jesus was not victimized in the manner of the Romans taking his life, He willingly laid down His life. I’m not telling you this to compound any guilt or shame because the truth is, we have no authority, no input, and no point of reference with regard to God’s plan on what the payment for sin will be and Jesus’ agreement on how it will be settled.
I’m reminding you of the cross because it’s always about the cross. It’s the intersection where God’s truth and provision meets man’s sin and human will.
This question may still be be lingering in the air, How do we move from the knowledge of forgiveness to embracing this as truth in our life? How do we make this our core belief and understanding so that we operate and do life from the place of being forgiven? How do we make the leap from knowing in our head that we’re forgiven to actually forgiving ourselves?
Maybe our inability to forgive ourselves is twisted up with the cross. And it’s the reason why we won’t let ourselves off the hook. Because the truth is, it should have been me. It should have been you. Paying for what we’ve done. That was our debt. Our burden, our guilt, our shame, our choices, our actions.
When it comes to realistically applying forgiveness, there is a portion of the process when we apply God’s truth every time guilt and shame comes up in our mind. We interrupt the thought with truth, not allowing our mind to start running wild. While that can seem robotic, God’s truth overwhelms every lie and is very effective.
The point of forgiveness that I’m trying to examine are the times where we’re checking all the Christian boxes of what makes a good Christian so that our good outweighs our bad. We’re doing all the right things. We’re praying, we’re fasting, we’re in church every Sunday all with the hope that we’ll get God’s approval and then He will supernaturally change the way we feel. I don’t want to deny the practical part of applying God’s word to our life, but what I want to dig down into is the pride part.
Could it be that we’ve put ourself on the cross? Let’s say we have. And yet we’re STILL struggling to extend forgiveness to ourselves. On the one hand, we can’t deny the truth of our guilt and on the other hand, somewhere down to the core of our DNA we also acknowledge that we are grossly under qualified (and that is putting it lightly) to carry the weight of the cross.
Whatever the reason is, I do know that pride can blind us. It did me. If we don’t humble our hearts we will find ourselves on the hamster wheel of guilt, shame, forgiveness, guilt, shame, forgiveness. It feels like a rat race but that’s simply the world’s value system. In God’s value system, it’s the intersection where God’s truth and provision meets man’s sin and human will.
I’m reminded of a story that’s been around as long as I can remember, I feel sure you’ve heard it. It’s about the man who worked at a bridge with railroad tracks. He was responsible for opening and shutting the bridge for both the boats and the train. He’d taken his little boy to work one day and the youngster was playing on the tracks. To the father’s surprise a train was approaching faster than he could get to his son but if he closed the bridge lowering the train track his son would be crushed. Not sure if it’s a true story or not but it goes on to say that the man made the excruciatingly heart shattering decision to save all the people and their families that were on the train and he lowered the tracks crushing his little boy. The people on that train would go on living their life, never knowing what the father sacrificed nor what the precious son had afforded them.
I often overlay that onto God’s Fatherly heart because some believers will never grasp the fullness of freedom that has been paid for them. Surely God’s heart must have broken because in the sin payment transaction God turned His face away from His beloved Son. Full payment for sin, the kind that saves us, translates to God the Father, being separated from His Son, Jesus.
Some believers will go on living their life, entangled in shame, regret, never embracing what God ordained and what the blood of the Son afforded them. They’ll maintain a distance between their head knowledge that God had a plan to pay their debt of sin and yet never embrace it in their heart what the precious son afforded them with His blood.
This whole message, this episode started when I was in my car, driving down the road, talking with God, the image of Christ on the cross making the just and final payment for my sin came to my mind. I’ve seen this picture countless times in books, and all kinds of preaching material but this time, my heart responded to the immense sacrifice, I made it personal. I saw the intimacy of what Jesus was doing for me and it softened my heart in a different way. The kindness of Jesus overwhelmed me. Kindness can seem like such a weak word in the scale of this particular context.
Romans 2:4 says, Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?
What had me weeping was being overwhelmed with the goodness and kindness of God even though I was in a place of pride, despising the riches of His kindness, forbearance and patience. I wasn’t letting the work of the cross, His Son’s blood be enough. I was making it about me.
I would not have made a direct connection with that way of thinking, none-the-less, it was playing out in my life, in my thought life. And when I saw how precious the Lord is to me even though I looked upon the cross with contempt/pride my heart become overwhelmed. If Jesus’ blood satisfied my sovereign, holy God, why was I being prideful still making it about me?
God hasn’t abandoned us at Friday on the Cross. He gave us the Sunday resurrection. Our God is alive. Jesus is alive. Living breathing, fresh perspectives, new beginnings, the God of do overs. That’s the power of the blood.
I’ve said a lot to bring us to this one point. It’s time to change our vision of the cross, our self imposed definition of what pays our debt. If you’re still in a strangle hold by your past I want to know, when you look up at the cross do you see Jesus on it or is it empty? Do you see Jesus’ work finished or unfinished?
If we haven’t allowed the blood to pay our debt we’re as good as a dead (wo)man. We’re physically alive but we’re mentally/emotionally 6 feet under.
And we’ll stay stuck in that type of mental grave until we soften our hearts, humbly admit that we’re not capable of paying our debt. Not now, not at our last breath, not at any time in between. Let’s take ourself off the cross. It’s not about us. Face it, we cannot pay for what we’ve have done or not done. We cannot fix what we said or did not say.
If you agree with the atoning blood of Jesus and His finished work on the cross, you have been acquitted. The final words of Christ on the cross apply to us. It. Is. Finished.
Tell your mind, YOU’RE FREE! Tell your heart, YOU’RE FREE! Tell your body, YOU’RE FREE!
We don’t have to wait for heaven to live in peace, joy, and freedom.
Give God, give Jesus, your praise and gratitude. Take a moment to let Him embrace you with His presence. Soften your heart toward His love, make Him personal in your heart and mind. And then do Him the best honor of all, let the world see God in you! Get out there and…
Live Loved and Thrive!
Get Rid of Guilt and Shame:
- Invite God into a conversation. Ask Him to take control of the atmosphere.
- Bring to the forefront of your mind the thing that still causes you guilt and shame.
- Talk with God about how you feel. Give him all of your pain and questions – Purge all your beliefs that surround the pain.
- Picture God with you, listening in a loving way. Ask Him, who do you want to be for me in this? What do you want me to know about You in this context of my guilt and shame?
- Trust God with your pain. Tell God you do not despise His Son Jesus and the work of the cross. Lay your guilt and shame at the foot of the cross.
- Break any agreement you have made with the lies you have believed about your guilt and shame.
- Give God your praise and thanksgiving. It can be in tears, laughter, songs of worship, outright words of praise etc. in whatever way you want to worship Him and give Him His due honor.
RESOURCES:
Past Podcast Episodes:
Emotion Code with Eileen Love:
Part 1 – https://alifeofthrive.com/2023/06/07/emotion-code-therapy-part-1-with-eileen-love/
Part 2 – https://alifeofthrive.com/2023/06/22/emotion-code-therapy-with-eileen-love-part-2/
Deliverance Ministry with Karen King:
https://alifeofthrive.com/2023/09/13/finding-freedom-through-the-deliverance-ministry/
November 22, 2023 – I’ll add the link for the podcast on Healing Prayer Ministry with Frank Meadows. In the meantime you can check out his website: https://www.meadowshealingprayercenter.com/
