Anxiety: The Soul Of Shame | Part 3

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Well, good morning, Awakening.

Great to be with you.

My name's Ryan.

If we haven't met yet, thrilled to have you join us today.

We're in part three of a series we're calling Anxiety.

Yeah.

Didn't come up with a creative name, but uh we all have it, so I figured we'd all resonate with it.

Um today, the sermon title, and go ahead and say this to your maybe not.

I don't know if you should.

The sermon title is called The Soul of Shame.

I don't know.

I don't know.

No?

Yeah, no, no, don't do that, don't do that.

That's good.

Um and I gotta be honest, I shamelessly stole the title from this book by Dr.

Kurt Thompson, The Soul of Shame.

And here's the reason why.

Uh in this series, and in particular this message, I have 35 minutes to talk on an incredibly deeply weighty, painful, personal subject upon which we're only going to scratch the surface.

And I think for many in this room, the next step from this sermon is to pick up, this is an excellent, excellent book, um and read it with a friend and talk through this and actually dive deeper.

I've been praying for you, I've been praying for us.

And my prayer is that uh Jesus would meet us right where we're at, that there would be this moment where you encounter his grace, his love, and that his voice would speak louder to you than the voice of shame that's been speaking to you.

And Jesus said, It is for freedom that I've come to set you free.

And my prayer is today for many the lifting of the burden, the lifting of the weight, the silencing of the voice, that that would begin today.

So would you pray with me as we dive in?

Heavenly Father, we welcome you here.

To speak, to meet with us.

And God, we just recognize that so many of us have a tape playing on repeat in our minds of worthlessness, of unlovable, of a waste.

Even when we're not aware it, shame seems to be operating in the background of our lives.

So in this moment, Holy Spirit, would you move?

Would you speak?

Would you meet our depths at heart's cry to bring life and hope and purpose and peace and love and joy.

That's what you do.

So we come expectant.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Shame and anxiety often form a destructive partnership in our lives.

Every one of us hears the voice of shame at some point.

It whispers we're failures, fundamentally flawed, unworthy of acceptance or belonging.

It taunts us with thoughts like, if only you were smarter, more attractive, thinner, better looking, more successful.

Shame cast its shadow, and anxiety follows as an unwelcome intruder asking, Will I ever be enough?

Is this how it will always be?

How does Jesus encounter us in the midst of our shame and anxiety?

And what hope does the gospel offer against the burden of shame that we all bear and carry?

I think Peter, one of Jesus' twelve disciples, he understood and experienced the weight of shame firsthand, like few of those early followers.

And it's in his story and his encounter with Jesus that we learn and see how Jesus wants to meet you and meet me and how he longs to bring healing and wholeness to our lives.

If you don't know, Peter was a fisherman.

He was a fisherman with his brother Andrew, and they had a wonderful, thriving, you know, family business.

They worked with their dad on the Sea of Galilee, and they partnered with James and John.

They're the sons of Zebedee.

So you had this family's working together, and they heard about this itinerant preacher named Jesus.

Um he was gaining in popularity.

He was his teachings were incredible, they were powerful, and then he was doing these miracles that were like, what is going on?

I mean, the amount of crowds that began to surround Jesus, it was like uh Coachella for the ancient day, you know.

It just was it was going off.

And one day Jesus is walking along the Sea of Galilee, he's got a crowd so thick behind him, he sees these empty fishing boats, and Peter and uh Andrew there are mending their nets, and he says, Hey, can I borrow one of those?

And they're like, sure, cast out a few yards.

I'm gonna teach.

And Jesus sits down and teaches for for a bit, and uh Peter's like, that's that was pretty good.

That was decent.

That's uh you're you're all that.

And then and then Peter has this encounter with Jesus that changed his life, the trajectory of his life, his what he would do for the rest of his life.

Uh Jesus looks at him and says, Hey, why why don't you um set your boat out into deep water and cast your nets?

And Peter had just finished a long, hard night's work.

He says, Lord, we fished all night, because that's when you fish, by the way.

Didn't want to remind you, but here I go again, uh, reminding you.

We fished all night and we caught nothing.

Translation Um, Jesus, you're a great teacher, but I'm a professional fisherman.

Let me do the fishing, you do the teaching.

He says, but because you say so, we'll cast out.

We'll we'll do what she said.

They set it out into deep water.

Many of you know the story.

They they cast their nets and they get such a load of fish.

Peter and Andrew aren't able to bring it in on their own.

They call to James and John, hey, come help us bring this uh you know load in.

They roll into shore.

Peter overwhelmed, now recognizing he's not in the presence of a mere mortal.

He's afraid, he gets down on his face, he's like, I'm a sinner.

Woe is me.

And Jesus looks at him and says, From this day forward, you'll no longer be a fisherman, but you'll be a fisher of men.

Come, follow me.

And that day, the day after the greatest catch of their life, they left their nets and their father and they followed Jesus.

It was three years or so.

Peter followed Jesus everywhere Jesus went.

He got to hear him teach.

He watched the blind get sight, the lame were healed, lepers were cleansed.

He even saw that the wind and the waves obeyed the very voice of Jesus.

And it was Peter.

It was Peter on that night when they're in the middle of the Sea of Galilee and the storm is raging, and they see what they thought was a ghost walking on the lake, and then it's Jesus saying, It is I.

He says, Lord, if it's really you, call me to you and I'll come to you.

And Jesus says, Come.

And it was Peter who stepped out of the boat and walked on water.

It was Peter who first acknowledged Jesus that he was not just a good man, but he was the Son of God.

When Jesus asked, Who do you say that I am?

And Peter says, You are the Christ, you're the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.

And it was Peter that Jesus said to, Upon this rock, I will build my church.

And then it was Peter.

On the night that Jesus was betrayed, as he's foretelling that the cross is ahead of him and that he would be taken into custody by the religious leaders and executed.

It was Peter that said, I'll never leave you.

I'm gonna be right by your side.

Even if I have to die, I'll never disown you.

And most of us know the story of Peter.

It was Peter who snuck in with a buddy into the temple court, or not in the temple courts, into the high priest outer courts of their house, hanging around as Jesus is being unjustly tried, trying to be incognito.

And uh a servant girl looks at him and says, Hey, you got a Galilean accent.

Aren't you one of Jesus' disciples?

He said, No, I'm not.

And then someone else says, Aren't you one of Jesus' disciples?

Certainly you're one of them.

No, I'm not.

And John tells us that it was a cold night, and they're sitting around and standing behind around the servants and the guards around what he calls a charcoal fire, and they're just warming themselves.

And yet again, for the third time, Peter's asked, Aren't you one of them?

And he says, I never knew the man.

And what we read, and what you'll notice, is Jesus is being tried, and Peter's in the temple courts, they can see one another.

And the minute Peter denied Jesus that third time, the rooster crow, Jesus had predicted, he said, You'll deny me, Peter, three times before the rooster crows, before morning comes, this very night.

The rooster crow.

Jesus in the distance turns and looks at Peter.

Peter looks at Jesus.

His friend, his rabbi, his lord.

When he needed him most, Peter fell short.

And the text says he went away.

And he wept bitterly.

He just wept.

And the wave of shame washed over him.

This was the defining moment of Peter's life, a core memory of the worst kind.

His life was building up to something.

He was on a new trajectory.

Jesus had called him to a new path.

And now he is a failure.

We all carry defining moments of failure, don't we?

Not measuring up.

Our failures have a way of casting a disproportionate shadow over our future.

Shame speaks loudly, doesn't it?

Who do you think you are?

You're worthless.

You're so dumb.

You couldn't even do one thing right.

You're a waste of space.

What were you thinking?

Now here's what's interesting.

What's interesting is what Peter did after the resurrection.

He denies Jesus.

The next day, his Lord and Savior's crucified.

And on Sunday, the greatest event of human history, Jesus rises from the dead.

But here's what's interesting: even after the resurrection, it seemed Peter no longer felt worthy to be a fisher of men, and so he returned back to being a fisherman.

Jesus is risen, Peter's back on the boat.

Peter saw the risen Jesus and concluded his failure had disqualified him.

And isn't that where many of us are?

How many times can I confess the same thing to Jesus?

How many times can I come back to him?

It's just embarrassing at this point, right?

I'm a screw up.

Even a good and loving God could never really want me anymore.

I want you to notice how Jesus encountered Peter in the midst of his pain and shame.

This is the hope the gospel offers us.

If you got your Bibles, would you open up to John chapter 21?

John 21 · chapter mention

John chapter 21, Peter returned to his trade.

John 21 · chapter mention

He's such a leader, by the way.

A few others followed him.

Verse 4, it says, Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize it was Jesus.

He called to them.

Now Peter is out fishing with James and John and a few others.

He called to them, friends, haven't you any fish?

And he asked it in the way that assumes no.

It's kind of like you ever walk by some fishermen and you realize their things empty, they haven't caught, but you still ask, anyways.

It's maybe the polite thing.

You're like, catch anything?

How's the fish?

No, they replied.

Sometimes I really question how good a fisherman they were.

They keep not catching fish.

And he said, verse 6, throw your net on the right side of the boat and you'll find some.

Oh, that was the problem.

Wrong side of the boat again.

How many times?

Cast it on the wrong side.

And they did it.

When they did, they were able to haul the net in because the large number of fish.

Then the disciple who Jesus loved, that's how, by the way, John speaks about himself, said to Peter, It is the Lord.

As soon as Simon Peter heard him say this, it's the Lord.

He wrapped his outer garment around him, for he had taken it off.

He jumped into the water.

The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they're not far from shore, about a hundred yards.

When they landed, they saw a fire burning with coals, there with it fish on it, and some bread.

Jesus says, Bring me some of the fish you've caught.

He says, Come have some breakfast.

They sit and they eat.

Verse 15, when they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?

Do you love me more than your fishing?

Do you love me more than your friends?

Do you love me more than the shame that you're carrying?

Yes, Lord.

He said, You know that I love you.

And feed my lambs.

Again, Jesus said, Simon, son of John, do you love me?

He answered, Yes, Lord.

You know that I love you.

Jesus said, Take care of my sheep.

A third time he said, Simon, son of John, do you love me?

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him a third time, Do you love me?

And he said, Lord, you know all things.

You know that I love you.

Jesus said, feed my sheep.

How does Jesus encounter us in the midst of our shame and anxiety?

What hope does the gospel offer us against the burden of shame we bear?

I want to suggest that how Peter encounters Jesus and how Jesus encounters Peter is exactly how Jesus wants to encounter you today.

There's three parts to this.

There's the catch, there's the charcoal, and then there's the questions.

This is how Jesus encounters Peter.

He meets him in this moment.

It's powerful, it's profound, and he wants to meet you today in this moment.

First thing I want you to just notice is the catch of fish.

And you'll remember, Jesus set this moment up, handcrafted this moment for Peter.

The catch of fish.

Peter assumes, God, you can never want me, you can never use me, I'm only good to go back to what I kind of know, what I can do, and I'm going back to the boat.

And before Jesus ever says a word to him, he wants to remind him of the day you first met me.

I want to take you back to that moment when you're sitting by the Sea of Galilee, and I called you out.

And I called you not to be a fisherman, but a fisher of men.

You see, shame tells us that our future is forever fractured, doesn't it?

Shame tells us that, oh, you're not good enough.

You'll never measure up.

Well, you had a future, but you screwed it up.

Wow, God had a calling on your life.

God, you you you had a purpose.

Maybe you had a vision, and well, look at where you've been and look at what you've done.

Just try to eek through, get through, be good and do your thing.

See, Jesus, he's so powerful.

He's letting Peter know that this moment carries the very same weight and significance as the very first moment.

Remember that moment when I called you to be a fisherman?

Remember when you left the nets behind to follow me?

Do you remember that?

I know circumstances have changed.

My calling hasn't changed on your life.

Jesus' call on your life is greater than Shame's voice over your life.

And I think for many of us, Jesus wants to take you back to the day you first met him.

Christian?

That's why we take communion, by the way, and at least one of the reasons.

That it would be this regular reminder of his grace and his love of the day you first met, the day when you were so far from him, the day that he covered all of your shame.

He took it all on himself.

He took all the weight of sin and pain, and you experienced his peace and his love and his joy and his life in you.

And he's gone.

I know you've wandered away.

I know you've gone your own way.

I I know that you feel like shame's voice is so loud, but my calling hasn't changed on you, child.

My calling hasn't changed.

I still love you, I'm still for you.

You're still invited in.

They catch a fish.

Jesus took Peter back to the day first meet.

And then the text, it says it does something kind of interesting.

The text is Jesus invites Peter to join him around, and it's John's very specific.

A charcoal fire.

The Greek word for charcoal fire is actually this word, you know, you'll find the word fire all throughout the New Testament and the Bible.

This word, charcoal fire, it's used twice in the entire New Testament.

John 21 5, here where Jesus invites him to sit down around the charcoal fire.

And John 18 18.

The place where Peter denied to Jesus.

See, the catch of fish, Jesus took Peter back to the day he first met, the charcoal fire.

Jesus took Peter back to the moment of his deepest regret.

A charcoal fire, by the way, would forever remind Peter of his failure.

He'd wake up in the morning, the rooster would crow, and somebody's getting the fire going, and every single morning he would wake up smacked in the face.

I'm a failure.

Shame has a way of reminding us constantly, doesn't it?

And for you, it might be a smell, it might be a song.

It might be the house you're living in.

The job you're working in.

Sometimes it's just looking in the mirror, isn't it?

It just takes us back.

And this is so important because Jesus doesn't ignore Peter's failure.

He doesn't say, let's pretend and act like this never happened.

What happened?

Yeah, see, it didn't happen.

Jesus, the great physician, longs to heal Peter.

Jesus brings Peter face to face with his failure, not to hurt him, but to heal him.

When I was in college, I went mountain biking with some buddies, and uh we were out several miles from the car.

Uh this is in Chicago, Illinois area, uh, outside of the city, obviously, where there's actually nature.

And so we're we're mountain biking and having a great day, and then we kind of came around the curve and we're going a little slow, and you ever just kind of like oh I kind of lost my balance a little bit?

Not too bad, but as we're coming, there's a tree.

I didn't look, and I just put my hand out just to hold myself up with the tree, but unfortunately the tree looked like this.

Yeah.

That's what how is there trees that look like this?

That have four-inch spiky thorns on them.

So I put my hand out, it goes straight into my hand, I get it lodged, it breaks off into my hand, and I'm like trying to pick at it, but obviously you can't get at it.

The only way back to the car is to ride back.

And so I'm kind of holding on to the blood's on, it's kind of getting a little slick, but the entire time as I'm riding, it's pushing about an inch thick of thorns left in my hand, deeper and deeper.

And so I get back to the um back to our dorm and I get some tweezers, I can't get it, it hurts so bad.

I call my brother like to ask him what to do, and he's like, you know, the body like rejects things naturally, just let it be and it'll it'll go away.

You'll I did.

I wake up the next morning, it had covered up.

And after a week, it kind of healed up, but I still had about an inch-long thorn in my hand.

You could feel it, you could see it.

There was this bump right here.

It hurt from time to time when I closed my hand the wrong way.

In class, I could just kind of mess with it, you know?

I could feel it right there.

I had this thorn in my hand well over a year.

And I guess maybe, I don't know exactly all the reasons why, but I guess maybe at one point in class I'm just sitting kind of, I mean, it's kind of funny, you have this thing stick in your hand, but it's covered up.

I just was messing with it.

And I must, it must have broken down to some extent.

All of a sudden it got infected.

And what was closed up became an open source.

And it got that, you know, deep infection, and then all of a sudden I began to have these red lines coming down.

We didn't have insurance at the time, had to go to urgent care.

I had this, I won't go into the grossness of the wind.

But we go to the doctor, and the doctor takes out his scalpel, and he numbs it as best he can.

He says, We gotta cut this out.

Because if it stays in you, if this infection and this, you know, rotting thing stays in you, it will kill you eventually.

And so he took out his scalpel and he cut into my hand, not to hurt me, but to heal me.

And he extracted that thorn out of my hand.

Jesus, the great physician with Peter in this moment, takes him to the place of his deepest regret, his greatest pain, not to hurt him, to heal him, invites him around the very same charcoal fire.

Not to shame him, but to bring healing.

And here's what shame does, doesn't it?

Shame always moves us into hiding.

Shame always moves us into hiding where we want to just ignore it, we want to push it away.

We're afraid if anybody really saw it, they wouldn't like us or want us.

It just kind of sits there and it's covered up and we kind of live and we exist.

We go, I guess this is just the way it is.

And Jesus says, no, no, no.

Let me first remind you of your call.

It hasn't changed, but I do want to take you to the place of your be your greatest pain, your biggest regret.

Because I want to do some surgery there.

I want to bring healing there.

And what we conceal, God cannot heal.

When we keep it like this, he's like, no, no, you gotta bring it out.

We gotta address this.

See, Jesus will rewrite your story of shame if you allow him to meet you in your deepest pain.

He longs to.

And so often we are just satisfied with you know what, it's kind of good enough.

It doesn't bother me that much right now.

It gets a little worse at times.

And Jesus says, Can I take that out of you?

Can I take that out of you?

The catch of fish, Jesus took Peter back to the day they first met.

The charcoal fire, Jesus took Peter back to his moment, his deepest regret.

He invited Peter to sit around the very same kind of fire where he denied him.

And he's inviting you and he's inviting me to do the same.

Where is your pain?

Where is your shame?

What is your charcoal fire?

Where you say, Okay, Jesus, I'm gonna sit with you.

Would you sit with me?

And we don't want to sit around the fire because we're afraid.

We're afraid of what Jesus will sound like.

What's he gonna say?

Is he gonna sound like my parents?

Is he gonna sound like my teacher or coach?

Is he gonna sound like an ex-spouse or boss or that inner critic?

Does he sound like me?

I want you to notice Jesus' response to Peter.

Three questions.

Jesus didn't reject Peter but lovingly restored him.

Three questions.

Peter disowned Jesus how many times?

Let's try that one more time.

Peter disowned Jesus how many times?

Three times.

And in this moment around the charcoal fire, three times, rewriting the story, bringing healing, so that no longer would this fire and would this moment and would that moment when he denied him be the defining moment of his life, but Jesus, the healer, and the moment in the presence with Jesus and his pain, and Jesus speaking into that would be the defining moment of his life.

Because Jesus speaks a better word.

And bringing healing.

Notice what Jesus does.

Three questions.

First, he says Simon's name, then he asks him a question, and then he gives him a new calling.

Simon's name, he says, Simon, son of John, Simon, son of John.

This is powerful, by the way.

Because you know what shame tells us?

Shame tells us you are unlovable, you're unredeemable.

And so it calls you a name.

Shame says you're not, you didn't just do something bad, you are bad.

You know what the name of shame says?

You're a loser, you're a failure, you're damaged good, you're not good enough, you're ugly.

You're a screw up.

Rejected, unwanted, unworthy.

That's the name that shame calls you.

Jesus starts, Simon, son of John.

Bobby in our alpha group this last week, as he was talking and closing out, he had this line.

He said, The enemy knows your name but calls you by your sin.

Jesus knows your sin but calls you by your name.

See?

Yeah.

Thank you, one of you.

Your name, you are beloved.

Your name, you are forgiven.

Your name, you are daughter and son of the most high God.

Your name, you're not unwanted, you're not unlovable.

Jesus knows it all, and he says, I want you, I love you, you're chosen.

This is your name.

The very first words that Peter or Jesus says to Peter isn't like, what's up, screw up?

Simon, son of John.

And then notice the question that he asked.

Do you love me?

Do you love me?

You know the question that some of us parents have been guilty to ask?

What were you thinking?

After all I did for you, how could you?

Again?

I get it one time, but after the third time, I like gave you a heads up on this thing, right?

Jesus' question is relational.

Shame do, shame moves us to hiding, right?

And they hid.

God's first question after Adam and Eve sinned wasn't, what did you do?

It was, where are you?

You moved.

You moved.

I miss you.

I want you back.

Do you love me?

Three times.

As if Jesus is erasing from Peter.

Each and every denial is shame and regret.

And then he says, Feed my sheep.

I love that by the way.

Because I'm sure Peter was expecting a demotion, right?

Upon this rock, you're going to build church.

You expect me to be the leader?

Jesus gives him a promotion.

And I think Jesus, even in his humor, he changed the metaphor.

When he first called him, he said, You're going to be a fisher of men.

But the problem was you might have got that confused and you went back to being a fisherman.

You're like, well, it's good enough.

You know, fishermen, fisher of men.

He's like, you know, let's just go the shepherding metaphor.

Because you know nothing about shepherding, you're a great fisherman.

Feed my sheep.

The promotion, I call myself the good shepherd, and I'm asking you to feed my sheep and shepherd my flock.

Instead of condemnation, he received a new calling.

See, Jesus gets the final word over your life, not shame or failure.

Jesus gets the final word.

Hebrews 12, 24 actually says, Jesus speaks a better word.

Not the word of condemnation.

But under Jesus, a new covenant.

By the sprinkling of his blood, he speaks a better word over you, his grace unending over you.

And so as we close, we're gonna take communion together.

We're gonna take a moment where I pray, would you just sit and be reminded of the very first time you met Jesus?

And then would you invite him in around your charcoal fire?

What's the weight and the pain, the heartache you've been carrying?

You need the voice of Jesus.

You need the great physician.

We're gonna sing a song where it says, I give it all to you, God.

Trusting you will make something beautiful out of me.

And I gotta be honest.

When we sang that, I just was in the first service, I just started to cry.

Because if I'm honest, there's so many times where I'm going, like, God, can you really make something beautiful out of me?

Can you?

Because I kind of feel like a failure a lot.

I kind of feel like I just mess up a ton.

Maybe that's where you walked in.

And Jesus' blood speaks a better word over your life.

Or you would confront the voice of shame that says, You don't have a future.

Or Jesus says, He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.

And so you're not done with me yet.

And so here I bring myself anew to you, trusting.

Not because I can do anything, trusting you.

You'll make something beautiful out of this.

And so would you worship?

Would you take communion?

And would you make that your prayer today?

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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