Okay, second one is you'll be confident: I can confidently fulfil God's assignment, and be free from the fear of people or their opinions. How many believe God has a purpose or an assignment for your life? Well you should be confident doing it then, see? Because everyone else has got a plan for your life, but you need to be confident in what God called you to do, able to do it without any - shame causes us to compare ourselves, and then we try to be like everyone else, and do what they want. See David - notice in this - when David was doing all his celebrating, and this is the bit I love, immediately his wife looked out the window, and she tried to toxic-shame him: who do you think you are? You just want to be the King of Israel, that's what you're doing, blah blah blah. He says ha! You thought that was something? You watch in the next round-up, I'm going to be even worse.
Now he refused to be shamed. He was able to stand up at what he's called to be, and the next day he got up, you know what he did? He said this is what we'll do now, we will now have 24 hours of this. He said up courses of musicians, never been done in history before. He sets up 24 courses of musicians, or 12 courses of musicians around 24 hours. He's setting up all of these courses of musicians to praise, worship, do stuff before God - no one had ever seen it before - oh, we've never done it that way before! Well I got this creative idea from God, I got this - what are you on about? No, don't put me down, I'm moving forward with these great things that God's given me to do, see? In the area he was called to serve, he became incredibly creative. That brings you to the last one.
See, creative means, in the area that you serve, you come up with ideas no one has ever thought of before. You don't follow the crowd, you become the crowd leader. You're free to express the creative wisdom of God through your gifts and abilities, so you've got to value those. Shame will cause you to not value them. What did Gideon do? Gideon changed a nation, but you know how he started? God said: oh Gideon, you mighty man of valour - and Gideon manifested shame. I'm the youngest in the family, haven't got much education. I can't fight, and we don't have much money, we're a small family. God said: when you're finished! [Laughter] YOU are a mighty warrior. I will use you to save a nation. Oh really? He needed a little bit of persuading to get out of his shame, but once he got the word of God about who he was, he got God's perspective on who he was, and agreed with God's perspective, and he did what God called him to do. It's brilliant to see it.
All kinds of guys in the Bible did the same kind of thing. Now you're not called necessarily to go out and conquer an enemy army out there, but wherever you're positioned in this city or region, God wants you to be unashamed, confident in who you are, and what you're called to do, and creatively do something no one else really else thought about doing it that way before. When Solomon got on the throne, he did it too, and he became so famous that people came from all round the world, what to see? The creative wisdom of God. They were smarter, sharper, better, had it working better, and people came and said: [inhales sharply] that's something else! That's what the church is called to do. Now by the church, the manifold wisdom of God will be revealed to the principalities and powers who sought to shame us, hold us down, stop us standing up, and living in a place of fear, and short of the glory of God, now by the church, by you and me, God wants to reveal His wisdom - and you can't do that if you're full of shame. You've got to come into agreement with what God says about who you are, what you're called to do, and what you've got inside you to help you to do it. That's the agreement.
I will share with you over the next couple of weeks just what shame is, how you can actually recognise it, because many of you here will be just taking in the concept in the initial stage, but you won't realise how deeply it's in your life and relationships, and you won't even realise how much the people around you are shaming you, and reinforcing that. But once we uncover what it looks like, feels like, and how it manifests itself, you will start to recognise it, and then we're going to begin to talk about how you get yourself out of it. There's a process to get out of it. It's not just a prayer, there's some steps you take that change your life, and I want to show you what they are, so all of us can step up and move out. How many people, when we did the series on offences, then began to recognise them just like that? I'm believing God will be the same on this one of shame. God wants us to arise, be bold, and be who He called us to be - full of His glory, so Paul says: Christ in you, God put His spirit in you, and it's the hope that you will manifest the goodness, the life, the light, the glory of God. Come on, let's stand up and give the Lord a clap!