Ashamed to Be Loved

Zephaniah 3:10-12, “From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia My worshipers, My dispersed ones, will bring My offerings. In that day you will feel no shame because of all your deeds by which you have rebelled against Me; for then I will remove from your midst your proud, exulting ones, and you will never be haughty on My holy mountain. But I will leave among you a humble and lowly people, and they will take refuge in the name of the Lord.”

I long for the day that I “feel no shame.” In my mind and in my spirit I know that that day should be today as “there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom 8:1) But still I feel to a degree that shame and condemnation. Today’s short comings, today’s failures do nothing more to solidify that shame and condemnation. Somehow it seems so difficult to own the freedom of forgiveness in Christ. And not just for me.

At Iwo Jima the other day my friend George was engaging in some almost self-destructive conversation. In many ways he was asking the group to disown him. When asked by Jim Spivey what the real truth was he said tearfully, “When I feel people loving me I feel shame.”

Complete and total empathy flooded me in that statement. Past relationship flashed in my mind and how they were born out of this shame of being loved. Enduring the unhealthiest of relationships was feed by a deep feeling of being unlovable. Perhaps that is the root of my mysterious attraction to and interactions with the unlovable. Somehow in seeing them as unlovable I identify with that in myself.  And that shame is not limited to people. That shame extends too often into my relationship with God. I love Him for sure, and I know that He loves me, but the shame of being loved in such an unlovable state limits the relationship. I limits what I will accept from Him in the form of love.

Paul, another Iwo Jima'r, commented to George’s confession that being unworthy of the love is what makes it love to begin with. And that certainly is true. Being unworthy sure is what makes God’s love unconditional at the least.

This is going to sound crazy but I am so thankful for the shame. I am thankful because until George articulated the feeling, for me it only existed subconsciously. But now I am conscious. Now the dross has been brought to the surface and it can be scraped from my relationship with God. I am unworthy of God’s love and that is precisely why He loves me. To know this, and to not act on it—to accept both the unworthiness and the love… this attitude is what will just leave me humble and lowly, taking refuge in the Lord. 

Shame

"Eve After the Fall"

2 Timothy 1:12 "For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day."

This blog has the theme of shameless surrender in hopes that we might know Christ more. To this point there has been a great deal of focus on surrender. This post however is going to take a look at shameless... the absence of shame.

What is shame? It certainly is an emotion. Perhaps it is an affect of someone's actions or reactions. It can be a cognition, or mental process that a person can be conscious of or not. There certainly can be an unconscious response to shame, or at least an attempt to forgo it. But really shame can be summed up in its original origins of "to cover." Shame caused Adam and Eve to hide their nakedness. Shame causes us to hide and cover up perhaps the majority of who we really are.

Shame works bi-directional. Shame is avoided, sometimes at all cost, from men - - from experiencing it with our peers. The problem is that as we hide behind the false coverings crafted in words and deviously intended deeds, we simultaneously create a reason to be shameful when presented with God. Do we be honest with man, or God?

Shameless, as inspired by the Holy Spirit and as part of "shameless surrender," is that there be NO SHAME... shameless before man and God.

I heard something on the radio this morning. They were discussing social networking and how people have become very open because of Facebook, twitter, and the likes. We know who you are in relationship with, your sexual orientation, what you had for breakfast, and so on. But what is the one thing NO ONE talks about?

Think about it....

I know many are thinking something spiritual. And it is spiritual in what it reveals. But what I am thinking of is that no one talks about how much money they make.

For the record... I have made slightly less than $28,000 in 2011. I am not ashamed of that today. Last week, I would be very ashamed having made more than 20 times that in years gone by. But the point is for the bulk of us, perhaps even all of us... our god that we do not want to bring shame to is money. The god of money, the god of credit score, the god of financial reputation.

At the end of the day it does not matter how much I make. What matters is did I earn it in obedience to God. It would not matter if I made 28 million if I did it obeying God. There is only one place of shameless living. And that is in obedience to God.

I am not ashamed of where I live, what I do, what I wear. I am not ashamed if God has blessed me with riches, and I am not ashamed if I go bankrupt a thousand times obeying the Lord. I am not ashamed my waistline is bigger than my chest. I am not ashamed that my back is hairier than my head.:-)

I am not ashamed of the gospel, for IT IS THE POWER of God for salvation to everyone who believes. I am not ashamed of being overwhelmed in the presence of God to the point of tears, or being unable to stand. I am not ashamed to comfort the downtrodden. I am not ashamed... I am not ashamed...

I am shameless!

Effervescent

Matthew 13:33, "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven.."

Whoa... hold on a minute Jesus, I thought leaven was compared to the teachings of the Pharisees. I thought that the bread of communion was unleavened to represent Your sinless nature, and therefore sin is leaven. How can the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, be like leaven?

(For those who do not know. The kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven are largely interchangeable. This is because authors like Matthew follow the tradition of not speaking the name of "God." Therefore they substituted heaven in the place of YWHA, or God.)

Leaven in modern terms is the result of yeast being active in something like bread. In the context of the kingdom of God being like leaven, Jesus is saying the kingdom of God is like yeast.

Here is where it gets interesting.

Yeast is a living fungous substance. When added to dough the living organism begins to comsume the dough as well as multiply. The resulting by product is a gas that causes the bread to rise and become fluffy. Likewise when yeast is added to fruit juices it again begins to multiply. It also consumes the sugars and as a waste product secretes alcohol.

As a result of this leaven, juice becomes wine, and in the process gives off gases. These gases, if not released or contained in a flexible "new wine skin" can cause the vessel to burst during fermentation. We do not see the gas of wine, but we all can relate to the gas that is released from a bottle of champagne. Champagne is nothing more than wine that has undergone a second fermentation where the gas is not allowed to escape.

The result is that when a bottle of champagne is opened and poured, the bubbling experience is effervescence Effervescence is the escape of gas from an aqueous solution and the foaming or fizzing that results from the release of the gas.

With me so far?

The kingdom of God is an effervescent life within a life. It is a living, growing thing inside our very soul. It is producing a cleansing gas, that from time to time will result in a spiritual burb. Expelling the gas, expelling the waste byproduct is necessary as the kingdom of God expands. As it converts what is in its way to itself, the waste must go.

I know this, because it is what I experienced with 12 or 13 living examples of Christ at love machine. With all hell breaking loose around me, with what feels like life hanging in the balance, God chose today for me to burb up some shame.

How fitting that this blog's theme is shameless surrender. How characteristically God that in a season where hell itself seems to be on a personal vendetta against me, that God would have me pause in the pressure to release some gas. I laugh because there is a condition that divers can experience under extreme pressure called the bends. If they come up too quickly without the gas buildup in their blood being released they will experience extreme pain and even death. Today for me was a decompression. Today's painful burb is preventative to spiritual bends tomorrow.

Even now I hear some of you asking how.  How did you have a spiritual burb? To that, I have no answer other than God is just God. The specifics however were a release of shame. Shame of failure. Shame of not being a better person. Shame of not being smarter. Shame of not thinking the right thing, of not treating people with perfect love. Primarily I feel shame because I don't believe my life reflects Christ completely. I feel shame because I don't think my heavenly Father is proud of me. None of which is true... but all of it needed to come bubbling up. It is the effervescent life of God inside my very soul that surgically brought all of the shame to the surface so that it could be removed.  These lies were buried in my soul. They were affecting my actions and my obedience. Fear of shame was causing ungodly reactions to normal pressures.

The fathoms of the issue are irrelevant. What is relevant is that we need not resist God's effervescence. We need not push down those feelings that rise to the top. New wine skins, a born again soul... expand as needed, but they are also porous allowing the gas to escape. Expand with the Holy Spirit but let the CO2 off. There is no life in it. Let God breath into you, and as necessary exhale the crap, the lies, the barriers, the walls, the myths, the teachings, everything that exalts itself against God. Allow the leaven that is the kingdom of God leaven your entire soul.

And if you want to see this practically applied. If you want to learn to exhale, contact me and I will put in touch with someone to help you in the process.