9.16.25 ~ Shame Free Living

Good morning!

Last night's zoom call: 0-65 in 3.5 seconds or work out your salvation with fear and trembling through diligently obeying His voice and all that He's commanded (Phil. 2:12-16; Ex. 19, 24; Deut. 26:16; 28:1; 30:1-10)

We are just a week away from the Fall Feast season  2025 (Yom Teruah, Yom Kippur, and the 8 day feast of Tabernacles) all dealing with the restoration of our covenant relationship with Yahweh Elohim.  Yahsome days ahead! These are days of restoration, days of love and days of judgment. Huh?

One of the realities that keep us from experiencing the purest judgment of love and restoration during this time of the year is 'shame'.

This feeling destroys lives beyond the crippling pain of guilt. Guilt can be repented of. You can repay someone to alleviate guilt. One can recover from guilt. Shame, on the other hand...not soooo easy!

Shame isn't about what you've done, it's about who you are and from that vantage point there isn't any recovery at all. From experience, I can tell you that shame causes one to feel internally worthless and once you hit that rock bottom, it's tough to overcome it.

It's painful. It is the worst reality in the world. It doesn't matter how successful you are on the outside, the gnawing pain of regret and shame eats away at our insides like a flesh eating bacteria that's never satisfied until it consumes everything in its path. The end result...we are not much more than 'walking dead'!

We will do anything to hide our shame with self-talk that condemns and does whatever it can to avoid the topic that never loses its tenderness. It keeps us away from intimacy and we avoid addressing it like the plague; living in the fear that if 'they' really knew who I think I am, they'd never accept me. This self-inflicted disease makes me live a lie.

The lie pushes me towards addiction just to cope from day to day. Since I don't have a solution to the feeling of internal worthlessness, I have to escape the pain any way I can and for most the escape is addiction and others suicide. These are the 'hospital ventilators' of this emotional 'covid' condition. By using addiction I can alter my emotionally damaged inner world with a mind-numbing action. It buys me time until I come up with an answer for my inner turmoil.

King David, one of our beloved Psalmists, gives us an answer to this dilemma. He recognizes that it is not himself that solves this issue, but God who rectifies the internal struggle by taking refuge in His instructions (Psa. 119:80).

Let my heart be sound in thy statutes/chok; that I be not ashamed/bosh. (Psa. 119:80)

David recognizes he doesn't have any power to remove shame, but it's yielding my heart to His statutes/chok (those commandment that I do out of love without a full comprehension; because I trust in all He says for me to do)  and frankly, nor do you or I (Prov. 20:9).

Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin? (Prov. 20:9)

God is the  one who cleanses the heart (Psa. 51:10), which opens up the pathway to God's goodness (Psa. 73:1). The end result is ascending into the Holy Hill in the coming day (Psa. 24:4). Only God can create a clean heart and renew a right spirit in us (Psa. 139:23,24), but He won't do it without considering our ways (Deut. 30:1-10); last night's zoom call :-)

God is ready to give each of us what we desire the most...a life without shame!

The fall feast season is  coming close. May that be our reality as a people of God...it can be! It will be (Prov. 23:7).

For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he:...
(Prov. 23:7)

Happy 3rd day of the week!
Shalom,
Alan

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