Shame has 3 main sources: Our own sin; Satan 'the accuser'; and the shaming actions of others. Shame is internalised, creating an ungodly belief. Looking at examples of life situations will help us recognise the shame message we have agreed with. These are powerful keys for breaking free. The first is coming to Christ, who bore our shame, and understand our suffering.
Well I want you to open your Bible, look in Genesis, Chapter 2. We're just doing a series on shame, I want to pick it up now, want to begin to look at the sources of shame, and we want to just have a look then at the steps that we can take to break out, because there's steps out. I don't want to do it all at once, want to just do one step today, then we're going to look and progress over a couple of Sundays, how you break this thing off your life. Let's just have a look in Genesis 2, and just revise where we were for those who are perhaps here for the first time - Genesis 2, Verse 25; They were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed. So God's original design was we should be unashamed. Unashamed means you can be who you are, there's nothing at all that you feel embarrassed about, about your life, about your ears, your nose, your height, your hair, your anything. You're just happy to be who you are.
We saw that when people are unashamed as God designed us, then people can be connected in relationship. We become confident, and also we're able to apply what we've got to life. We can be quite creative in our various areas of life, but when shame comes around our life everything changes - so let's have a look in Genesis 3, what happened when shame came in - Verse 7. Then - that's after Adam and Eve had sinned - then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew were naked. They became conscious and aware of something they didn't realise before - and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves coverings for their loins. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God in the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him: where are you? And he said: I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself. The Lord said: who told you you were naked? Who told you? Who have you been talking to?
You see what happens now as Adam and Eve sinned, as they broke their relationship with God, something that God had imparted to them was lost. The Bible tells us very clearly that man was made to be clothed in glory, so we see that the original Adam and Eve were covered with the life of God. Their life radiated the presence of God. We saw that they were very good, part of God's creation, but the moment sin entered in, something changed. They actually became different. They became separated from God, and different on the inside. The glory, the life that they had, the beauty that they had, now had disappeared, and they became very self-conscious. Before they had not been self-conscious or self-focussed at all; now the presence of something wrong - we saw that shame, the message of shame is: something is wrong with me, I'm damaged. The message of shame is: I am different, and now I'm in danger that I will be exposed, rejected and hurt, I have to do something.
You notice when God came to Adam, what he said to Him was this: Adam spoke to God and he said: I was afraid. I felt deep fear come into my life, and he said: because I was naked, because something was wrong and damaged, and so I hid myself. We saw the two things Adam and Eve did as a result of fear; one, they concealed themselves one from another, and we saw that shame, when shame is around your life, you will cover over who you are. You'll try to put on a mask and be something you're not, and we saw also that they hid from God, they hid from an intimate relationship with God. We saw that shame is an intimacy thief, it stops you connecting intimately in any relationship, because you can't really reveal who you are. If you showed who you are, well you might be exposed and shown up, and rejected or judged, and that's extremely painful. The Bible says they said: we were afraid. They'd never felt shame, never felt fear, never run away and hid before, and now the moment they've sin, something has changed in their life.