Unshackled Moments ~ July 24 ~ Free From Shame

There is a common saying in recovery that we are only as sick as our secrets. It's not totally accurate. For example many of us who get clean and sober find out in recovery that problems we were hiding or playing down were only being hidden to ourselves. The rest of the world seemed to realize I had a drug and alcohol problem long before I could admit how bad it was to myself. That said there is some truth in the idea that our secrets will make us and keep us sick, and that truth is not new.

To be free of the past confession must play a part. There are two ways to be free of the past. First, to be free of the weight of guilt and shame, in other words forgiveness. The second way to be free of the past is to be freed of the repetitive cycle. We've all heard it said that those who do not learn from history (i.e. the past) are doomed to repeat it, but the truth is that we can know areas of bondage are killing us and controlling us without breaking the cycle. Knowledge and learning won't set us free from the shackled of true slavery.

The psalmist David understood the problem is spiritual rather than mental. If it were mental, then just learning our lesson would be enough. But a spiritual problem needs a spiritual solution. David wrote in Psalm 32: 3-4 that, "When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was turned into the drought of summer." When we keep silent it kills us inside. The shame and fear eat away at us like a cancer, stealing our joy and our strength to walk free from the very things that we hate about ourselves and our past. We find ourselves in that vicious cycle of repeating our personal sinful history as though we are incapable of learning any better.

Secret shame is one of the enemies greatest weapons against us because there are a lot of things in our lives human nature says we should keep silent about. There are things we feel ashamed of and have learned to push down and cover up rather than expose. These might be family problems, compulsive or repetitive sin, addictions (chemical, spending, eating, sexual addiction, to name a few), or any area of bondage where we feel shame as much if not more than guilt when we fail to walk free of it. Silence might seem like the best, safest way to handle it, but silence always leads to more pain and guilt and sickness inside. It eats away at us, at our spirit. And it always affects other parts of our lives.

We go through the motions of faith and responsibility of  the day to day life of a believer with a mask on to keep the world around us from realizing that we’re dying inside. Nobody knows we have these secret sins that are keeping us from moving forward. No one knows about it except God, and when we are alone in the dark with our fear, insecurity, shame and guilt, ourselves. In those scary and rare moments we can be honest with ourselves we know about it. God knows about it.

David shows us how he found freedom from the guilt and shame of a past which including murder and sexual sin. "I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,' And You forgave the iniquity of my sin" ~. Psalm 32:5

It almost seems to easy doesn't it? Why is confession so powerful? Well, it's not so much the confession itself as what the confession represents. As long as we are hiding our shackles we are in effect saying that either there is no problem and or that we can figure out a way to free ourselves of it, to control it. But when we admit the nature of our bondage and shameful sin we also admit that it is beyond our control, that we can't fix it.  There is something intrinsically broken and sinful in every human being. Merely human efforts (learning and understanding, behavior and location modification, counseling and therapy, etc.) cannot cure the sin problem.

My brokenness, like yours, is very complex. Jesus said that He can to heal and restore the sick, those who know they have a problem, and not the well or people who can pretend they are healthy when they are not. If we want to heal and be set free from the cycle of sin in our lives and from the pain and misery that shame breeds, we need to be honest with God and ourselves and each other.

Shame says we need to hide, that if anyone actually knew for sure, if we admit, then......But David ended Psalm 32 with the amazing truth that God is our hiding place. He ends with joy. "For You are my hiding place; You protect me from trouble. You surround me with songs of victory." ~ Psalm 32:7 Despite his sin and failure he wrote a song of victory because he had been forgiven and set free. You’ve been forgiven. You have been set free. Your lying schemes, forgiven. Your lustful acts, forgiven. Your self-seeking manipulation, forgiven. Your religious hypocrisy, forgiven. All the guilt, all the shame, all the stuff you’ve been carrying maybe for years and years and years... you can be set free. God has come in the person of Jesus to set you free.  But the key to that forgiveness and freedom is admitting and confessing that we need it.