Faith Hope Love #4 Shame
Things are going well.
You are slowly turning your dreams into realities.
You are making it.
And all of a sudden,
Something unexpected, something unexplained occurs
You’re thrown into a tailspin.
You crash and burn into the desert.
The valley of Achor, the place of trouble.
And there Satan tries to steal your faith, hope and love.
Faith: trust and confidence that moves us to action.
Hope: the power to lean into the future faith envisions.
Love: the fuel for the journey
All rising and failing on the relationships you are
experiencing.
1 Corinthians 13:12-13 (RSV)
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
We don’t have all the answers even when things are going well.
We don’t see clearly,
We don’t understand fully,
But God gives us faith, hope and love to journey,
To explore, to realize dreams, to become the
people He has created us to be.
Satan wants to stop you dead in your tracks.
So a counter attack to faith hope and love is devised,
With the goal of replacing your faith with doubt,
Your hope with despair,
And your love—well that’s what we need to look
at today.
But first just a little refresher on how to take the route out of the desert.
You’ve crashed and burned.
Maybe a trust has betrayed.
Maybe you lost something or someone precious to you.
To get out of a desert of doubt you will have to continually be doing three things.
You will have to continually be Embracing the pain,
You will have to be continually remembering God’s redemption story.
And you will have to be continually forgiving your betrayer.
To get out of a desert of despair you will have to continually be doing three things
Grieving your loss
Admitting discontent,
And Taking risks to lean into the future.
If you hadn’t notices—getting out of the desert is hard work.
You can build a hovel in the desert and die a slow death or
you can start the journey out.
But that’s just the problem when Satan sets up a counter-attack
on the love God has put in your heart.
Satan’s counter attack to love is ambivalence.
I seldom use that word—ambivalence.
“I’m feeling rather ambivalent on this matter.”
Consulting my online dictionary I discovered these definitions:
the coexistence within an individual of positive and negative feelings
toward the same person, object, or action,
simultaneously drawing him or her in opposite directions.
uncertainty or fluctuation, esp. when caused by inability to make a choice or
by a simultaneous desire to say or do two opposite or conflicting
things.
the presence of two opposing ideas, attitudes, or emotions at the same time
Kind of like the situation in Teen Group—
We celebrated a couple of birthdays
And Monica brought brownies and lemon cake.
Instant conflict for me.
The desire to enjoy a brownie
Or a piece of lemon cake.
Verse the desire to loose weight.
The desire to enjoy both a brownie and the lemon cake.
Verse the desire to loose weight.
I stood to the side watching Gretchen and Monica serve brownies and
lemon cake in a state of ambivalence.
Conflicting emotions, pulling me in opposite directions.
Partake or refrain?
I couldn’t decide.
I couldn’t commit to a course of action.
I was stuck in ambivalence.
Finally logic won out and not wanting to offend the bakers of brownies and
cake, the servers of brownies and cake, and to isolate myself from the
rest of partakers I enjoyed both.
Followed by feelings of guilt for my stupid justification
Of my actions.
Coupled with feelings of shame for being so weak willed
as to refrain.
And served up with a little denial, promising myself that
I’ll exercise more tomorrow to make up for the
extra calories.
Ambivalence
“is feeling two contrary energies moving us in opposite directions, being
caught in the bind of opposing desires, feeling divided and torn.”
(Allender, p. 92)
Ambivalence keeps you from making a decision.
You want the whole situation to just go away,
You want to go away and not have to deal the situation at all.
You want someone else to make the decision,
But its yours and yours alone to make.
Ambivalence causes you to feel depleted and detached. (Allender, p. 93)
Love on the other hand is all about doing.
Love is a verb, not a feeling.
Love always needs a defining so we know what we are talking about.
Love for God is obeying His commands.
Ambivalence delays, postpones, procrastinates, our obedience.
Love for others is meeting their need,
Which often means you have to sacrifice something to do that.
Ambivalence traps us between our desire to help and our fear of
failure, or more often than not, the safety of our comfort
zone, the protect of our busy schedules/
Love for self is becoming the person God created you to be.
Ambivalence creates a Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde complex,
Like the Incredible Hulk stuck in the middle of His
transformations either from or to the form of Bruce
Banner.
Ambivalence takes the verb out of love.
We don’t do anything but be miserable caught in our indecision.
“We’re caught on the horns of a dilemma,
We feel stuck at the crossroads?”(Allender, p. 94)
Satan tries to replace your love with ambivalence through shame.
When you do something wrong,
The Holy Spirit uses conviction to cause you to feel guilty.
Feeling guilty motivates you to take responsibility
do something to correct the mistake,
Fix the problem,
Reconcile the relationship.
Guilt apologizes:
I was wrong. I am sorry. How can I make this up to you?
When you do something wrong,
Satan uses shame to convince you that the reason you did wrong is because
you are wrong.
Something is broke because you are broken.
A relationship isn’t right because you aren’t right.
Things are messed up because you are messed up.
Now there will always be a little truth mixed in with the lies of
Satan’s accusations.
But that when we look to the Holy Spirit and he turns the
what little truth is in Satan’s accusations into
Healthy shame—
Healthy shame drives us to the cross for redemption and
transformation.
But if the lies win out then we are plunged into Toxic shame.
Toxic shame brings you feelings of being flawed and defective.
Toxic Shame brings you feelings of distrust, ugliness, stupidity,
doubt, worthlessness, inferiority, and unworthiness.
Toxic Shame brings you an adversarial relationship with
yourself.
(John Bradshaw, Home Coming: Reclaiming and Championing your Inner Child.)
Love involves “offering a gift, receiving a gift in gratitude,
offering praise, and receiving praise with Joy.
Give and receive, respond and engage.
A dance of intimacy.” (Allender p. 103)
Love “ is the capacity to offer ourselves to others—
To bless them with our presence and our gifts.” (Allender, p. 29)
Love is the capacity to receive from others,
To be lead in the dance.
But toxic shame “shuts us down.” (Allender p. 105)
“It blocks us from receiving and giving…” (ibid)
“It makes us feel unlovable and unable to love.” (ibid)
We reject ourselves.
Many of us feel shame not for our too-bandess but for our not good-enoughness.
(Lewis B. Smedes, Shame and Grace , p.116)
Toxic Shame always moves us away from love and into extremes.
The extremes are presented as ways out of the desert of shame.
Recall the relationship between ambivalence and shame,
If ambivalence brings exhausting indecision,
Then the way out seems to make a decision.
But the way shame works is to force you to the extreme of
dogmatism.
Dogmatism says there is only one right answer,
All the rest are wrong.
Dogmatism creates an “orderly world of law and predictability,
[rules and procedures,]
A place contained and constrained.” (Allender, p.106)
You follow the path of legalism.
You follow the path of self-righteousness.
You follow the path of conformity.
Those paths lead to contempt, cynicism and sarcasm.
(Allender p. 106)
Lets consider the elder brother in the story of the prodigal son.
We know that the younger son demanded of his father an inheritance.
Took the money and blew it all trying to live the high life,
When the money ran out so did his friends,
And his opportunities.
Homeless and destitute he returns home to beg for
a job, to be a hired hand.
But to his surprise his father greats him as a long lost child,
Restores him to his place as his son,
And throws a big party to celebrate his return.
Luke 15:28-30 (NIV)
The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'
The older brother couldn’t dance the dance of love because he was full of contempt.
Contempt is a powerful feeling of dislike toward what you considered
to be worthless, inferior, or undeserving of respect.
Contempt, cynicism and sarcasm causes distance in relationships.
The shame one carries gets projected on to others.
From the safety of the tower of should’s, musts and oughts,
One can feel condescension, scorn and disdain for all the lower
mortals who just don’t get how they should be in this
world or the one to come.
Ambivalence being torn between to opposing forces,
Egoism, the self centered on the self on one side
Being God centered on the other
Pulled in two directions at once by the flesh and the Spirit,
Has toxic shame as a foundation.
But there is a route out of the valley of Achor,
The place of trouble with its shame and ambivalence.
As with doubt and despair there is a way out of the desert.
The path out of doubt and despair the path out of shame is not easy.
The path is journeyed by continually receiving and giving grace.
Returning to the story of the prodigal son,
We see a story of grace.
The son returns home in disgrace.
He deserves the contempt of his older brother.
He deserves to be punished for his actions.
He knows it.
He rehearses his confession:
Luke 15:18-19 (NIV)
Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.'
Shame convinces you that you are not worthy.
The truth is that you are not deserving.
But because God loves you, you are worthy.
Romans 5:8 & 1 Peter 3:18 & John 1:12 (NIV)
God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. …For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God…to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--
God deems you worthy.
It doesn’t matter what has happened to you.
It doesn’t matter what you have done.
God deems you worthy to receive His love—
His grace.
You don’t deserve it, but He is going to give it to
you anyway.
Grace overcomes shame,
not by uncovering an overlooked cache of excellence in yourself but
simply by accepting you,
the whole of you,
with no regard to your beauty or your ugliness,
your virtue or your vices.
You are accepted wholesale.
Accepted with no possibility of being rejected.
Accepted once and accepted forever,
Accepted at the ultimate depth of your being.
(Smedes, p.109)
In the story of the prodigal son, the father is full of grace.
The son is on the journey home.
Luke 15:20 (NIV)
"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
Jesus tells this story as an example of what God the Father is like.
Jesus tells this story to explain to the Pharisees why he welcomes and eats
with sinners.
Why he accepts the disgraced.
The prodigal’s father does not judge, does not condemn, does not reject,
The prodigal’s father is gracious because of his love for his son.
Because God loves you, he is gracious to you.
Not because you deserve it, but rather because He has decided
that you are worthy of it.
Luke 15:22-24 (NIV)
…the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.
We experience grace as acceptance:
we are reunited with God and our true selves,
accepted, cradled, held, affirmed, and loved.
Accepting grace is the answer to shame. (Smedes, 108)
In the grace of acceptance,
You know that God loves you unconditionally just as you are.
And that God loves you too much to allow you to stay just as you are.
The grace of acceptance “gives you courage to look at the messy mixture of
shadow and light inside of your life,
it allows you to feel healthy shame for some of what you see”
(Smedes, p. 115)
Which empowers you to take your mess out of the darkness to
the cross to have it redeemed.
Grace the desire to be and the power to do that overcomes the ambivalence of
shame and replaces it with love.
Love for self is becoming the person God created you to be.
Love for self is partnering with God’s transformational plan for
you.
Love for self is moving out of the shame of the
past into righteousness.
The path out of a desert of shame is receiving and giving the grace of acceptance.
The easier of the two is giving the grace of acceptance.
In the simplest form giving the grace of acceptance is meeting a need
someone has.
You don’t meet the need of someone that you despise
and reject, that you have contempt for,
that you are disgusted by.
You meet the need of someone that you consider worthy
of serving.
They don’t deserve it, but you love because
God first loved you.
Shame created ambivalence is overcome by meeting the needs of others.
Choose to be a servant of love, giving grace gifts away.
It moves you along the route out of the desert.
The harder of the two is to receive the grace of acceptance.
To receive the grace of acceptance you must go home to God.
You have to let God love you
You have to let others love you.
You have to overcome those messages of rejection,
With the messages of acceptance.
You have to risk that God gifts you with the grace of
acceptance.
To receive the grace of acceptance you must go home to God,
And you must engage others.
You have to risk entering into relationship with others.
you will receive grace not only through the
cultivation of your relationship with God,
but also with God’s people.
You must learn you are acceptable by letting others love you.
To let others meet your need,
even if it cost them time, talent, or treasure to do so.
The path out of a desert of shame is not easy.
The path is journeyed by continually receiving and giving grace.
The receiving of grace is the hardest to accept.
For me it started with a simple confession—
God I don’t know how to receive your grace.
I read about, I understand enough about it, but I don’t feel it.
Help me to feel it,
To feel that you have made me OK.
God has answered that prayer in steps.
Sometimes it takes a long time it untie the knot of shame.
God knows how to untie it,
The right moves to make to set you free.
I suggest you get honest with God,
Ask Him to let you feel that you are a new creation in Christ,
Forgiven like the prodigal.
Accepted like the prodigal.
Free to take your rightful place in God’s story of
redemption.