Category: evil

Toxic Shame

“My disgrace is before me all day long,
and shame has covered my face.”

Psalm 44:15

Some years ago while in prayer I saw myself, apart of God. There was a marble fountain abandoned in a gorgeous courtyard. It was beautiful. As I looked I realized that it didn’t have clean fresh water like you might think, but it spewed feces and urine. It was gross, it was awful, and I immediately understood.

I suddenly realized that I was that marble fountain, and I was spouting out only filth.

Being ashamed is cruelty that can only destroy a person. We think we must have defense mechanisms to survive. We drink, use drugs, and get involved with sex. Some might put on a tie and raise their hands during our church worship time. Whatever works I suppose. Almost always shame drives us to look for ways to escape.

People who live with shame often feel worthless, depressed, and anxious.

Shame can be a contributing factor to depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. People who are constantly ashamed live out a difficult emotional and mental battle each and every day.

The Hebrew word for “shame” is disgrace, confusion, or dishonor.

I believe only the power and blood of Jesus can purify me. Only He has the ability to clean my spirit. In the New Testament, we see Jesus healing the leper with just a touch. Shame will be removed from your heart when He touches your own “leprosy” of sin.

Here are things you must consider.

  • Shame separates me from God.
  • Shame is a sign of self-hatred.
  • Shame makes me feel like giving up.
  • Shame leads me to go out and sin more.
  • Shame destroys the gifts that He is waiting for me to serve others.
  • Shame makes me judgemental and critical of others.
  • Shame weakens the Church in ways I can’t comprehend.

God intends to move you out of shame and guilt. You must have faith to put His Word into practice before you can be really free. It will probably be a battle–every day. Faith is the only way to freedom. The following promise is crucial.

“But if we confess our sins to him, he can be depended on to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong. And it is perfectly proper for God to do this for us because Christ died to wash away our sins.”

1 John 1:9, LB

I must reiterate this, and use the authority God has given to me as a teacher of the Word, please shake off the humiliation you live in. You must do this.

I want you to be set free from shame.

Unless you step completely away from the shame of your life you’ll be destroyed by the enemy. I dare not pull any punches with you. I don’t mean to be hard, I really don’t. But I do understand. I really do.

“Once again you will have compassion on us. You will tread our sins beneath your feet; you will throw them into the depths of the ocean!”

Micah 7:19

You can be free from sin and shame. God has a way.

It is the cross of Jesus, and by His blood–that is the only way sin and shame can be cleansed from our lives. There is nothing else in the whole universe that will do this. Only the red blood can turn the black into white.

I strongly suggest you share your battle with another believer who will understand and be discreet. (Sharing this maybe is the step you’re missing?)

Shame is the ugly fountain that only produces deadly things. It’s that shame that keeps me from understanding that I’m the beloved of God and His precious child.

 

Fallow Ground

Today I realized that I was sick and very tired of myself. It’s really not disgust or even loathing. It’s more like weariness, exhaustion. I’ve never felt this way. In a strange way, it intrigues me. Could this definite disenchantment mean something spiritual? Does it have value, or am I just feeling self-absorbed or conceited?

There seems to exist a real rigidity to evil, something intense.

I have seen it up close– sin that hardens all who touch it, plain and simple. My growing immobility disturbs me, as I know I’m developing a “hardness of heart.” Atherosclerosis is a condition of a sick heart where arteries become blocked. It’s also known as the “hardening of the heart, or arteries.” It is a patient killer, slowly and surely making hard deposits that block the flow of blood.

The Bible speaks much about having a hard heart.

It also uses the metaphor of fallow ground that must be plowed up. Jesus used the same image in His “Parable of the Sower” in Matthew 13.

“A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. 5 Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, 6 but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8 Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain.”

There are really only four options.

  • The first is the seed that gets walked on.
  • The second lands on hard stones.
  • The third seed tries to grow in the thorns and thistles.
  • Only the fourth flourishes.

Heart of Stone Heart of Flesh
The Battle of the Heart

I have found that my own heart drifts. I myself struggle with a mental illness where my emotions fluctuate constantly. They gallivant around, floating here and then there. I may be depressed and suicidal in the morning, and then I can be euphoric in the evening. It’s having the identity of a “wandering star.”

But I so want my heart to soften. I want to grow. I really do.

I so want to sit with Jesus and hear His words. I need Him to share what He’s thinking about. Yet I know that any sin I entertain has a hardening effect on my spiritual heart. This scares me. But truly he still holds me close, and he keeps his steady loving hand on me. *

Never underestimate a hardened heart. Never overestimate His love to free you.

*

The Desperation Factor

  1. : Loss of hope and surrender to despair. 2. : a state of hopelessness leading to rashness.
  2. Synonyms–desperation · concern · dejection · depression · despondency · disconsolateness · distraction · distress · pang · torture · trouble · worry. noun as in rashness.

A terrific study is finding the people who fell at Jesus’ feet. Tucked in the Gospels you’ll find stories of those who despair. You’ll also see them come to Jesus in brokenness and humility, without any other recourse. I call these the feet-finders.

They came to Jesus because they had no hope otherwise. They were people who were hopeless and wretched, they had long ago run out of options. They came to Jesus, falling down in front of Him. They were all feet-finders.

They were men and women who were truly desperate.

“Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

John 11:32

One of the classic scenes in the Gospels is when Mary meets Jesus after her brother’s death. She doesn’t understand Jesus’ delay, Lazarus has been very ill and Jesus could have healed him. She is grieving and confused. But she only has one posture and one place in her heart to be– at the feet!

There are some common characteristics that feet-finders have:

  • A great need that can’t be met without His touch
  • To understand one’s true condition–humility, brokenness
  • To beg for a healing, for self or family
  • To honor Jesus as the Messiah
  • To be more receptive to His teaching, to understand Him
  • To become a witness to others (although it does seem secondary)

The following 3 verses are just a small selection of those who fell at Jesus feet.

“And great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them.”

Matthew 15:30

“But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet.“

Mark 7:25

“Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”

Luke 8:35

But there are several other instances where people came to sit at Jesus’ feet:

  • Mark 5:22-23, Jairus, a leader in the local synagogue
  • Luke 7:37-38, a sorrowing mother for her daughter
  • Luke 8:41, also Jairus
  • Luke 10:39, Mary, when Jesus was teaching
  • John 11:32, Mary, meeting Jesus entering Bethany
  • John 12:3, Mary, with her perfume
  • Revelation 1:17, John to express what he was seeing (also 19:10)

In every case we find people consciously coming and kneeling at the feet of the Lord Jesus. It was a deliberate action that came from their hearts. Each had a terrible need, and each was without hope.

Formality and religious politeness are jettisoned. Brokenness and true humility takes their place. A foot-finder is no longer operating on spiritual niceties. Religion is comfortable, noble, and respectable, but it cannot heal or change people deeply.

Feet-finders know that they need Jesus desperately and will go to any length just to be touched by Him. They defy what is conventional and proper. They are not what we call respectable. You can find them at the feet of Jesus. They are feet-finders. Foot-finders weep, kneel, beg, shout. Too many tears and maybe some snot.

Hardly decent to religious people.

Are you really that desperate yet? Have you seen your need, and do you realize how lost you would be without His healing touch?

Often when I do pray, I sometimes think of the woman who was unclean. She speaks to me about approaching Jesus. I see myself in a crushing crowd of people, and I’m reaching out just to touch the hem of His robe. I know only Jesus can stop my own uncleanness. (Matthew 9.)

I’m convinced only Jesus can make me clean and whole.

I’ve tried to be holy and acceptable to Him. But I felt like a juggler, trying to keep my balls in the air all at the same time, and I could never pull it off. So I tried again and again. I was the unofficial master of religious effort.

But I found my rightful place at His feet. It’s where I belong. I love Him.

I’m not ashamed to be found kneeling.

bry-signat (1)

*

We Are Not Crushed

“Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.”

2 Corinthians 1:9

To be chronically ill often means living with awful frustration. We can’t do what we want, we are ‘trapped’ by a disease we never asked for, and we’re held hostage by our minds and bodies. We once had a job– a career… and our time was occupied by that.

We wanted something else, anything more than being very sick.

I once was a pastor of a small church. I also taught Gospels for several years in a local Bible Institute. I loved ministry very much. I enjoyed helping people and teaching the Word. I endeavored to be faithful in the ministry. I hope I did.

With the sudden onset of a brain tumor, followed up by a diagnosis of severe depression, my life more or less exploded. I had extensive memory loss. I knew I had to step out of the ministry. I simply could not function. It was a hard thing to leave it behind.

The post-op recovery following the tumor was an ordeal, as I had to relearn much. A few years later I ended up on disability; I was unable to work, and my symptoms were so unpredictable. I dealt with profound depression and a solid dose of paranoia and fear.

My depression grew even more profound with the stillborn death of our third child just 3 days before her delivery, Things suddenly ground to a standstill as my wife and I tried to process all of this. I guess I just couldn’t understand and more or less just shut down. I spent months in bed, unable to function.

The isolation of being ill seems worse than the pain. We wonder why this is happening to us, and we hear lies about our own unworthiness or God’s anger. We think that the Church has abandoned us. We can feel cursed, forgotten, or even worse. (Maybe even irrevocably lost?)

Satan craves our spiritual destruction, and he snares unsteady souls.

I admit I have been slow to learn this– but God brings good things out of the dark. I’m embarrassed by my personal lack of acquiring all of this. Now I’m starting to learn finally, and I want His words to reflect these truths.

I’m learning how to walk in brokenness.

His light will shine, and the treasure is found in clay vessels. Brokenness only means the treasure is now seen clearly. It’s important to note–jewels lose none of their value by being surrounded by broken clay. Our weaknesses are being turned into goodness, understanding, and love for our brothers and sisters.

Troubles of many varieties will pay us a visit. Count on it.

“We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.”

2 Corinthians 4:8-9

Bryan Lowe

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