Shame loses it's power when it is spoken out loud and brought from darkness to light. Who God says we are and what it looks like to release the power and grip of shame in our own lives.
Tribe, A Jesus Revival
S4 E8: Shame.
Hey everyone, it's Britt Vega, host of The Tribe Podcast. Here at Tribe, we believe that we are all called to live, love, and pursue our God-given purpose within the context of a tribe. Not only were we created by a God that is community, love is our identity in calling. It's literally in our DNA. If you want to hear real stories of God's great love and faithfulness, you're in the right place. Let's get a new our message for today. Hey y'all, welcome back to The Tribe Podcast. It's Britt Vega, your host, and I am so excited that y'all are here spending just a little bit of time with me. Okay, so today our topic is shame and I know just that word in general can give us so many different feelings. Like we're all all over the map on shame and our feelings associated with it and what we think it means. But I want to talk about it from a biblical perspective and just recognizing that shame is not something that comes from God, it comes from the enemy. And that here's what I'm learning in my process of just growing and healing. What I know to be true about shame from my own experience is that the less that we talk about it, the more of it there is. And I believe that that's true for a lot of reasons. But one of the biggest reasons is that shame loses its power and it's hold when it's spoken. So for instance, if I'm struggling with shame from my past or even in my current circumstances, when I decide to just keep it in the dark and just stuff it and not allow anybody else to help me through it or even like not take it to Jesus and I'm just like I'm going to put this in a box and it's going to go on my closet and I'm not going to deal with it. When I choose to keep it in the dark and not let anybody help me process it through the biblical lens and going to Jesus and repenting and just praying and filling up on scripture, what's going to happen is it's going to multiply. And it's going to feel so much worse and I'm going to give you an example of something spreading so that you can really like visualize what I'm talking about. Okay. So recently one of my best friends who also happens to be my cousin Ashley had a crack in her windshield and she texted me a picture when she first noticed it, which was like in the morning when she was out running errands and it was just the smallest little crack. In fact, I could kind of see like where the impact happened and the crack was like spreading out from that. So by the time she sent me another picture of the crack and I can't remember if it was like later that day or if it was the next day, but that crack had spread so far and so long and so deep and that's what shame is like because if we don't take care of the root cause or the impact or the trauma of what initially happened and that shame spreads like wildfire, it's when we start to see things like bitterness or resentment, unforgiveness kind of creeping in and guess what? If that goes on long enough, untreated and undoubt with, it's going to come out in a really, really unhealthy way. In fact, Jim Cress says it this way, what you don't work out, you'll act out and y'all I've seen this play out in real time in my own life. Guess what? Sometimes I'm the one who hasn't done the work to heal and sometimes it's the other people. It's not one sided. It goes both ways. Okay. So I know that this all sounds kind of scary and a little bit dramatic, but it's true and I believe that the cure for shame is twofold. First you have to bring it into the light and by bringing it into the light, I mean bringing it to Jesus and bringing it to a few trusted tribe members. And the second part is that we have to work through and heal so that we can cultivate our story and then authentically walk inside of it. I think I'm not a hundred percent sure that it was Brene Brown that said that we have to develop a shame resilience. So shame is thinking like I am bad, but guilt is I did something bad and there's a huge difference between the two. But developing a shame resilience means that we are bouncing back from the shameful thoughts or feelings and when we bounce back, we're bouncing towards Jesus. It's our opportunity to re center ourselves and to return to like our original form, which is who God created us to be in the first place. So when we work our story, we are making the choice to show up and to be real, not worry about what others think or focus on the optics of how we say things. It's in the daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and then living in the light of who God says we are. I'm going to tell you who I think shame attacks the hardest. This is something that I am in recovery for. It's the perfectionists because when we are so focused on being perfect and remember only Jesus is perfect. What we're doing is we're using every fiber of our being a work as hard as we possibly can to make sure that things are looking good on the outside like we're so focused on what people think of our marriage and our home and our kids that we have a lot to lose by naming our shame and bringing people in and working the process. But here's what happens when we choose this lifestyle. Y'all we miss out on so many opportunities in life when we let fear cripple us. When we are too afraid to put ourselves or our imperfections out for the world to see we miss out. I don't know any other way to say it. It's bringing the shameful thought or feeling into the light, taking it to Jesus and then inviting people to walk with you as you heal. I literally don't know any better way to describe a tribe than that. Okay, so Hebrews 10 verse 23 is one of my all time favorite verses. In fact, a few years ago when I decided to start living my life like all in for Jesus and I walked away from people and I invited new people in. It's one of the first verses that I memorized and it says, let us hold on swervingly to the hope we profess for he who promised is faithful. Y'all that is a verse I've gone back to time and time again, but I was reading that verse this week and I like to back up to like the verses before it and then read the verses after it just to really understand the context and listen to what verse 22, the verse right before it says. It says, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings. Having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water, y'all, that is the antidote to shame. It's trusting our maker. It's having full assurance of God's character and then the faith that that gives us to walk out our daily lives. It's repenting and confessing our sins to one another so that we can walk in the light and live in the resiliency of Jesus. Let's make heaven crowded. I'm praying for y'all and I'll see you next week.