I’ve battled with anger issues off and on throughout my life, and underneath the anger lies shame. I’m ashamed when my temper gets the better of me. I’m ashamed at the words that fly out of my mouth that do more damage than a club. Words wound in ways that destroy the essence of a person. I battle anger and I battle shame.
We screw up or we make life-altering wrong choices. We doubt Jesus’ blood can truly clean our past. Anger rules us. Our enemy uses shame to keep us locked in a pit of hopelessness.
How do we get out of that pit? How do we exchange shame induced hopelessness for redeeming hope? By not letting the enemy win. By not letting shame rule your decisions or dictate your actions. Let the shame you feel guide you to the redemption Christ offers.
The First Reason
Shame indicates two things: an attack of the enemy or an issue that hasn’t been dealt with. The enemy deals with generalities and the Holy Spirit deals with specifics. When you experience overall shame and condemnation, the enemy is preventing you from knowing hope. Stand firm in God and resist the devil by speaking truth over yourself. Say, “Jesus’ blood redeems me, in his name I’ve confessed my sin and I stand forgiven. God chooses me. God makes me victorious and nothing can prevail against the God’s love for me and in me.”
The Second Reason
The second problem is a little bit more nuanced. Often when shame lingers over a particular incidence, we have a forgiveness problem. Many of us are quick to ask God for forgiveness and he grants it to us. (1 John 1:9). Often we will go to the person we’ve wronged and seek their forgiveness and whether they grant it to us is between them and God, but we’ve done our part. Whatkeeps us trapped in shame is when we don’t forgive ourselves.
If God has forgiven you, why can’t you forgive yourself? God doesn’t treat us with “three strikes and you’re out” so why do we treat ourselves that way? If you’ve said something you’ve regretted and you’ve made it right with God, make it right with yourself. When you refuse to forgive yourself, you reject God’s redeeming forgiveness.
When you reject God’s redeeming forgiveness, you rob yourself of hope. And when you struggle through, you find your way to hope.
The Solution
“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:2-5
When we wrestle through the suffering we build endurance. Endurance builds our character because we don’t give in to the easy way out of living in shame, but we battle through to victory over shame. Character produces hope because we’re changed from the inside out. Hope is an outward projection of belief and trust. And hope doesn’t shame us. Why?
Because of God’s love poured out into your heart through the Holy Spirit.
Hope Fulfilled
It’s God’s love that starts and ends it all, draws us to himself, and makes a way for redeeming forgiveness. That love resides in us. And when his love is flowing through us and out of us, shame has no place. Hope does.
Hope in God and rest in the confidence that he brings. You are forgiven. Your past is redeemed. Your love is God’s love.
Application
Memorize Romans 5:2-5
Consider anything you haven’t forgiven yourself for and receive God’s forgiveness by forgiving yourself.
Peace seems fleeting and difficult to catch. It’s vapor and mist. I wonder what it would be like to know peace without having to wrestle for it? What happens when our days become night and what was once bright is now dark?
Our flesh may fail, but God never will. God’s plans will come to pass. We will know his healing for our brokenness. Once again our hearts will sing God’s praise. But what do we do in the meantime?
What do we do when we wait for God to move? Or when he does move, he moves us in the wrong direction?
His faithfulness is great. His steadfastness is consistent. He holds us in his hands and that is where our confidence, our peace, rests.
God guides us in ways that are for our best and for his glory. Hence, the struggle with peace. Sometimes it seems as though God is guiding us down a path that is not in our best interest. Then we stomp our feet, and attempt a detour, which sometimes lands us in the belly of a smelly fish.
After Egypt, the Israelites had cloud and fire. They only had to look up to be reassured of his presence. But I’m sure when they looked at their circumstances, they had to wonder. God took them down the desert road to freedom. Then he had them wander before leading them to the edge of the sea with their enemies behind them.
How many times do we want the direct route to a destination ordained by God? Yet, it seems as though we get sent down the desert road to wander here and there. We wonder if this is the best road.
We get so caught up in what is for our best that we forget that our lives are for God’s glory too. And a life for God’s glory may not always look like a “best” life on the outside. It just might mean tragedy, relationship aches, financial challenges, or dealing with personal wounds.
Finding peace in situations like these require us to look beyond our own capabilities within the circumstances and look straight at God.
It means coming to the complete, and total end, of ourselves and finding ourselves in the very best place to be: God’s heart.
He doesn’t fail you. Even when life is failing you, God is still for you. He holds you in his hands and cups you close to his heart. Can you hear it beating? It’s beating a rhythm of peace. It’s the whoosh-whooshing sound of a heartbeat that bled and died and rose again for you.
That’s where you find peace. That’s the place where you can be in an awful situation, and still know God’s peace. It truly is the peace that passes all understanding.
Philippians 4:7 “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.
Peace comfort and guards. If we revisit the Israelites, we find that God battled on their behalf. He guarded their backs while he led the way through the sea. They acted confident until they had no where to go.
He knows what we need. Sometimes he calls us to the battle and other times he calls us to stand still. He knows when we’re acting confident, but inside we quiver like jello. Maybe the next time you feel that way, God is wanting you to be still so he can shock your socks off.
Peace comforts and guards. We reject his comfort because life hurts, and we don’t understand why God doesn’t just do something already. And when we step away from the comfort, we cannot know the protection peace brings us.
Life screams at us, but God whispers. Lean away from the scream and lean into the whisper. And when you lean into God, he will give you the strength to bring glory to him in your life.
Application
Write down one way that peace comforts.
Write down a way that peace guards.
Listen to Do It Again and think about the ways that God has shown up in your life.
Have you ever felt as though God has abandoned you? Have you ever felt confused by God? Does it seem as though his peace is fleeting and fickle?
These words of the Psalmist reverberate through my mind:
Will the Lord reject forever?
Will he never show his favor again?
Has his unfailing love vanished forever?
Has his promise failed for all time?
Has God forgotten to be merciful?
Has he in anger withheld his compassion?
It’s in the busy of the day that we mute our troubles, but it’s in the quiet of the night when our minds start to rev up and race around the troubles that daytime held at bay. We lay in the dark, listening to the furnace cycle on and off, watching the moon cross the room, eyeing the numbers on the clock inching their way closer to morning when we can get up and get away from the thoughts in our head. Then bedtime comes and we repeat the anxious riddled night, which leaves us sleepless and heavy hearted.
Our days are marked with busy and our nights marked with anxiety.
This season of light is a showstopper, but it also reveals our darkness as well. The colors of life sparkle and glow and the contrasts between what we see and what we feel oftentimes becomes too much to bear. Our anxiety grows and it becomes a beast that we cannot wrestle to the ground.
It’s tempting to pray more or serve more or begin a new bible reading plan. And these are good spiritual disciplines, which we need in our relationship with Christ. But they are not the cure for anxiety. They will not be your peace.
The way to peace is not through doing more. It’s through remembering and exchanging.
When peace seems elusive and anxiety definite, we have to pause. We have to pause so we can remember.
We follow in the Psalmist’s footsteps and remember God’s mighty works. The sun that rises. The sun that sets. The way our bodies function without our help. We remember God’s greatness and how he makes a way when there seems to be no way.
We remember that the winds and the waves obey him and that when his path leads us through deep waters that those waters will not engulf us. We take his hand and hold fast, trusting his steps, doing what he does, and stopping when he stops.
We pause and listen for the song that he sings over us. The song of delight and wonder. We remember that he made us lovingly and purposefully. We lift up the mirror of his word so we see ourselves clearly.
After we remember, we name our anxiety. We name the thing that rob us of peace. It could be finances, our marriage, a person, the future, or the past. And then we place it in God’s hands and pick up his peace. But if our anxiety leaps back to us like a magnet, we must put it back again. We place it on God’s desk, because it’s his to deal with and then we pick up his peace. It’s an exchange we repeat.
We remember, we exchange, and we remember again.
There’s no wrestling our anxiety into peace, there’s only us remembering God and exchanging our anxiety for his peace.
Peace Application
Read Psalm 77
Create a Peace Sandwich:
Write down three things that help you remember God’s faithfulness and love.
Write down one or two things that robs your peace.
Picture yourself walking up to God’s desk and placing those items there.
Then imagine yourself picking up his peace.
Write down three more things that you remember about God’s faithfulness.
