You read Jesus' first ministry, first message that's reported Jesus preached, and you find what happens. Found in Luke, Chapter 4, He preached, they said: what a lovely preacher, what a nice man and then he began to tell them how God had blessed the Gentiles. That was it, they were up, they wanted to kill Him. Do you understand that Jesus confronted these things, continually confronted anything in the society that brought shame to people, and eventually they crucified Him for doing that - so then we get some idea now on shaming. How many people have come in, and you felt like you didn't fit; there's something wrong with me, and you felt shame because there was a judgemental attitude? People are sensitive to that. It resonates with what they've already got struggling inside.
Okay, how are we going to get out of it? So let me just define it, and then show you the steps out of it, then we'll get started on them. Looks like I won't get started too far today, but let me give you the keys. I want you to see where we can go on this. So we begin to recognise these doors, so shame is an accusing spirit that torments people. It's an emotional wounding, and pain that people have, and shame is also a deep belief: how I see myself, and how I see the world and God. So it's a belief, it's an emotion, it's a spirit, and if we're going to get free of shame, I've got to recognise what's needed to get rid of what, and there's different things needed to get rid of different things. If you had a learning disability, chances are you have tremendous shame, and you've tried to cover your inability to read all these years, ashamed it'll be found out. I couldn't believe it, it's the first time I'd actually ever met people who couldn't read, was when I went to Dannevirke.
It never occurred to me people couldn't read, just never occurred. It was quite a surprise for me, and then I found it was actually quite common. Then I found that God helped people who couldn't read - found one man there, amazing man, he never could read, and he asked God to help him, and he could read the Bible. Couldn't read anything else, he could read the Bible. I heard him read it, many times fluently - couldn't read anything else, so God gave him grace to do it, but he used to hide the fact that he couldn't actually read anything else, and he had to get his wife to do everything. He become ashamed of it. Okay, how do we get out of shame? So let me give you the four parts of getting out of shame, or four things I've identified are crucial, and we'll see if we can get one started.
Number one, how am I going to get out of shame? How am I going to get this thing, that's wrapped around me, so I don't like who I am, and I want to hide from you, how can I get that off my life? Here we are, number one. Number one, I must come to Christ, the shame-bearer. I need to come to Christ, and I'll open these parts up for you, each one of them up and develop them. But the first thing I need, Christ carried my shame at the cross. He is able to take shame off my life. He is able to totally set me free, not only set me free from shame, but restore what originally got us shame, which is being separated from God. He is able to put His spirit in me, so the glory that was originally there in man, now has come back inside man, and we carry the glory of God within us.
So the first step to getting free of shame is nothing cosmetic on the outside; it's a deep, transforming change, coming to Jesus Christ, who took our shame on the cross. He took the shame as He hung naked upon a cross, and then by faith in Him, I can receive His spirit into my life, and the Bible says then: I become a new creation. I become a different person. I'm one of God's kids now. I have a new identity. Now the dilemma of course is to shift your thinking to embrace the new identity - that's where we'll get to in just a moment.
The second thing I need to do, is I need to break my attachments to shame. I need to break free from any attachments to shame. I need to break free of them. I'll show you how to do that, and we'll share that next week. I need to break free of any place shame has got attached on my life. Maybe it was some parent shamed me, maybe it was the family background, maybe it was where I was in school, maybe it was failure, whatever it was that was done or happened that caused shame to get a hold of me, I need to break that thing and cancel it's power. I need to let go, what's held me there. I need to forgive the people involved, bring the grief and pain of it to the cross. I have to deal with that.