It's amazing. I was thinking about just what happens when you give your lecture to Christ. The Bible it tells us that he transforms us from glory to glory, that he transforms our mind. I need a link where that is from.
I'm not prepared. I have one verse up on my screen and one verse only because I read it and it just perfectly talks about what I feel like God wants us to focus on tonight. And that's just not losing your shame. I think that some people doubt if they can ever be free from feeling ashamed of who they are or ashamed of where they come from or what they've done in their past or I don't know where they're at right now but shame is something that gets it invades you and it seeps into the deepest parts of who you are and it's so hard to shake.
It's like black mold. It covers everything and it impacts almost every part of your life, not just you and your thoughts and the way that you feel but your relationships and what you dream and what you strive for, what you think that you can do, your habits, your lifestyle. So I just felt like tonight God wanted to reassure somebody that he can really free you from your shame that you really can be free from it. I used to doubt if I could.
I was ashamed of everything I felt, everything that I was. If I was hungry I would hide it. Like I was afraid to even say I'm hungry. I have needs.
I'm a person. I just thought that my existence revolved around making everybody else around me happy and to make sure that I didn't repel anybody's like that. And so I would hide my own needs and say that they weren't important. And if I liked something I wouldn't say that I liked it.
I would like what everybody else around me liked. I was a people pleaser to the max because to me that was what it meant to survive. It was a survival mechanism. And so it was so deep in me though.
And then I gave my my elective Christ and I took him a long time. But every year I see more and more of it is gone. And this past year I had a really big moment where I realized just how unashamed I'd become. I was getting my nails done and she just finished with them.
But they were covered in dust like both of my hands. So my nail tech told me to get a bingo wash in my hands so that she could put the final gloss cover over them. So I got up and I washed my hands and then I came back to my seat. Now I am six feet.
And the chairs built for a person of the average height which is like five seven. So most chairs in public spaces are like too short for me. And this was short and leather. And I'm kind of clumsy too on top of being tall.
So I fall often. And when I do I'm literally like the tower rolling the entire state building falling. When I sat down I sat hard and the chairs squeaked really loud and scooch backwards. And then on top of that when I hit the letter of fabric it filled up with air when I got up out of my seat.
So when I sat back down in the seat the air was pushed out and made a huge farting noise. Right as the conversation in the salon had paused. So it was nice and silent. For this like huge like falling slash sitting thing that I did it was really loud.
Everybody stopped and looked at me. And it hit me then though at that moment that God had really done a work in my life because I wasn't ashamed. That would have been something that even a year before would have ruined the day. I would have gone home just like kill me now.
I would have been so embarrassed. And I would have reigned apologies upon everybody in the place and said I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for that. And instead I kind of sat there and the impulse to apologize was there.
But I thought like sorry for what? Who did I hurt? Sorry for what? For like for being a human and doing something funny.
So that's when it hit me that Jesus really had taken my shame and I had nothing to be sorry for. So like not only does Jesus pay for your sins but he really does take away your shame. David writes something beautiful in Psalm 34. This is in the Passion Translation.
It starts in verse 4 which says listen to my testimony. I cried to God in my distress and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears. Gaze upon him.
Join your life with his. Enjoy will come. Your faces will glisten with glory. You'll never wear that shame face again.
That part in particular strikes me that what are the promises that we're given is that we're never going to wear our shame face again. I think we all have a version of ourselves. Hopefully that you know it's an older version but if it's not that's okay. But we all have a version of ourselves that has shame.
I think that every person deals with shame in some way. And then we all have an idea of ourselves that we wish that we could be. Some be more confident. Some be more selfish or you know not selfish or really but assured by Christ somebody who can stand up and be heard.
Somebody who can be seen in take up space. And Jesus can help you to be that person. I'm not saying that every day I don't feel any shame at all but he picked me up when I was so loaded down with shame I could not look people in the eyes. I just felt like dirt every day all day and he's taken me from a place where I felt lower than every other person I ever met and he's helped me to feel like a normal human being.
And like that's not no that's not a small thing for me. That is a miracle because in my family I'm not going to name any names but I was raised by some broken people who stayed broken for their whole lives. And now it makes me so sad because I know that God loves him and wants so much for them. He wants so much for all of us.
And I think the worst thing that we could do the one thing that we could do to dishonor God the most is to stay broken our whole lives because he came to make us whole and he came to save our souls. So like the one thing that he wants the most for us is to feel like a whole human being. And it just breaks my heart now to think of just some of the examples that I grew up with with adults were just so shattered so broken and they've been through things. I'm not blaming them but God wants to help us to move beyond our past to move beyond where we have been.
And he wants to open up this beautiful future for us this beautiful life to us but we have to let go of who we were so that we can be who he wants us to become. God also gave me a lot I'd like to share with you. So when it comes to shame I used to have a lot of memories that would beat me up. Just like things that I did that were so dumb I thought like oh I like I'd be having a good day then a memory would come into my brain and then suddenly it wasn't a good day anymore it was a bad day.
Just things that I wish that I'd said or done differently. Things that I'd already apologized for and were forgiven for I'd made a mens' for but still it was like I couldn't get over it. I'm trying to think of one because like why not? Whatever.
They don't have a hold on me anymore because God helped me. He exposed me. And so when I tell you like let God expose parts of your heart that are broken I'm not telling you to do something that I'm not doing too. And that's why I'm so open here with you because I I'd like to be transparent you know I'm not I'm not perfect.
God's just really been good to me. So anything that I have any progress that I make it's not because of anything it's all him so it can all be yours too but lately I was thinking about an embarrassing moment when I was like 18 okay it's been I'm not gonna say how many years there's been a lot of years. I was just like so dumb I thought at the time I was over at my pastor's house at the time. I went to a tiny church in the country and his wife was showing me like their new renovated bathroom and she had like a fancy tub in there with the Jets and everything and I don't know I just I was raised in like a trailer and hotels and stuff so I had never been in a house this nice and I've never known anybody who renovated their bathroom before so I didn't know what to say.
I was 18 and I was like this is I'm barely an adult this is a gold stuff like how do you am I honestly how do you respond to something like this so I felt like a do this and I just kept saying over and over one day when I renovate my house you'll help me right and she just she looked at me like I was an idiot and I was like see so that's that's not the right thing to say but I swear that sentence I think I said it like four times because I just didn't know what else to say and every so often it'll play in my head just like when I didn't know a social cue and I just was dumb I looked dumb I guess I was praying one day I was riding my bike that's sometimes what I do to clear my head and I'll talk with God and I felt like he sort of talked to me about that memory I didn't even know I was thinking about it until I felt like he told me he was thinking about that again it's going on again let's stop that now and I for a second I could kind of see myself not through my eyes but through somebody else's eyes so if I had been a separate party in that bathroom of like another friend touring the house with me and the pastor's wife and I saw a young girl 18 who was obviously like dealing with some stuff kind of flustered and not know how to respond and she said the same thing over and over I would think wow she's really nervous like let me pat her on the shoulder and say girl is cool and so like got me to slow down and look at it objectively and then when I could kind of see that I wouldn't have judged that girl I think somebody kind of maybe not nice would judge a girl like that it helped me to kind of see that I didn't do anything wrong and that maybe I wasn't a false met situation but the pastor's wife could have had more patience with me and honestly I wouldn't show a young girl whose family had been homeless renovations to my house that's kind of bragadocious and I'm not I'm not trying to criticize her I don't think she did it to intentionally hurt me but I share that because our embarrassing moments if we can step outside of how they feel for us and look at them the way that God sees them then we can see ourselves as a whole lot less embarrassing and cringey and just as normal human beings trying to deal with a situation that they've been given so at that time I had not been exposed to normal people or normal circumstances I didn't really know what normal was so of course I didn't respond in a normal way um there's nothing there for me to be embarrassed about and so like if you have embarrassing memories that play that play you because some of our shame that we deal with every day isn't even about stuff that's happening today it's related to stuff that happened a long time ago and we just can't move on from it and I understand how hard that can be but if you saw yourself the way that God sees you you would not be ashamed of who you are so you need to let that so that's all I'm gonna say um sit with all of that but yeah God loves you and he sees he sees you as precious and valuable not cringey and embarrassing so if you're feeling ashamed of anything about who you are or about things that you could have done or said differently you did your best at the time and God has grace for you he always has grace for you so just ask him for more grace today and receive it that did one of my favorite verses is from limitations three twenty three we're told that his mercy is grace it's new every morning if we really woke up in the morning and said God what happened yesterday is over I prayed about it I repented for what I did wrong it's done it's wiped away so today is a fresh day I'm not gonna let anything from yesterday or my past darken this brand new day that you've given me I think we would already have a lot less shame but um so today I challenge you to really take hold of God's fresh new mercy and also um if you find yourself thinking about the past about things that you've done wrong that you've asked God to forgive you for give those to him and ask him to give you his perspective on that situation because I promise you you have his perspective you won't have a lot of shame left afterward okay have a good night bye