Let’s Talk About It – Shame Off You

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Bartow, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Well, today, today I want to talk about one of the things you ask about.

In fact, every time we do a survey, people ask questions along these lines because I know that there's parts of our lives that just get so unbelievably heavy.

Here's the kind of questions we hear from people all the time.

What do I do with my shame?

That's tough.

Here's one.

How can I forgive what I can't forget?

Like when someone's hurt you, betrayed you, abused you, how do you how do you forgive that?

How do you do that?

Here's one more that people ask all the time.

It's how do I move past my past?

Like I keep stumbling over my yesterdays and tripping into my tomorrows.

How do I do that?

So let's talk about it.

Every summer, one of the things I do is I love taking time with my family.

So every summer my family takes a big family vacation.

We we look forward to it every year.

And then every year I take my daughter on a daddy-daughter trip, and it's always fun.

We usually spend all the money on all the skincare products any person could ever want or need.

But that's what we do.

And then I take my boys on an adventure.

Now, this is fun.

It started many years ago when my boys were really little.

My wife had to go away for a couple days, and she said she was leaving.

So I said to the boys, if she's leaving, we're leaving, we're gonna go have a vacation just for the men.

And we named it mancation.

And every year we take two, three, four days and we just go do dumb stuff.

We jump off of things, jump into things, swim in things, white water rafting things.

We literally one time jumped off of a mountain.

That was crazy.

Like we just do fun, dumb things together.

And for years it started small.

It was like a day trip to the beach, and that was fun.

And then one year we went to the Nickelodeon Hotel, which it's sad that it closed.

R.I.P., that place was awesome.

You were gonna have a good time and a strong chance of catching a communicable disease, but it was awesome.

Had a great time there.

And we love it.

Well, one year, seven or eight years ago, a church in Calgary, Canada called me and they invited me to come up and preach.

And I said, Well, sure, I'd love to come.

And they said, When you're here, you should visit Banth.

Now I had never heard of Banth before, and so I looked it up.

It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

I believe it's one of the most photographed places in all of North America, second only to the Grand Canyon, and there's a reason, it is breathtaking.

And so I flew up and I preached at this church, and then I brought my boys with me because it was Memorial Day weekend and they had just gotten out of school, and I said, this year we are going Man Cation next level.

We're going to Canada.

We we literally for three days renamed it Manada, everybody, and um, because we're dumb.

Okay, so here's pictures of me and my boys there, and it was incredible, unbelievable, beautiful.

If you're from Florida, these are mountains, everybody.

And um, even though it was scorching hot here in Florida, there was still ice and snow, there was ice on the water.

We had the best time.

This next picture is in a city that's on the way to Banff.

Here's the next one, and it it honestly didn't even feel real.

It felt like we were staring at a painting.

We had the best time, and we just did all kinds of adventure stuff together.

But before we went to Banff, I flew in on a Friday night, and on Saturday morning, our body clocks were not adjusted to the time change.

So my boys and I got up early and we wanted to explore the city of Calgary.

And so we we drove around and we found this thing.

This is called the Calgary Tower.

It's very similar to the Space Needle in Seattle.

And so we bought tickets, but we were there before it even opened, and nobody else was there.

And so it was really fun.

For just a few minutes, my boys and I had this whole place to ourselves, and so you go up this huge elevator all the way to the top, and in this beautiful panoramic view of the city of Calgary, and it was unbelievable.

Um, one of the funny things there is there's a big section of glass that's underneath you.

And so I took and I posted this picture, and people freaked out over my post of this.

People were like, nope, no chance, no shot, no way I'm ever doing that, ever, never, never, never.

Okay, I got that.

And so it was fun.

And for a little while, my boys and I had the full run of the place.

My boys were literally running in circles around, racing each other.

It was just fun because we had it all to ourselves.

Well, then after like 15 or 20 minutes, you've seen everything there is to see.

And so we were gonna leave, and I said, Boys, let's play a dumb man game, right?

Let's play a game.

So we're gonna stand in front of the elevator, and you gotta do something silly.

And when the elevator opens, if there's someone in there, it'll be embarrassing.

If there's not, you escape.

And I said, Since it's my idea, I'll go first.

I stood at the elevator and I made a silly face, and the doors opened and no one was in there, and so I escaped.

Well, then Joey steps up and he does something silly, and the door's open and no one's in there, and he escaped.

And then Gavin goes and stands at the elevator, and he starts doing something silly, probably inappropriate because it was a man cation, and he's being dumb, and all of a sudden the elevator makes that ding sound, and the doors open, and as it starts to open, Gavin goes, nope, nope, nope, and he took off running the other direction.

I kid you not, the doors open, and all these sweet old ladies come piling out of the elevator like a like a clown car.

They've all got their cameras and they're taking pictures of everything.

And Gavin's eyes were the size of the state of Texas, his skin was white as a ghost, and we get in the elevator together, and I started messing with them.

I was like, Gavin, you wuss.

What are you doing?

Why didn't you do this?

And he goes, Dad, dad, I couldn't do it.

He couldn't do it.

He said these words, he said, Dad would have ruined my life forever.

He said that I would never forget that moment.

Isn't that funny how our lives tend to work?

Like your life can be awesome, amazing, and perfect.

Everything can be good and golden, your life can be great, but sometimes when we fall asleep or when we wake up early, we don't think about our best moments, we think about our worst moments.

You ever notice this?

It's like it could be 20 years ago, but you can wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat going, because you're just startled and you remember that moment of embarrassment or condemnation, or or here's the word for today, that moment of shame.

Last football season I was watching a football game, and uh, whoever the player was, it was a college football game, he went out for a pass and he was wide open in the end zone.

He was he was so open that I bet you 99 out of a hundred times he would have caught the ball easily and scored a touchdown.

But on this time the ball came to him and he turned at the last second and he dropped the ball.

Within 30 seconds, I went to Twitter and I searched the man's name, and there were hundreds of posts of people saying, What a loser, what an idiot.

But the post I remember was one person said, When he's 75 years old, he'll still be thinking about this moment.

It's like we were never intended to live carrying the weight of shame.

Now I want you to see this.

From the very beginning of time, it was God's intention that you and I wouldn't live with, carrying the weight of our worst moments, the weight of shame.

We wouldn't carry it.

In fact, think about this.

Genesis chapter 1, verse 1 says, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:1

The Hebrew phrase here is the word ex niho, which literally means from nothing God speaks, and out of nothing comes something, and God created the world.

And this is so cool to me.

Like, God creates everything.

I said this several times, it still blows my mind.

Scientists say that God created more planets and stars than there are grains of sand on earth.

Can you can you even get your head around that?

Like go to the beach and pick up a big old two-handful of sand.

I would think that there would be more grains of sand in my hand than out in the universe.

Think about the Sahara Desert and all the sand there.

All of that screams of the strength and the majesty and the power of our God.

He makes all of it.

And at the end of his creation, God pushes some dirt together and breathes into the nostrils the breath of life, and he created man, and then from the side of man, later he creates woman to be a helper to him.

And then there's this interesting thing.

God places Adam and Eve in this place called the Garden of Eden.

I don't know if you ever stopped to think about this, but Eden is a Hebrew word, and Eden means pleasure.

Okay, I want you to think about this.

When you think of God, what picture comes to your mind?

Because if he is an angry old man with a white beard who's just zapping people for having fun, you have a wrong picture of God.

God creates humanity to be with them, to spend time in his presence, and he places them in a place called the garden of pleasure.

God wanted them to have fun, he wanted their life to be a delight.

And then at the end of Genesis chapter 2, there's this really interesting detail.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

You can read right over it and you can miss all of it.

Genesis 2, verse 25 says this.

Genesis 2:25

It says, Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.

I want you to think about this for a moment.

In this beautiful garden, the garden of pleasure, the garden of Eden.

And God, when when He makes them, there's just this little detail.

It feels unnecessary even to the story, says they were naked, and naked means they didn't have clothes on, but it also means something figurative.

It means that there was nothing about them that wasn't known.

They were fully vulnerable, fully transparent.

Every detail of them was known to the other.

There was no secrets between them.

And in spite of that, they felt no shame.

Here's the thing: you need to understand that God's picture of a perfect place, a place of paradise, like the Garden of Eden, is a place where you and I can live shame free, unburdened by the weight of shame, not feeling the condemnation of this life that so many people live their lives tripping over day after day after day.

God's picture of paradise is a place where there is no shame.

Here's the thing all of us deal with shame at some point or another in our lives, don't we?

It's that moment we messed up, it's that moment we failed, it's that moment of embarrassment.

But also shame comes from things not just that we did, but shame can cause from come from people who hurt us or abused us or walked out on us.

You can commit your life to someone and they can leave you, you can commit your heart to someone and they can betray you.

All of us have some shame that we did or that someone else did.

And here's the thing about shame shame will always cause you to hide.

That's what shame does.

Shame causes you to live a life that backs up into the backdrop of obscurity because you think to yourself, if you really knew the real me, if you knew all my secrets and all my shame, if you really knew me, you couldn't possibly love me.

But here's what I want you to understand you can only be loved to the extent that you are known.

It's funny because so many of us we want to be loved, but what we really want is we want to hide.

We want to love, but we really don't want you to know all of me.

Think about dating.

First dates, it's all a game, it's all hiding, it's just like letting know how how much can I tell you, how much of me is really uh appropriate for me to share.

This is how we live our lives.

Come on, you know this is true.

Some of you came to church today and you fought the whole way to church, and you walked in and someone greeted you on your way in today, and they said, How are you?

Said, I'm good, brother, I'm good.

And nothing in you is good because you don't want people to know the real you.

Here's the thing I want you to understand about shame.

I want you to hear this.

Shame never comes from God.

You need to hear me on this.

Shame never comes from God.

The funny thing is, many of us live with shame as like the soundtrack to our lives.

Think about a great movie for just a moment.

Every great movie has a great soundtrack.

It's the music that underscores the beauty of the film.

Your life and my life also live with the soundtrack, and if you're not careful, shame will be the soundtrack of your life, which means everywhere you go, every conversation you have, every interaction you have with someone else will be littered with or overdubbed by shame.

And if shame was never God's intention, then let's let's try to define it for just a moment so you can know what you're dealing with here.

I I think shame is one of the great tools the enemy uses to distract Christians.

And a lot of us, we confuse the word shame with another word, and it's a similar word, it's the word guilt.

And I want you to hear this guilt and shame, they're similar, but they're not exactly the same.

Guilt is what I would call a positional word.

Shame is an emotional word.

Guilt is positional, shame is emotional.

Here's what I mean by that.

If you committed some sort of a crime and you got arrested, and you stood before a judge and he says, You are guilty, that is a positional term.

You have now been declared guilty by the law, right?

Guilt is based on something you did.

Shame is the feeling, it's the emotional response to the guilt that you carry.

So here's a good way to explain it.

Guilt says I deserve to be punished.

Shame says I am worthless.

Guilt says I did bad, but shame takes it farther and says I am bad.

It's kind of like this.

It's like guilt is what we feel in our minds.

And if we're not careful, that guilt will take an 18-inch journey from our minds to our hearts, and it has this way of ruining our lives.

So much so.

There's some studies done a couple years ago by an organization called Lifeway Publishing.

Here's two questions they ask of thousands of people.

The first one is this Which of these feelings do you seek to avoid the most?

Shame, guilt, and fear.

Overwhelmingly, shame and guilt were like number one and two, crushing fear.

Here's another question they ask which of these desires is strongest in your life?

Is it personal freedom to overcome or to have respect?

And overwhelmingly, people want to walk in freedom.

Why?

Because if you are not careful, you will live a shell of a life and never step into the divine destiny God has for you.

Shame has this way of abusing you, marring your soul, and causing you to live a life far less than the life you were created.

So here's what I want to do.

I want to take you back to the story, to the verse we just read a moment ago.

And here's important detail.

This verse we just read about Adam and Eve being naked and feeling no shame, it's the very end of Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

And I want you to see what happens in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Here's Genesis 2.25.

Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.

Literally, the next verse is Genesis 3, verse 1, it says this.

Genesis 3:1

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.

And he said to the woman, and here's the first question in the Bible.

Doesn't come from God, it comes from Satan.

First question is, did God really say?

I want you to think about this, did God really say, You must not eat from any tree in the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.

And look how Satan responds.

He says, You will certainly not die, the serpent said to the woman, and here's why, for God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Satan takes the words of God and he twists it around.

And it says, When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and she ate it.

And all of a sudden sin enters the story, and with sin always comes shame.

So then it goes on and says, So she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

Then the eyes of both of them were open, and they realized they were naked.

Here's another way to say it.

They eat and disobey God's rules, and shame enters their story.

And so, what does shame do?

What does shame do to you, and what does shame do to me?

It says, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Why?

Because you you can't really hide your emotional shame, but you can hide your physical nakedness.

So all of a sudden their eyes were open to this and they felt shame, and shame causes us to hide.

So they they make some sort of ancient version of clothes out of fig leaves for themselves.

It says, Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.

Something that had been happening with them since God made them.

He was with them and spent time with them, walking with them, and look what they did.

And they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

I want you to see God's question.

The Lord God called to the man, Where are you?

Here's a question.

Do you think God was confused as to where they were?

He's, you know, God.

Like he knows everything.

Was he confused?

Hold on to that.

Next verse is this.

He answered, I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked.

So I hid.

And here's God's second question in the Bible.

And he, God, said, Who told you that you were naked?

Like who let you in on the secret?

Up until this point, it's been all pleasure and delight.

It's been all fun and there's been no shame.

Who introduced shame to your story?

Who told you you were naked?

He says, Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?

And look what we do.

This is this is from the beginning of time.

This just didn't happen on social media.

It's been happening since the very beginning of the Bible.

He goes, The man said, It wasn't me.

The woman you put here with me doesn't even call her by name.

It's the woman, not my fault, it's the woman's fault.

She gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.

Then the Lord said to the woman, What is this you have done?

And the woman continues the blame game, and she said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.

Shame always mars our soul.

It always causes us to hide, and it causes us to try to pass the buck to someone else.

And here's why.

If we can get the attention off of us, maybe we won't feel as bad about our own shame and insecurity.

In the verses we read in Genesis chapter 3, there's the first three questions of the Bible.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

I'd like to look at those three questions because if you can wrestle these to the ground, I think you can walk out of here today ringing the bell of freedom.

And I think that maybe somebody who came today, overrun and overwhelmed with shame, can walk out feeling free.

Here's the three questions of shame.

Number one is this.

Remember, Satan shows up to Eve and he asks her, Did God did He really say that?

This is a really good question, and here's why.

This is, I believe, one of the questions the enemy of your soul will use to trick you or to distract you.

In fact, we we live in a culture that is moved away from believing that there is an ultimate or absolute truth.

We've moved away from a culture that believes there is one authority, and what we've done is we say that I know what God's word says, but I think.

Alright, I love you.

Hope you came to church with your big boy pants on for just a moment, because here's why.

When you say that, do you know the what you're actually saying?

You're saying, I somehow know better than the all-powerful, omniscient God of the universe.

That's a pretty hard line to take.

I know what God's word says about, and fill in the blank with your topic.

And here's the thing feels like every generation the target moves.

In my parents' generation, it was divorce.

It was like divorce was the thing, and churches shied away from talking about it, and people dealt with it, and they would say things like, I know what God's word says about divorce, but uh I'm gonna do my own thing.

In our generation, it's gotten even messier, and here's what's happened, and I'm gonna get political for just a second.

What's happened is issues that are spiritual issues, these are not political issues, have gotten political, and what I mean by that is politics have merged into the church's lane, and they're trying to define for the world what God's word already defined thousands of years ago.

So we talk about issues that are hot button issues, and people get all upset about it.

Issues like abortion or or homosexuality, gay marriage.

Well, we'll talk about issues like gender and identity, and all of these things, in my loving, humble opinion, are spiritual and profoundly theological issues, and the government and politics is merged into our lane, and we need to say, hold up, hold up, hold up.

Listen, I know what you're saying, but God's word already spoke on it.

But this is important for you to hear.

Here's why.

Many of us have an opinion, but if your opinion doesn't line up with God's opinion, I've got good news for you.

Your opinion doesn't matter, it doesn't.

And here's the thing it's really hard to go to the Bible, the authority, the word of God, looking for what God says when you've already determined what you want it to say.

Okay, so if you go to college to study preaching and writing a sermon, there's a term that we use called exegesis.

Exegesis is when we go to the Bible and we excavate out of the Bible the truth that we are to apply.

There's another term that's kind of the opposite of that.

The term is eegesis.

And eisegesis is when we go to the Bible looking for information.

To show us what we want it to say.

So if you pay attention to politics, let me just get here for one minute.

On both sides of the aisle, Republican and Democrat, they will use the Bible, take verses out of context, and twist it to fit their own agendas.

At the end of the day, you need to know what God's Word says.

At the end of the day, you need to make this decision.

My life is fully and completely submitted to what the Word of God says.

And sure I have an opinion and maybe I think differently, but at the end of the day, my opinion doesn't matter because it's God's voice that is the final voice in my life.

It's a big deal.

Let me say it one more time.

And it's really hard, really, really difficult to trust God's voice when you've already determined what you expect Him to say.

Second thing you need to know, second question of shame is this Where are you?

Remember Adam and Eve, they sinned and all of a sudden they're like, yeah, we're naked, and they they sewed some clothes together and they went and they hid.

And it says that God is looking for them, but let me just be really clear.

God wasn't confused about where they were.

It's important for you to hear.

He's God.

One of the attributes of God, this is important, is God is omniscient.

Omni means all and shouldn't is like science.

God, he's like all-knowing.

He knows everything about how everything works.

God knows all of it.

Adam and Eve are hiding, and the omniscient God of the universe isn't confused.

It's not like they picked that perfect spot that God couldn't find them.

God's not asking, where are you hiding?

He's asking, where is the you that I created you to be?

Where is that one?

Like, where's the you that existed before shame got in and marred your solo?

Where's the real you?

Let me ask you that question.

What were you like?

What was your heart like before shame got in and mucked the whole thing up for you?

Where's the you that God created you to be?

And here's the third question that God asked.

God says, okay, who told you that you were naked?

Who did this to you?

Was it your decision?

Was it some lie or deceit that you fell into?

Did you make a decision intentionally to disobey God?

Or here's a reality for a lot of people: their shame isn't even in something they did, but something that was done to them some years ago, probably over a decade ago.

Had a man asked to come meet with me.

He he walks into my office.

I have no idea what he wants to talk about.

And this dude walks in and he is like a tank.

Like when he walks in, his muscles have muscles.

He was so jacked, right?

So jacked.

If I looked like that dude, I would never wear a shirt, everybody.

He was jackjack, right?

Veins popping up out of places.

This huge masculine man sits down in front of me, and we just make pleasantries and small talk, and I say, okay, so what did you want to talk about?

And this man burst into tears.

What's going on?

He said, fifty years ago, my uncle sexually assaulted me.

And for 50 years I've carried that secret and told nobody.

This guy who was so strong physically, emotionally, so broken, so weak and so vulnerable.

This is what shame does to us.

And here's the thing: if you start living a life where you filter all of your thoughts through the filter of shame, some stuff's gonna change in you.

It's like this, it's like we we are vulnerable to perfectionism because we think if I'm not perfect, people will judge me and I don't want them to see the real me.

We we are critical of ourselves, and then that makes us critical of others.

Here's one more.

We we use self-defeating thoughts as a form of protection and escape.

And if any of these feel like you, I love you, and I've dealt with these too.

I just need you to know these are the symptoms of shame.

But I need you to understand what I said earlier shame never comes from God.

It was never his intention that you live in shame.

In fact, Isaiah chapter 53, there's this beautiful passage where the prophet Isaiah, some seven to seven hundred and fifty years before Jesus lived, the prophet Isaiah, he prophesied that this Messiah, Jesus, would come, and he would give his life to pay for the sins of the world.

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

But he adds this little phrase in the sins and shame of the world.

Then Isaiah 54, he goes on and he says, He says, So fear not, you will no longer live in shame.

Do not be afraid, there is no more disgrace for you.

You will no longer remember the shame of your youth.

Okay, let me try to explain it to you like this.

When a person makes a decision to follow Jesus, if you've ever prayed that prayer and said, Jesus, save me, forgive me, change my life.

If you've ever done that, here's what you're receiving, okay?

When Jesus died on the cross, it wasn't just him dying for himself.

He laid his life down to pay the price for the sins of the world.

So every sin you've ever committed, every wrong thought, impure thought, every thought you've had that was anything other than of God, he paid for that.

Like this, the sin is paid for.

But also the shame is paid for.

I want you to get this.

One of the things that's uh awkward sometimes as a church is we really do love you and we really do want the best for you.

Like we really do want you to walk in freedom.

I love you so much that I never want you to live another day, literally carrying the weight of your regrets and your shame.

So sometimes we'll get up and say things like, Well, you you need to get into a group because groups are gonna change your life.

Or you need to get baptized.

Can I tell you why we do these things?

Here's why.

Because so many of us we carry our shame all by ourselves.

We're like the man who confessed after 50 years something that he didn't even do wrong, but had literally robbed his joy for 50 years.

And we do this.

Why do you need this?

Because you you need some people in your life that you love and trust.

That you can take your shame and you can bring it into the light with them.

You need some people in your life who know you, who know your worst moments, and who say, I know you and I love you.

Remember, you can only be loved to the extent you're known.

Some of you are just like walking through this life completely unknown, which means you're you're not experiencing the love you were created for.

Here's one other thing I think you need to do.

Every other month, we celebrate with dozens of people who go public with their faith through baptism.

What is baptism?

It's a public declaration of a personal decision to follow Jesus, right?

That's a it's a big deal.

But can I show you a picture of what it is?

When we take a person and we immerse them in water, what we're saying is their former sinful life is dead, buried, and gone.

So what does it mean?

All the stuff that keeps you up at night, all the mistakes you made that haunt you, all the things that were done to you that have been wrecking and ruining your soul, they're buried and they're gone.

The reason a person comes out of the water and throws their hands up is I believe something supernatural and spiritual happens.

When you make the decision to follow Jesus, he saves you, but that baptism is a public funeral for your past.

All of your shame is buried in it.

So let me say this to you.

Next Sunday's baptism Sunday.

And if you're here and you haven't had a meaningful baptism experience since you made the decision to follow Jesus, stop playing.

If your life feels overrun by shame and you're like, I don't know how to get rid of this, and you haven't been baptized since you believed, it's time to stop playing games.

And I don't want something from you, I want this for you.

Why do we ask you to do these things?

Why do I want you in a group or leading a group?

Why do I want you to go public with your faith and to have a public funeral for your former self?

Here's why.

The only way to heal from shame is to move the focus from what I'm not to who Jesus is.

I've got to get the focus off of me and my regrets and my shame and my condemnation, because that's not what God's even about.

He's never been about shame.

The most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal or everlasting life.

John 3:16

Verse 17 is not as popular, but it should be.

It says this, it says, For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved.

Okay, so if God isn't condemning you, if shame never comes from God, and if we are to bury and have a funeral for our shame, then why would you carry it?

Here's what I want you to do.

Here's my practical advice: three things.

Number one, I need you to drag it out of the darkness into the light.

I need you to find somebody.

Don't tell everybody, don't post this on your social media, don't be that weirdo, don't do that, okay?

Not everybody needs to know, but somebody does so that you can feel full love.

Second thing is I think you need to have a funeral.

And if you haven't been baptized since you believed, I need I need you to put that shame to death.

Let's have let's have a few thousand of our best friends celebrate the fact that your sinful past, your shame, is dead, buried, and gone.

When Jesus died on the cross, he died for your sin and your shame.

Here's one more thing, though.

The most important thing.

You gotta take it to Jesus.

First John says it like this.

If we confess, this word confess means like with confess, our words.

If we use our words and tell God our sins, this word is flexible.

This means the sins that you've done and the sins that have been committed against you.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and he's gonna do what?

He's gonna forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

I love these words.

He he forgives.

It's no longer being held or counted against you, you're no longer guilty in the eyes of the eternal courts of heaven.

You're forgiven, and then you're purified.

I love this word because to purify is to return something to the state it was before.

It's like if your heart has been broken or marred by shame, look at me.

He wants to purify it, which means to return it to what it was intended to be.

So here's how I want to end today.

I want you to take a moment, I want you to audit your soul.

Where are the areas in your life where you feel unworthy, unlovable, unknown, uncared for, unseen?

And I want to ask you a question is shame marred your soul, and if that's the case, here's the homework at the bottom of your notes.

There's this fill in the blank, and I don't have the answer, but you do.

You might say, I am not something, but because of Christ, I am.

I'll give you an example.

Shame might have caused you to feel like you are no longer worthy of love.

I am not loved or lovable, but because of Christ, I am fully loved.

You may feel like I am not worthy to receive his grace.

Because of Christ, I am so worthy, I am so blessed.

I get to walk in the blessing of God.

I want you to take a moment, I want you to think about that.

And if shame has marred your story, we're gonna let go of shame and we're gonna take hold of the life God has for us.

I'm gonna ask you all across this place and at all of our locations, would you bow your head and close your eyes for just a moment?

This moment's between you and God.

If you're able to not walk around or move for just a moment, just stay where you are.

I think some people are gonna get set free from some shame right now.

So, God, in this place, we we choose to live open-handed.

We choose to let go of shame that has robbed us, hurt us, marred our souls.

God, forgive us if we've let shame become the soundtrack of our lives.

God, we we make this decision and this declaration.

Your word is the final word.

And you say that we are forgiven, so we choose to receive your forgiveness.

We choose to let go of the shame of our past so we can step into tomorrow in total freedom.

God, I thank you that you love us so much that you never wanted us to live one moment of our life where our hearts felt overrun by shame.

Thank you, the shame is never from you, so we give it up.

We just let it go and we walk out today a completely different person.

We thank you for it, God, in Jesus' name.

With your head still bowed and eyes still closed at all of our locations.

Maybe you came to church today not knowing if you're right with God.

Maybe that means you've never made a decision to follow Jesus, or maybe you just feel like you've walked away from your relationship with God.

And in either case, today, if you want to start or restart that decision to follow Jesus, to let Him save you and forgive you and change you, would you just raise your hand right now if this is you?

Come on, it's awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome.

I love this, I love this, I love this, I love this.

Come on, at all locations, if it's you, just raise your hand.

And here's what I'm gonna ask you to do.

I'm gonna pray a prayer out loud.

And if it's you, I want you to pray it out loud after me.

And here's the thing you're surrounded by so many people who love you that I'm gonna ask everybody at all locations, let's pray this prayer together out loud and let's lend our faith and let's lend our support to those who are making this decision.

If this is you, hear me on this.

Praying a prayer changes everything when you mean it with your heart.

So I want everyone to pray this out loud with me today.

Come on, everybody say, Jesus, I give you my life.

Save me, change me, make my heart new.

Jesus, I confess I'm a sinner in need of your grace.

From this day forward, I choose to follow you.

Jesus, you gave your life for me.

Now I give my life to you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Come on, church, let's celebrate those who just made that decision.