Messy Church: Facing Shame (Andrew Meher)

Andrew Meher: you If you have a Bible, would you open up to Genesis chapter two, the very last verse. ⁓ verse 25, we're gonna read that, we're gonna read most of chapter three in just a minute. If you are new here, welcome, it's so great to have you joining us today. We're in the middle of the season called Lent. If you're not familiar with what Lent is, it is the time for 50 days leading up to Good Friday and Easter where we go and journey with Jesus to the cross. And it is a time and a season where we reflect on our own mess, our own need for Jesus and the work that he does on the cross on our behalf and the victory that Jesus has done ⁓ over death on our behalf. And so we are taking time in this Lent season to talk about and engage with the messes of our lives. How many of you love engaging and talking about the messes of your life? It's like your favorite subject, like Thanksgiving or Easter dinner with the family, like, ⁓ so tell me about all of the ways your life is absolutely screwed up right now. It's like your favorite, no, none of us like talking about this. I know none of us like talking about this. We don't like talking about this, but we have been felt challenged because of the goodness and totality of what Jesus has done on the cross. have a safe space to be able to open up and talk about the messes of our lives because God is bringing fruitfulness out of the messes of our lives and God is redeeming the messes of our lives amen three of you believe that amen maybe more of you will by the end of this morning we're gonna get to the text ⁓ in Genesis in just a few minutes probably a story you have some familiarity with but maybe not a lot depending on on your ⁓ history of reading scripture ⁓ But what I want to do today is we're going to talk about a kind of mess. We've been talking about sin last week and confessing sin. And next week, we're going to talk about ⁓ grief and loss when it doesn't make sense. And this week, we're going to talk about the issue of shame, the shame and the pain that each of us need to face in our lives. And we're going to consider ⁓ the story of Adam and Eve and God in Genesis chapter two and three. But I thought it could be helpful before we get there, just so you know that this is a good topic and a helpful topic and there's actually fruit and something good in your life on the other side of talking about this. I thought it could be encouraging to share maybe a little bit of my own story ⁓ in relation to shame and one aspect of that in particular. ⁓ I, some of you know the story, but I moved a lot growing up. By the time I was 18, I had moved nine times. So every two years on average, it didn't actually work out that way. Sometimes it was moving from one house to the other side of town. But then sometimes it was from the East coast to the Midwest, to the East coast, to the Midwest, to the other side of the country and the Pacific Northwest. I've been all over the place, but nine times by the time I was 18, I had moved on average every two years. And what that began, to ⁓ do ⁓ in my life, especially as I got into the kind of late elementary school years, middle school, high school, is I began to find it increasingly difficult to make friends. I found it incredibly hard to find a place to belong. How many of you have lived in the same place your entire life? You moved somewhere, you grew up in the same place, so you maybe had a group of friends or different groups of friendships were stronger in one season than another, and you were just with those people for life. So imagine me showing up ⁓ halfway through middle school and I'm trying to make friends with these people who have history. trying to ⁓ find a connection, a place to belong, a place to fit in. And my sister's here, she can tell you, I was a nerdy, awkward kid. ⁓ What's changed? you know, it took me, it was really hard for me to fit in. As I got older, I became more and more kind of insecure and had a deep sense of shame that I did not belong, that I did not fit in. that there was always, if there was the option, I might be forgotten about by this group of people and they might just prefer to do things with the group that they've always done things with. And this left me feeling particularly insecure about my belonging, where I fit in. And I felt a lot of shame. around that. I wasn't just ⁓ seeing the problem of not having friendships. I actually began underneath to believe there's something wrong with me. That's what shame is. We'll talk more about in a second. And so in order to cover up this sense of insecurity and shame, what I began to do was kind of cover that up in a couple of different ways. There were a lot of different things, but two in particular that I'll share with you this morning. ⁓ I began to develop this habit of telling very small lies to enhance... my life, make it sound more interesting, things I did or didn't do, experiences I'd had or had not had, just to make myself sound more interesting or to appeal to a certain group of people. And I would do this and I started to do it without even totally realizing I was doing it. It was almost just the self-protective reaction because I felt so much pain and shame about not belonging. And so let me try and help these people feel like they want to include me. Another thing that I would do to cover up this shame, especially as I got into high school and early in college, is I developed a very unhealthy sense of ambition. I am going to succeed and be successful at something and that is going to help people like me. I will fit in. I will belong. people will appreciate my achievements and they will want to include me. For me, that sense of ambition was always about wanting to make sure I belonged and fit in because I was very ashamed of it. And so sometimes I could be pretty gruff with people if they were getting in the way of my ambition. Not because I was really like wanted to be mean to them, but if they're getting in the way of my ambition, then I am not going to be received and accepted. Do see how the pattern starts? And so this was my journey for ⁓ most of my life up until ⁓ college. And then about halfway through college, I made a ⁓ transition to another school because I felt a call into vocational ministry. ⁓ And so when I ⁓ went to a school to begin to be trained ⁓ in pastoral ministry, I thank God I ended up at an institution that was not really interested, they were interested, but they were not primarily interested in making sure I had good skills of pastoring, like preaching and organizing people and educating people about the gospel. There was some of that too, but I went to an institution thankfully and met many people that cared more about the transformation of my soul in order to lead other people well into the same thing. And because of that, I began to be challenged to deal with these things I was using to cover my shame with and began to be challenged to actually allow my shame, my pain, my insecurities, all of that discomfort to be exposed before God and before others. I'm exceptionally grateful and some of what I'm going to talk about today comes from some of lessons that I've learned in that season, especially for many mentors, but in particular, doctors Ron and Wanda Walborn, who spoke into my life ⁓ in such a particular way, especially in regarding to dealing with shame and pain and my propensity to cover that up. In fact, ⁓ I should say that now the Reverend Dr. Wanda Walborn is going to be preaching here in two weeks. So you're going to want to come. I'm very excited to have her with us. ⁓ And so March 22nd, make sure you clear everything else and make it a priority to be here. It is going to be powerful. But her and her husband, Ron, and many others began to call me out of hiding and call me out of my shame. And I slowly, as I named and began to realize those lies that I would sometimes use. or the selfish ambition that had creeped in, and I thought it was holy ambition for God, but a lot of it was really just selfish ambition. And I began to realize what was underneath that. First, it was incredibly uncomfortable and painful because I was being met smack in the face with what was really there in my life. And that's hard, it can be really ⁓ disillusioning for us, especially if we've thought our life is one way and then we realize actually it's just like fake and what's underneath that is a lot of pain and a lot of un-dealt-with shame. And it's actually terrifying to me and I don't want anyone to know that all of this is there. And so this was first very uncomfortable and painful because I feared rejection. I feared that if I talk about what's really here and why I really wanna be a pastor or why I really am feeling this call, ⁓ people are gonna be like, ew, what? Like, get outta here. You can't do that here. But thank God I quickly learned that I wasn't the only one hiding. We all do it in one way or another. and I began to open up to others and to God and talk about this pain and talk about my insecurity and talk about fearing not belonging. And as I did so, God began to transform my life. Not to the point where I don't still struggle with issues of belonging or feel challenged by those things in any way, but to the point where now, when those things come up, I have the tools to be able to bring the shame, bring the pain, bring any of that to God instead of hiding. And I realized in that, and this is what I believe is really important for us today, that we all have pain, we all have shame, we all have these underlying insecurities that are undealt with. And here's the thing, the only way that my shame was going to be dealt with was if I faced God. The only way that your pain, your insecurities, your shame is going to be dealt with is if you face God. But you cannot face God as long as you remain hidden. And so I wanna call us this morning, not into something I've never done before, but for your encouragement to know that this is a path that I can tell you with certainty if we come out of hiding, God will meet us. Let's look at our text. Genesis chapter two, 25, right at the end of chapter two, and we're gonna read most of. chapter three through verse 21. I want to read this text and then we'll pray and we'll discuss from there about how God wants to meet us in our shame. It says this, now the man and his wife were both naked but they felt no shame. The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made and one day he asked the woman, did God really say that you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden. Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, the woman replied. It's only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, you must not eat it or even touch it. If you do, you will die. You won't die, the serpent replied to the woman. God knows that your eyes will be opened. as soon as you eat it and you will be like God knowing both good and evil. The woman was convinced and she saw the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. And so she took some of the fruit and ate it. And then she gave some of her to her husband who was with her and he ate it too. And at that moment Their eyes were open and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. ⁓ So they sowed fig leaves together to cover themselves. And when the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. And so they hid from the Lord God among the trees. Then the Lord God called to the man, where are you? He replied, I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked. Who told you that you were naked? The Lord God asked, have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat? The man replied, it was the woman you gave me. She gave me the fruit and I ate it. And then the Lord God asked the woman, what have you done? The serpent deceived me. She replied. That's why I ate it. Then the Lord God said to the serpent, you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild. You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live, and I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel. Then he said to the woman, I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy and in pain you will give birth and you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you. And to the man he said, since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you though you will eat of its grains. By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust and to dust you will return. Then the man, Adam, named his wife Eve because she would be the mother of all who live. And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife. Let's pray. Holy Spirit, we pray that you would help us hear the voice of the Father calling, where are you this morning? We pray, Lord, that we would hear your call and we would not stay hidden and we would face you with all the shame, with all the baggage, with all the stuff, the mess of life. and that you would meet us this morning. Some of us in particular, sense Lord, that you wanna meet us in a way that we have never met with you before. And so we say yes to that call this morning. In Jesus' name. Let me provide you with a little context from this text. There's so many odd ⁓ things and if you're a curious person perhaps we can have a conversation more at another time about why there's a talking serpent and things like that here and what this means. There's a lot of very bizarre things happening but I want to just pull out a couple of things relevant to talking about shame this morning. ⁓ The first is something we need to understand about what was happening. prior to this story. It's what we get in verse 25. The man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. Prior to Adam and Eve's rebellion and the entering into the world of sin and brokenness and all the mess, they lived in a world that God had said after he created it is good. In fact, when God made a man and a woman, God said it's very. Humanity is very good. And then he called Adam and Eve to be fruitful and to multiply that they had a mission actually to expand and subdue the earth literally we're gonna put you in this beautiful garden that's lush and rich with flowing water and all of this fruit you can eat just stay away from this one, but you can eat everything else and actually I would love for you to expand this garden to cover the entire earth. is what the text is implying. That they are going to go and they're gonna just keep expanding. This is their mission, their assignment from God. Be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth. This is what they're called to do. And they're living in this perfect harmony with each other and with God. They feel no sense of shame. They don't feel embarrassed or exposed about anything. Nothing is a problem. They're going about their mission of cultivating the earth and they are close to God. Eden would have been understood by an ancient Near East person reading this text at the original time that it would have been composed. They would have understood Eden to be like a temple garden. This is a place where the very presence of God is dwelling. This is the space where humans get to be with God and God gets to be with humans. They had complete access to God. There was nothing between them. Some of you are taking hearing God's voice right now and you're like, How do I hear God's voice, right? There's no struggle in Eden to hear God's voice. There's no struggle. They know exactly how God thinks about them. They feel perfectly secure in who they are. They do not feel any shame because they are completely at one with each other and with God. But then they are tempted. They are tempted and questioned. and invited to consider finding their own solution for making this earth a wonderful home. This is what's implied when we see Eve say, this fruit is good for wisdom. How are you gonna subdue the earth? Well, you need a lot of wisdom, right? We saw that this tree is good for wisdom and really convinced by the serpent saying, you know, if you eat this, you'll be like God. You're gonna know all the answers. You're going to know both good and evil. Literally in the Hebrew, you're going to know good and bad. You're going to know what works and what doesn't work. You're going to have all of this knowledge and wisdom and you'll be able to figure out how to do the job that God gave you. That's what's implied here in the text. There was actually, in a sense, kind of good motives behind this. Great, we'll be able to do what our mission is. But here is what sin really is. Literally the The Hebrew word for sin talks about missing the mark, missing the target or the aim of what we're called to or what we're supposed to do. And here we see that the core of what sin is about is choosing for ourselves what we think is the best way to do things instead of what God has taught us is the best way to do things. This is why if you remember, during our Ash Wednesday service, I said confession of sin, like we were praying earlier, is basically about saying, God, I trust you with my life more than I trust myself. That's at the core of confession of saying, I don't know what's best, you know what's best. And I name all these sins, I acknowledge it, and I turn from it, and I wanna walk in your way. And so here is the first moment where humanity goes, You know, I think I've got a better idea than the one who created all of this. Now it sounds silly when you say it that way, but we just assume that on a daily basis, don't we? I think I know what's best in this situation. And what comes out of this process of seeking self-knowledge is shame. The first thing that happens when they seek knowledge, self-knowledge, is they experience shame. Something we need to understand is that shame is a self-knowledge that doesn't come from God. God wants us to know ourselves and understand how he made us and how God is leading us, but God does not want us to come to knowledge of ourself by some other means. Because all we can do when we come into a knowledge of ourselves by any other means, like Adam and Eve did, is we see ourselves and are overwhelmed by ourselves and become ashamed. It is not a God-directed wisdom. It is self-directed. Now in a healthy situation, we might recognize our sin in a way that is a lot more in line with what God would hope for us. ⁓ Something like, I recognize that I did something wrong. Or if we were sinned against, we might say, they did something wrong to me. But here's what shame does when we have taken on sin and self-knowledge. Whether we do something wrong or someone does something wrong to us, we interpret both as, there's something wrong with me. You see how shame ⁓ makes this, this inward ⁓ navel gazing. We have no power to overcome. And this is what Adam and Eve experienced in this moment. They ate of the fruit. They realized they were naked and they felt ashamed. They were covered with a sense of dread, of insecurity, of embarrassment. They were exposed. and they needed to hide as quickly as possible. So what did they do? They did two things to try and avoid the shame and the pain they were experiencing. First, they took fig leaves and sewed them together and covered themselves up. This is what we call shabby chic. It's like the pre-shabby chic. It's the most shabby of all the sheiks. And here's the thing is if you took leaves off a tree, what do you think's gonna happen to those leaves over time? They're gonna what? They're gonna shrivel up. They're gonna dry up. They're gonna get crinkly. And before you know it, that thing that you thought was covering up your shame and embarrassment, it's not working anymore and you need to find something new to cover your shame and your embarrassment. And this is what was happening with Adam and Eve. They were going to just try and find the quickest fix for their pain and their shame that they could find in a moment. And they desperately did the best they could. Let me just say, so you understand this is coming from a compassionate place. That's all any of us can do on our own is the absolute best we can. And some of us have been in seasons where we've just covered up with fig leaves like Adam and Eve and we're just doing the best we can. So I just want you to know that ⁓ don't pile on more shame as you might be thinking, ⁓ no, I do that all the time. Just recognize you've been doing best you could when you do it out of your own power and your own strength. It's all you know how to do. It's all any of us know how to do when we are hiding in our shame. So they cover themselves with fig leaves, doesn't really work too well, and then they hear God coming for his evening stroll through and they hide. So not only are they covering their shame, now they're hiding from God. The one person who could probably fix this in some way and they're like, we can't let God find out. This is the cycle that gets created by shame. Shame is painful so we cover it. God comes near and we hide. God calls. If we don't answer, then we feel more ashamed because we didn't answer God's call. And then we feel more embarrassment so we cover up more and that leads to more hiding. And it creates a vicious cycle where we just hide more and hide further within ourselves. And if you're anything like me in the story I shared, you begin to not even realize that you're hiding. But you're living in this closed off life going, why can I not sense God's nearness and closeness? Like Adam and Eve. Why is God so far away? It's because like Adam and Eve, we have covered ourselves and we have hidden ourselves from God. In order to avoid the pain and the shame, we do what we can as best we can. But here's the good news. God does not let us stay in our hiddenness. What is God's response to this? He comes walking in the garden, of course God knows what happened. And what is His question? It's so gracious and it's so kind and it is so unassuming and it allows us to meet God gently. Where are you? You ever feel that question coming from God? Just kind of a gentle nudge of, hey, where are you? Where are at? Where are at right now? God knows, but God wants to draw out from you the thing that you don't want to admit to yourself. The thing that I don't want to admit to myself. Where are you? He says to Adam and Eve. course Adam says, we're hiding, we're afraid of you. Because we did what we were not supposed to do. We're ashamed. We've broken this thing. But here's what's so profound, they were not going to be able to initiate that conversation with God on their own. They were buried underneath their shame. They needed God to initiate reaching out. We need God to initiate reaching out. And God has initiated reaching out to all of you. By the way, you might not know that God is speaking to you, but as soon as God came in Jesus, God was reaching out to all of the world, to everyone in humanity to say, where are you? Come near. But here's the other thing that God does in this text that is so profound. Yes, there are consequences for their actions, right? Think of my kids sometimes. One of them, when they do something wrong and they know they did something wrong, they run to hide. And actually a lot of ⁓ developmental psychologists, especially pediatric psychologists and stuff, they say the best thing you can do in those situations is not go scold your kid, because the kid knows they messed up. The best thing you can do is establish consequences that help you reconnect with that child. Because it teaches them that when they do something wrong, can... And this is what God is doing with humanity right now. God is saying, when you do something, there are consequences, but I want to make sure that you come near, that you come back to me. So the curses are named these things that are now the reality of living in a broken world come into existence. But then God does something that I think is spectacular right in verse 21 at the end. And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife. Here's what this affirms, God is telling Adam and Eve, what you need, what is underneath all of that shame is a real need. You felt overwhelmed, like you couldn't subdue the earth like I called you to. You felt embarrassed that you made a mistake. You felt insecure. You felt like you didn't belong here, that you weren't good enough. All of these things are real needs and real things we have a belonging of security of acceptance of love of affirmation of identity. God says these are good things that I have created in you to be met by me and by others. These are real needs and I want you to know that these are real and so God covers them. This shame is real. I to know that there is dignity and I care about you still and I want you to know that what is happening in you is real and so I want to cover the need that you have right now. And so God covers, just think about that for a second. I'm just amazed, I was meditating on that verse. The Lord God made clothing. What's that process like? God's sewing, maybe weeping over his children, but still out of love, caring for them, covering them in their dignity, making sure that they knew, even though this was painful, making sure they knew that they were loved. they were gonna be cared for still. That God was always going to look out for them and God was never going to give up on them. Perhaps there's something in Adam and Eve's story or my story that I shared that resonates with you this morning. Maybe you've come in and you have been carrying or feeling a lot of shameful things from your life or you felt exposed. Maybe it's your own sin, your own mistakes, your own guilt, secrets that you've left unsaid. Maybe you've had experiences of rejection. Maybe there's been trauma, whether it's through or something else that's happened to you, maybe not something that you necessarily were responsible for, but things that happened to you, and you have carried the shame of that pain with you for your whole life. whatever that painful past is, that shame is, those moments often get filled with our own sinful flesh or the voice of the enemy. And over time, these painful things of life start shaping us to say things like, you're not good enough. You see these things that you did or these things that were done to you, that's because there's something wrong with you. You see how you're rejected? That's because you're not as valuable as other people. You see, you messed up again. Obviously, that's because there's something wrong with you. And this is really painful, especially when we start to acknowledge it. so what we do, often without even realizing it, is we begin to use our own fig leaves to cover up the pain. We begin to use our own coping mechanisms to try and make sure that we don't feel the shame and the pain anymore. Now we might not use literal fig leaves, but we might use things, very obvious things like ⁓ some of us might initially use things like we start to use alcohol and drink too much. These are very obvious things. Some of us might turn to some kind of sexual promiscuity. to get a need met or connection met. Some of us turn to things like theft or lying or these what ⁓ St. John of the Cross called the gross sins. The obvious things, the large things in our lives that we recognize is connected to some sense of insignificance or other kind of insecurity and this becomes a fig leaf to cover it up confess them. Many of us, well maybe some of us struggle with those things and we need to bring those into the light and confess them. I think a lot of us struggle with fig leaves that are much more socially acceptable. But are fig leaves nonetheless? A big one, especially in this room for many of us, might be religiosity. Often if our lives felt particularly out of control, especially growing up, religion can for some people feel like a form of control. If I do the right things, then I get this. and they create a form of works righteousness. God loves me if I do this and if I serve on this team and if I take care of this or if I attend this class or if I pray enough or if I read my Bible enough. And we treat our following Jesus less like a relationship and more like a religiosity because we're trying to keep control over a life that we feel so out of control about. Another reason you might turn to something like religiosity might be because you experienced a lot of praise and affirmation maybe growing up around your devotion to your faith or maybe if you grew up in an environment like I did and you memorized all of the scripture passages every week in Sunday school you start to feel really good. about that. Maybe for you that's a sense of affirmation and you're needing affirmation because you're not getting it elsewhere and you turn to something like religiosity. Some of you if there's a control thing from your past where you felt out of control, some of us parents we actually turn to try and control our children. We feel so out of control in our own life that we want some kind of certainty and we begin to be very controlling and manipulative with our kids. And it manifests as, I'm a really doting parent. But actually what we are doing is being highly controllive, controlling and manipulative over their life because we feel out of control. And it's a way of coping. Some of us use the fig leaf for a coping mechanism of workaholism. We get some sense of achievement or success and we're always climbing the ladder. But the thing is, is the fig leaf dries up at some point and we need a new one. And so we have to try and engage and get ambition at the next rung of the ladder or the next payday or whatever it is. And we consume our lives and our identities become our jobs or our careers or our financial success. Some of us struggle with things like food restriction or overexercise. Food becomes a thing because we have felt out of control. Many of us are insecure. It becomes a sense of control. I don't, I'm going to restrict how much I take into my body because it's the only thing I feel like I can control in my life. And what's really nasty about this is because so many people in our culture start applauding you when you start fitting into smaller size of clothing, especially women. And they'll give you a, wow, you look fantastic. and it feeds something really unhealthy, but you feel like I'm finally getting affirmed. I'm finally feeling in control of my life, but we don't realize that this is actually a veneer, a covering, a fig leaf covering real deep pain that is still undelt with. And let's be honest, many of us, if not all, love a good phone addiction. You get your dopamine hit. I have found, especially over the last few years in my own life, when I have a sense of disappointment emerge or a sense of embarrassment about something or rejection or I'm frustrated with something, it can be really easy to not engage that pain and bring it before God and others and instead just start flipping through Facebook or playing a little candy crush. I feel better already. Let's get that little dopamine hit. I'm not really dealing with the problems of my life. little better and man is it socially acceptable. None of these ways actually help us deal with our shame. They just cover the pain and then cover the pain a different way and then try and cover the pain a different way. And when we haven't dealt with our shame, here's what it does very similarly to Adam and Eve, we are cut off from God's presence. Now hear me, God has not cut God's self off from us. our shame has blocked our ability to know that God is near. The fakeness of the fig leaves of our lives have masked off God because we're not really ready to engage with what's really going on, right? God only meets us in reality. He doesn't meet us in our fantasy. And so if we're not gonna be real about what's really going on in our lives, we cannot meet God because God is in what's real. But there's another thing that happens, the enemy roams free. lies to us and compounds the pain and and we then third we find ourselves not able to fulfill the calling and assignment that God has given each of us because we're so bogged down in our shame Adam and Eve had a call to be fruitful and multiply to subdue the earth and there they are huddling down hiding and making little fig leaf clothings for themselves They're not focused on their assignment. They're distracted by their own pain and shame and when we have pain and shame in our lives we are distracted from the incredible calling that God has given each of us in our families, in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods. Shame might be holding you back from the mission of God. We're a church that talks about being present in our community and with our neighbors often, and ⁓ when we do that, we can't go into those places covered with fig leaves. Because we're just gonna bring all our junk into their life and be like, Jesus is good news. They're gonna be like, whatever that is, it's not good news, I don't want it. But in the midst of all of that, what does God do, just like with Adam and Eve, God comes looking for us when we can't find him. He calls to each of us, where are you? Where are you? The question's going to be, are we going to stay hidden and ignore him calling, where are you? Or are we willing to face the discomfort and say, I'm here? I was hiding because I was afraid. God also casts the enemy out when we've been defeated. He tells off the serpent. You're gonna crawl on your belly and eat dirt now. God deals with the enemy. But God also, as we saw in verse 21, provides for the real needs underneath the pain and the shame. Your shame is not just like you need to get over it. There's a real need in your life that is not being met, and God wants to cover and meet that need. So as we ⁓ bring this to a close, just for a minute, here are three questions. If we are going to step out from the fig leaves, step out of hiding and face God with all of our, what are your fig leaves? They can heal us. We are going to need to answer these three questions. Number one, what are your fig leaves? What are your fig leaves? What are your coping mechanisms? What do they do specifically? How do they work? How do they help you get some sense of relief from the pain or shame that you're experiencing? Now here's one thing I wanna say about this is that especially, this happens especially with children, but if you've experienced something ⁓ traumatic in your life, ⁓ there are some coping mechanisms, and actually your brain will do this, where it will actually compartmentalize a whole situation that's happened in your life. Or you did that and you know why your brain and your body does that? So you can survive. But you may have had a season or something like that that happened in your life and you are now in another season of life, but you're still behaving and acting and coping as if you're still in the midst of that struggle. Do see what I'm saying? Are two of you with me? Praise God. And so if you're acting and coping in a different season, say you really had a really insecure ⁓ household dynamic and you couldn't really trust anyone so you closed yourself off. Now imagine going into the workplace and you can't for the life of you work, get on with your coworkers, you're struggling, you're fighting all the time, you don't trust your boss, you don't trust anyone who's working alongside you, you're wrestling with that. There might be a coping mechanism there of not trusting people that was really helpful for another season of life and it is absolutely killing you right now. And so sometimes our coping mechanisms are things that we need to acknowledge that was really helpful in that season, but it is not helpful anymore and it's time to let that go. And so what are your coping mechanisms? What are the other things that you need to attend to? Secondly, what pain or shame are those fig leaves covering up? We have to name the specific pain that's being covered up. For me, my coping mechanisms, the lying, the selfish ambition, the unholy ambition, it was covering up this pain or shame that there was something about me that people did not like and didn't want to be around. that someday I was going to have to face the reality. I imagined it sometimes in my head, like an intervention where all these people were gonna sit me down and say, okay, we need to talk about how we all don't like you now. Like, we're finally just gonna tell you we've been beating around the bush and avoiding it as long as we could. This is like the fear in me. It's like I do not belong to that extent and I am tolerated. And so I have to name the pain and name the fear and name the shame that each of us have and why we're covering that up. And then finally, the third question we need to ask ourselves is, what is the real need that's underneath? What real need is underneath all the pain and all the shame? What was my real need? I had a need to belong. I had a need for sense of affirmation and security from my peers. ⁓ What are your needs that you find you're struggling to get met through your coping mechanisms? If we can do some honest examination with God and with others about these three questions. we will be opened up finally to God being the one to meet our need. Unless we name the leaves, name the pain and shame they're covering, and then name the real need that we have underneath all that, we will not be able to encounter the living God who wants to draw near and meet our need. The good news is that when we do this... God makes clothing to cover our lives. Isn't that what the apostle Paul said? You have now been clothed with Christ. You have been clothed with glory. You are not clothed anymore in the clothing of your sinful nature. You are clothed with the Spirit. But first we've got to acknowledge the fig leaves, the pain and the shame, and what the real need is. receive the clothing that we were always meant to wear. Would you stand with me?