So to walk with God, I must actually come into agreement, and that word agree is the word Yadda. It means to be intimate with someone, with a view of reproducing life, so if I want to walk with God, I must come into being intimate agreement with Him, with a view that His life will start to flow in me, and flow out from me. It's intimacy. I must come into agreement in my heart with Him. I must actually yield to Him. So intimacy in a marriage, then there's a yielding to one another. There's an engaging one another. You can't be intimate in marriage if you've had a great row, it's just impossible. You actually have to come to yield to one another, and so He uses this process of walking together as us yielding to the Lord, yielding to what He says - so for example, let's just give you an idea.
I have found many times if I've looked into a person's eyes, and I've talked to them about how valuable they are, and what great qualities they have in their life, often they begin to react. What they're reacting to is, they can't agree with me over what I've said about them. Now God has many things to say about you, but if you won't agree with Him, you will react to what He says, instead you'll attach to what you've been used to thinking about yourself. That's why our belief systems must shift. So there are reasons why we may be like that, let me just give some of them, so I'll show you how to actually break the agreements. Number one, I need to remove the mask, I need to remove the mask and become honest. The first step out of shame is you've got to remove the mask. You've got to remove the mask, and there are lots of masks that people wear. Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:7, the moment they become aware of their shame they covered themselves, they put some fig leaves on. I wonder what fig leaves you've got on?
Then when God came they just ran away and hid see, so the hiding. Now there's many ways we've got of hiding, but let me just ask you a few questions, just for you to think about. What experiences of shame have you had in your life? What did you feel when you had those experiences? What did you feel? What message did it say to you? The message of shame is that I'm damaged, something's wrong, I'm different and I'm in danger, I'm going to hurt, someone's going to expose me, see? More important, what did you cover yourself with, to try and cope with it? I started to think of a few things as I was thinking about this this morning. Some people have a mask on. I didn't have one at home, or I'd have worn it, and you wouldn't have been able to relate to me with a mask on. You'd hear my voice - that sounds familiar, but you wouldn't connect with me if I was wearing a mask, because what you're seeing, and what you know, are completely different.
You can go down into these shops, you get a mask - have you ever got a mask on? How scared kids get when you wear a mask, even adults. Get a big ugly mask and put it on, you come near someone, they freak out. They know it's you, but they still freak out, because they see the face, so the face that you present, is actually the way people identify you, see? So what face are you presenting? Well of course people have got all kinds of ways to cope with shame. I've just listed a few, and you might recognise one or two. It won't be you of course, but there's someone probably sitting in this church. [Laughter] There's the witch face, and when they put on the witch mask, then very sharp, very critical. Probably you know a few old witches, you know, very sharp, very critical. Then there's the Arnold Schwarzenegger mask, [laughter] tough and independent, and nobody messes with me. Some people wear that, everywhere you go, but there's a frightened little person inside there.
Some people wear the clown mask, the Joker, so the moment you try to relate to them, they're joking. You can't get past the jokes. Me thinks he jokes too much! I can't get to know who he is. I've been there. Okay, then there's other kinds of masks: the Lone Ranger mask. The Lone Ranger, if anyone's seen the Lone Ranger, Lone Ranger comes and rescues people, and some people are the Lone Ranger. No one really ever knows them, they're a Lone Ranger, but they have a mission. I will rescue people! Someone's in need, count on me, I'll help them out. They're in there to rescue, and they've got all these people they've rescued, and they're so grateful to the Lone Ranger, who's feeling much better about themselves, because I am the Lone Ranger, and I rescue people! [Laughter] It's who I am! Of course the Lone Ranger often has a nervous breakdown, [laughter] so unfortunate that, but because you can't know who they are, you never do see them when they're having their nervous breakdown. It's usually when they're alone, and they took the mask off, see? There's all kinds of things.