I'm sure those things are included. Shame is a part of the bondage of addiction. I have never met anyone addicted where shame was not a part of it. But what I have also learned from my own experience, and from talking to others who have lived captive lives, is that the shame is rarely limited to times and events associated with our addictions. Many people feel overwhelmed and suffocated by secret shame. Life becomes miserable, full of fear (what will happen if people find out. if my shame is revealed?), and a process of slowly dying rather than abundant life. And often, crippling shame is one of the symptoms of spiritual sickness that people are trying to treat when they try this thing or that wrong solution that may work temporarily to relieve the pain, fear and misery, but eventually stops working and chains us to death.
When shame controls our life we can not serve God well, and shame can be a harder slave master to escape than the addictions we embraced trying to quiet it. Shame exists in a horrendous cycle of bondage. First, comes the condemnation and pain from the instigating event. Sin, ours or someone else's, births the shame. It is followed by branding. Branding? Yes, shame brands us as its own by deceiving us into embracing the idea that we are defined by and identified by the pain and failure associated with what caused the shame. Our past is not something that we did or something that happened to or was done to us, but it is who we are. Because we are defined by our shame we can not recover, should not recover, deserve the misery and failure we experience, and finally, since we so shamefully deserve such misery, we should also be ashamed of our thoughts, feelings and very existence. This second layer of shame adds to our false identity, leading to deeper branding and more shame. The cycle continues in ever increasing increments of shame that eventually controls every aspect of our actions and reactions.
Of course if shame is determining how we act and react, that means the Spirit is not. And any time the Spirit is not in control of our direction, actions and reactions we travel a road that leads to renewed bondage and death. It is the power and direction of the Spirit that takes us on the path that leads to life. And it is the Spirit that transforms us into the new creation that no longer has to live in regret or avoidance. That is the freedom of the promise.
We no longer have to live clothed in and branded by shame that leads to regret, regardless of what we have done or what has been done to us. Why? Because we come to understand that we are not defined by our past but by Daddy. We are not who shame says we are but who He says we are. We are not our failures and foolish choices, slaves to shame, but we are the redeemed, those so special and significant to Daddy that He paid the highest price to make us His. We are loved by God. We don't have to live in regret because, rather than showing us to be worthless, the pits we have have been pushed into, fallen into and even jumped into don't define us but lead to a demonstration of what the power and love of God can do in our lives.
No longer wishing to close the door on the past doesn't mean that we are trapped in it. It is when we spend our days wishing we could make our past disappear and trying to close the door on it that we can't escape it When this promise comes true it doesn't mean that the door is so open that we live in the past. It means that we stop living in denial, pretending it didn't happen and praying no one brings it up. We can live in the now, in the present with an awareness of God's presence within us and His love for us. But we don't fear something or someone revealing our past, because when it comes up it is an opportunity to say yes, this is what I did, and more as well, and or this is what was done to me, but the story doesn't end there. That may be what it was like, but this is what happened, Christ worked in my life, and this is what it is like now. Oh, and you can have the restoration, healing and freedom that I have as well, because Jesus also loves you, as He loves me, as you are, not as you should be.
We don't live in the past, but we don't want to pretend it away because it is our past, our story (the word of our testimony is how it is said in scripture) combined with the the blood and work of Jesus that overcomes the enemy and sets captives free, drawing them into the understanding that they too can have relationship with Daddy and can be set free and given a life worth living. Why would we want to close the door on our greatest asset to point the way to Jesus? I was a cripple but now I can walk! I was a slave but now I am free! What does saying we have been set free even mean without the correlating admitting to not being so? But there no longer has to be regret and shame with what it was like. We can rejoice that not only are we no longer who we were, but that something good has come from what once caused us shame. First, it helped show us how desperately we needed Daddy, and it continues to cause good things because the Spirit can use our past to show people that they too can be set free.
If we are going to run from shame, let us make sure that we run directly to Daddy. He will take us, declare us His and significant to Him, and then we no longer have to flee the past or the shame tied to it. What once made us so sick and kept us slaves can now display His glory and be wielded as a weapon to defeat captivity and set others free. It's not denial. It's not saying that is not who I am....the junkie, the drunk, the felon, the foolish, the selfish, the cruel, the..... those things are indeed who I was and who I am without Jesus. They don't go away never to be known about again, but I am who Daddy says I am even more. I am bought with a price, made new and empowered to walk differently than before, able to say no to the sin I never could say no to on my own, I am sealed as His by the Spirit, adopted into the family of God and declared to be His child, no longer His enemy. I am a demonstration of His love, His power and His way of life rather than an example of what not do and how not to be. And you can have and be that as well, because Daddy loves you as you are. You do not have to be ashamed constantly running from the past. You too can be free.
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