Ashamed: Fighting Shame With the Word of Godনমুনা

Day One

Every time I experience any conflict of any kind, I tell my husband to rent a moving truck and get ready to disconnect our power and water and move to a new city. I love getting away from problems. I rrreaalllly like fresh starts.

I have had eleven home addresses in sixteen years. That’s a whole lot of fresh starts.

And I think I’ve sometimes been running from shame. I seem to lean toward running and hiding rather than staying and serving because I don’t want to feel the shame of my brokenness or weakness. I don’t want to be confronted with my depravity. It sounds awful, you know? I’d rather pack.

But God does incredible, miraculous, shame-crushing, joy-inducing things when we admit and confess our sins. One of the most beautiful examples of this is in the book of Isaiah. Today we’re going to look at Isaiah 6.

In this passage, Isaiah’s iniquity was removed. Not only is Isaiah relieved of the punishment he’s due, but he's also relieved of the guilt. That’s huge. Consider that again—God doesn’t just remove the punishment; He removes the guilt. We’ve all felt guilt before, so we know guilt is a too-heavy-to-carry punishment in itself.

Here, with the angels and God and Isaiah, we see a man who is thoroughly guilty standing before the God who sees all and knows all. And instead of destroying him, God forgives him. It’s hard to even imagine what that must be like, right?

In those early figuring-it-out years of my faith, my fear and shame kept me from obedience. My fear and shame kept me from living for God, listening to God, and being blessed by taking part in the mission of God.

But the more I began to understand my own sinfulness and just how much it took for God to redeem me—just how much love and mercy was involved—the easier it was to take baby steps in the direction He led. As soon as I started taking those steps, the blessings He poured out on me and my family were overwhelming.

Blessings like purpose, peace, and joy.

Remember what Isaiah's coal-meets-lips scenario means for you. Like Isaiah, we are unworthy when faced with the purity of our perfect, all-powerful God. But that hot coal reminds us that God is so loving that He offers us forgiveness. While Isaiah's forgiveness was symbolized with a burning coal, our forgiveness is offered through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In short, awareness and repentance of sin leads us to offer ourselves up to the Lord for His work.

Read Isaiah 6 and pray that the Lord will help your mind release the shame of your failures, that He’ll help you remember His Son’s payment for your sins, that He’ll help you renounce your fear of the future, and that you’ll feel His nearness as you do something eternal today.