The shame game (is lame!)

"The enemy comes to steal and kill and destroy, I come that they might have life and have it to the full" ~Jesus Christ. John 10:10

Life.
To the full.
Think about it.

The enemy comes to steal kill and destroy.

Why is it that many christians, especially youth, seem less alive than their non christian peers? I will suggest that from personal experience, it is because they have such abundant life in Jesus Christ, that Satan goes targets them so viciously, stealing that life. How so? Many ways. I want to talk about shame.

I have experienced shame. Lots of it. In those moments (or minutes, hours, days, months....) where I have been so drowning in my shame, I would recall the words of Paul, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1) ....and it helped very little. It almost felt like a mockery, for even though I was a christian, I undoubtedly was NOT in christ jesus because I kept screwing up. The shame is perpetuating. Satan takes a grand and perverse pleasure in heaping it on Gods children. It gets to the point where you begin to suspect that there is little more to life than shame. Sure there is eternal life in the presence of God Almighty sometime down the road, but on this side of life, we are distined to wallow in shame until our dying day.

Durign those moments, life to the full seemed like a distant dream for super christians or on the flipside, people who do not have any sense of morals and therefore have no standard to fall short of. We get sick of missing the mark. And we blame ourselves. We try to motivate ourselves in a rediculous and sometimes, twisted painful and destructive ways to change. We know that only Jesus hit the mark, and no one else made it, but it sure seems that everyone else is WAY closer than we are. That we would be happy if we could just be as close as they are.

Shame. I felt it, it sucked. I tried every way of dealing with this shame. Eventually I became numb and hardened, because that way I could at least live with myself. "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Right, my sins are forgiven, I'm "in". There is no condemnation for me. God doesn't condemn me. Jesus doesn't condemn me.

God does not condemn me, Jesus doesn't condemn me. If there were two beings who you would not want to condemn you, there they are. In fact, if only 2 people could deem you free of condemnation and everyone else who ever existed did condemn you, these two would veto everyone else. ever. So what was my problem? I sure FELT condemned...

I did not realize it then, but in fact, I was being condemned. By Satan. He constantly hurls false accusations at us, lying to us... and many of them, I had come to believe. And it was killing me, like a poison or an infected wound, it robbed me of the life to the full that Jesus talks about.

I talk about this in the past tense, and I do so because shame and guilt are a thing of the past. I cannot stress enough to you how I did nothing to over come that. Nothing. The only reason Shame and Guilt do not still leach my life anymore is because God in his wisdom and love and grace and mercy came to me and raised me to a new standard of life. There is no system by which we can be free from this, only through God.

I see now that shame and guilt are Satans ways of bringing the kingdom of heaven to a standstill. When you are trapped in shame and guilt, all you can think of is how inadequate you are, how bad you are, how your life sucks. He tells you that at your core, you are evil, then turns you inward so you cannot see God working around you, only how sucky you are. Its a vicious move, and it really does bring christians to a dead halt in their walk. When you sin or let someone down or fail to live up to an expectation, it cripples you. All you see is the evil inside and wonder how God can stand you, cause you sure can't. You know you should do better, and you try to pick yourself up and dust yourself off, but somewhere inside you know you will mess up and sin again and just have to pick yourself and dust yourself off again, so what is the point?

What is the point?

When you look at it that way, there are really no answers that can convince you to give it another shot, because you believe deep down that you are getting up only to fall over again.

But the thing is this, you are good. You. Are. Good. Your. Heart. Is. Good. David says in the Psalms that we were just lower than the angels in their glory. Me? Glorious? Its almost laughable! Yet it is true. Yes we sinned and fell, and what a fall it was. But it has not ended there. Jesus came and he died for your sins.

Ok quick aside, I know that Jesus died for me, and I aknowledge he did it in my place, and only he can die for the forgiveness of sins. When you are drowning in shame, knowing that almost makes it worse, because Satan tells us that its our fault he died, and every time we sin he reminds us that we killed the perfect son of god. How could anyone live with themselves knowing that? But this is the thing, Christ died for you...And then he was resurrected for you. He submitted to death, then he subdued it. Death could not hold him. He kicked death in the face. Straight up knocked him flat out.

Then he tells you there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. And those words are so true. Forget about yourself. Its like Jesus is telling us we are good, which we so desperately want to be, but we just....don't....believe it! We keep whining to him about how we are sinners and are so sorry and blahdeblah! And he is like, CUMMON! YOU DONT UNDERSTAND HERE! And as he sees fit, in his timing, in according to his will, he will lift you out. If you are ready to let him of course.

Now when I sin, there is no shame. I still feel remorse, perhaps even more so, but I do not wallow in it, instead it brings me to my knees before my maker, in humility and thanksgiving and JOY that there is no condemnation, and that He who has started a good work in me has not abandoned the work of his hands. And what a work I am. Work is the word, and I need a lot of it. But it is all for his glory that he redeems us and lifts us out. So There is no room for shame and guilt anywhere anymore. I still sin and am still selfish, but I have no time to be ashamed, I can only be more humble and full of praise and thanks and gratefullness for his vast love and mercy and grace. Before it was like when I sinned, I wanted to get as far away from god as possible. And thats what shame does, it makes you run and hide from the only one who can free you and redeem you.

And I have absolutely no time for that.

Because God is coming back to rule his kingdom, and there is work to be done.

God doesn't ask that we stop sinning, he just asks that we stay in his hands so he can keep working on us, loving us, growing christ in us. Redeeming us to our former glory. For his present glory.

aaaaaaand my nose is telling me that the lasanga needs to come out of the oven and into my tummy. Now.

Peace friends