One of the ways you can deal with this area, is you can begin to write out, and remember what you did. Another way is as you worship the Lord, you begin to allow your mind to go back and remember what happened, remember what it felt like, remember what it felt like inside, and as you do it, the Holy Spirit just brings this stuff up, then you feel a lot of pain. Now most people when they feel the pain, just want to get out of the pain, and so they push it down again. If you're male, you may have quite a strong problem with this area; the moment you start to think about anything that caused you pain, immediately you block it off, and minimise it, say it's nothing, don't worry about that, you know? So what happens is, we don't engage what's really in our heart. So as we worship with the Lord, David was absolutely abandoned. He shared his distresses and troubles with the Lord, and the Lord set him free. He can set you free too.
So the first part is, I need to allow the feelings to surface, and just release them to Jesus, the grief carrier. It says in Psalm 84: blessed is the man whose strength is found in the Lord. He turns to the Lord with an open heart, and he said: he makes the valley of tears into a well, that others can be blessed in. So there is a part of your pain and your shame, that if you can bring it to the Lord and weep over it, you let the feelings go. I remember praying over people that have been abused, and they just wept and wept and wept, with the grief of being so shamed and embarrassed. Some cultures, the shame is so deep, that when it starts to surface they just weep and weep and weep.
The second thing we need to do is forgive. We've just got to let go, from the heart. Forgiveness is more than just a prayer, just 'I forgive'. No, it's actually - there's the heart feelings as well as the will, and so in forgiving someone, I need to actually remember how it's affected me, and allow myself to feel the reactions, then make the choice to forgive. Some people forgive, it's just from the head. Jesus said in Matthew 18:34-35, forgive from the heart. I've got to let it go, let it go, let it go. Unforgiveness locks you to the past, grief locks you to the past. These things keep you there. To move out of shame, I've got to let them go. I've got to just be willing to let it go, grieve over it and move on, and we don't like doing that because it's a bit messy. You feel a mess, you feel you're falling apart, but it doesn't last. You just grieve, you release forgiveness, start to bless the people, thank God He can use it to make something great in your life, and then you come free of it. It's a process as well as a decision, can take a little time to do it - or it can just take place in a very quick time.
Have you let go the people who've shamed you? Have you really let them go? Have you really let them go? Have you let them go? You don't need to stay back there, you need to move on. This is the time to move on, time to let go. People shamed us - let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go because it stops you fulfilling what Jesus called you to fulfil.
And finally, we need to deal with the hidden reactions in the heart, where I've reacted about being shamed. By reaction, reaction's the way you respond when someone's really hurt you deeply, and there's many ways we can respond. Some people respond by making an inner vow - I'll never, I'll never let anyone get near me. I'll never let any woman, I'll never let any man - and so inner vows are vows you speak into yourself, that harden your heart, so you can't be shamed any more. They put a wall up, they keep you distant, and so there you are, you look tough, you've got it all together, and inside there's just a broken little person, fighting to try and hold the wall up. That's what people do. People do it everywhere. They're at your workplace, they're all around you, but church is a place we can find healing and restoration. We don't have to stay in those places. So we may have made inner vows, and may have made judgements, and may have just wanted to die; Elijah wanted to die, he felt ashamed of the whole thing. He'd run his course and there it was, he still hadn't made a change in the nation, and so he just wanted to die.