“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are
in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).
Amen.
[that]
I vividly remember a professor in college saying, “One day
you will do that which you thought
you would never do.”
And I remember laughing inside at such an absurd thought—for
if you knew you didn’t want to do something then why would you allow yourself
to do it? He wasn’t talking about a good that
either. He meant the ugly stuff—the moment of weakness, the words of anger and
hate spilling out of your mouth, the thoughts counter to any good in this
world, the actions that cause you to be shocked at even yourself.
What I failed to realize then is “that” thing you never
thought you would do is just that: something you honestly never even conceived
in your mind of doing before. Whatever your “that” is catches you off-guard.
It’s over and done before the notorious thought crosses your mind: I never
thought I would do that.
[shame]
The remarkable thing about the enemy is not necessarily that
he entices us to “do that which we thought we would never do,” but it’s that he
keeps us in a self-loathing state afterwards. Cue shame.
Shame takes on many forms—from a paralyzed state of life to a
helpless thought that we are not worthy of moving on. I think of it as a rope
tied around your feet and hands keeping you from moving from the place you are
in. The only issue is that we gave the enemy the power to tie us up and then he
hands us the end of the rope and walks away leaving us to die in that place.
You see that? We hold the end of the rope. We have in our
power the very thing that could get us out of our paralyzed state of being and
allow us to move forward again especially if we are followers of Christ. We
have a choice. Stay in that place—the place of shame and of feeling like we’ve
done something we cannot move forward from. Or hand the end of the rope to
Christ—Who has all the power to take the rope from us, untie us, and restore
life to us.
Shame keeps us in the place where our “that” is. It
suffocates the life out of us, constantly reminds us of our “that,” and tries
to convince us that we will never be good enough to move on. The ropes are
tight and the more we struggle, the tighter they get. The ropes are binding,
they hurt, they are crippling. And eventually, if we don’t hand the rope to
Jesus, we will die in that very place.
[no condemnation]
Did you catch that? No condemnation. No ropes. No death.
There is only life for those who are IN Christ Jesus—for those
who have handed the ropes to Him.
Shame does not belong in the kingdom of God. Shame does not
belong to the Church of God. Shame does not belong in the Christ-follower’s
life.
May we hand the rope to our Savior—the One who bore our
shame and despised it so many years ago (Hebrews 12:2). Let us live with this knowledge that He has made all
things right again (2 Corinthians 5:17).
It is by His wounds we are healed (1 Peter 2:24).
May we live a life worthy of the calling to which we have
been called (Ephesians 4:1).
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