How to Face Shame Head-On

Photo by Justin Luebke on Unsplash

There are some choices we make in life that we know almost instantly are taking us in the exact opposite direction of where we should be heading. Sometimes we continue on that road, hoping it might lead us somewhere beneficial. The longer we travel in the wrong direction, the more we might come to realize we need to turn around.

We start to look for the right place to make a “U-turn.”

The Lord had answered my prayers to show me areas where I needed to make major changes. But how to make those changes? I knew what, but now the real action had to take place.

Dr. Todd Phillips of McLean Bible Church, the pastor of the church I attended in my twenties, used to say often, “Knowledge without application is supplication.”

Simply put, knowing without doing is worse than not knowing. It eats at you. This is where the test of faith really begins…Especially when we have to turn from the sin that is the closest to us, right smack in the middle of our hearts.

My sins were isolation and presentation.

I kept my real self in hiding and presented what I thought would be accepted and loved by others. I hadn’t known any better, but I knew in my core that it was not the way I was supposed to live. You know how when you put two northside magnets together, there is tension? That was how I felt in my own skin. Sin and the Spirit cannot ride together, and the Spirit in me just had enough of sin junking up my car, changing the station, and messing with my GPS, so to speak. I was so done being all that I was not. I wanted to be REAL! I wanted to know what real love was. I wanted to be really known.

I was humiliated with myself for what I had done. But how could I be real if I didn’t know who I was? This was where I knew I was out of my options. I had to seek outside of myself. I needed community, accountability, and Lord knows I needed grace like a fire hose

Without confession, I could have continued to make wrong turn after wrong turn.

As long as no one knew, I couldn’t be held accountable. But with confession, I would be taking the first step in holding myself accountable and setting myself free from hiding.

Do you need the courage to be “out there” and just trust God?

Start by getting into a life-giving community where you can be yourself.
Learn to be vulnerable so that in that you can find the greatest healing.
Speak out and be courageous enough to BE HEALED!

Sometimes all we know is how to experience and manage our pain, but to really accept healing, and receive our healing comes with speaking it into existence. Today, let’s face our shame head-on.