Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
God, the Father, took me on a journey into His heart. I am still on that journey. It has been a glorious journey, but sometimes it has been painful. This is about some of the pain. This is about shame. It is a painful subject. Shame touched everything about 
me. It was rooted in the core of who I was, my identity, but I didn’t know it.
It is important to know that there is a difference between guilt and shame. Guilt tells you that you did wrong. Shame tells you that you are wrong.
Shame is one of the enemy’s greatest strongholds. Let me describe shame from my life. It is raw and ugly, but that is the way shame is.
It felt like never ending embarrassment about something. Please understand, embarrassment is not shame, it can be a result of shame, but not always. I believed I didn’t belong. I felt naked. I felt exposed and vulnerable. I was seen, but I was not pretty. I felt something was wrong with me.
Being accepted and loved was for other people, but not me. Success was for others, but not for me. Others were good, but I was bad. Others were important, but I was nothing. I didn’t matter. I had no honor or dignity. I felt worthless in the eyes of others and worthless before God.
Because of my shame, I was not only embarrassed about something I was also resentful, critical, sarcastic, envious and full of anger. Shame fueled rebellion in me. I was either too aggressive or passive in my relationships. I wanted to be loved, accepted and included. I wanted people to know the real me, but I couldn’t allow that. I was too ugly, so I hid behind my masks and walls.
Why was this? How did this happen? I don’t fully know, but shame is a part of the fallen nature. All of us suffer with it to one degree or the other. Sometimes shame comes because of what happened to you, but you can’t point to a particular event. Instead, it comes from the gradual accumulation of demeaning words and actions. Sometimes it is devastating things such as disabilities, abuse, rape or just being born on the wrong side of the tracks, the wrong family or the wrong race.
How did I get free from shame is a more important question? I am still getting free. I haven’t arrived, but I am well on my way. The day the orphan spirit’s hold was broken off my life was a turning point. Since shame is so wrapped up in the fallen human experience and touches the core of our soul, it takes the Holy Spirit’s delicate touch to root it out.
It turns out the Bible is all about dealing with shame. It is introduced at the very beginning. The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Gen. 2:25). That is the last thing the Bible says about Adam and Eve before they fell. We were created naked, and unashamed, but we made ourselves naked and ashamed in the fall. As a result, we ran and hid. We did not want to be seen.
Jesus Christ, the finished work of the cross is our answer to shame. It says, “He endured the cross, despising the shame.” (Heb. 12:2)
“Then they spat in His face and beat Him, and others struck Him with the palms of their hands” (Matt. 26:67). The level of contempt placed upon Jesus by the Romans ensured that He would experience the greatest humiliation and shame possible.
He was, in all likelihood, naked on the cross. You won’t see crucifixion pictures of Jesus naked, yet, following Roman custom, He would have been crucified naked. John 19:23 confirms that He was stripped of both His outer and inner garments. He died in total shame.
The Father has made a way for us to be free from shame and all its destructive fruit.
Many Blessings, BW