The Release from Enslaving Shame - Is the Gospel!

Hello Church Family!  Do you ever struggle with feelings of worthlessness that are accompanied with thoughts of rejection and a general gloomy glum attitude that you are always falling short of your community’s expectations of yourself or even your own individual expectations of yourself?
 
Welcome to your own personal world of “Shame.”  Most likely you know this world all to well.  We all struggle with shame.  Shame is the painful emotion that is caused by a thoughts of guilt, failure, or indecency, that often results in the paralyzing belief that we are worthless, that we are of no value to others or to God, that we are unacceptable, and altogether deserving of disdain and rejection.  . 
 
We all suffer daily with our own shame.  Some of us live in shame that touches every area of our lives every day while others of us only have shame visit at specific moments during the day.  Shame will attack us because of something that we have done or because of something we did not do.  Shame will attack us because of what others have done to us or what others have not done to us.
 
Where does our shame live?  Shame lives in the shadows of our lives where we keep it hidden from everyone around us.  While we try to hide our shame it slowly eats away at our joy, delight, and freedom that we have in Christ through the Gospel.  Shame can be debilitating.  Shame is not what Jesus wants for us.  He has come to take away our shame.
 
The good news is that Jesus Christ has come to deliver us from all guilt and from all shame (Romans 1:16).  Justification, adoption and sanctification shine a bright light of hope into the shameful shadows of our life.  God our Judge, through faith in Jesus Christ has declared us absolutely holy and righteous no matter what brings us shame.  God as our Father has adopted us knowing our shame fully.  He knows where our shame rests and He still adopted us.  He knows how our shame arrived in our lives and how that shame has grown.  Jesus has come to redeem our shame! 
 
The Gospel redeems us from shame and gives us a new release on a life without it enslaving us.  In shame’s absence Christ fills us with an accurate, truthful understanding of who we are in Christ. This new understanding brings joy, delight and hope.  The Gospel is the power that consistently drives out shame from our hearts.  In Christ, our loving heavenly Father delights in us no matter how great our shame. 
 
This Sunday we will be looking specifically at how the Gospel ends shame.  I look forward to worshipping together without shame as the body of Christ.
 
Romans 10:11  For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in Him will NOT be put to shame.
 
With great love, Steve