Overcoming Shame

Shame is the feeling or belief that something is fundamentally wrong with you. Feelings of shame can rule your life if you have been influenced by hurtful, unhealthy relationships. Shame can consume you when you focus on other people's negative opinions of you to the point where you believe them over God's opinion of you.

God created us with the emotion of shame to help us live by biblically based standards. God wants you to feel shame when you choose to violate His standards. That's how He created us. You should feel shame when you lie, cheat, steal, hurt someone, or act immorally. However, don't confuse shame with guilt. Guilt is legitimate shame designed to bring us to repentance. Shame is a distorted form of guilt where we feel  responsible for the sinful actions of others. Perhaps someone belittled you, violated you, threatened you, or blamed you for a something for which you were not responsible. Sadly, most people who have experienced those types of situations assume responsibility for the other person's sin and carry the shame of that sin for years (sometimes indefinitely). 

{ Guilt is about what you have done. Shame is about who you are. }

Shame causes feelings of embarrassment about things that should not cause embarrassment. Some examples of this would be:

• For being sick or hurting.
• For being alive.
• For needing to talk to someone about a problem.
• For wanting to feel loved and appreciated.
• For wanting to feel significant. 
• For needing to ask for help.
• For letting someone help you.

Shame often leads to depression. Depression results when we meditate on the circumstances of our lives in an unbiblical way. 

How is depression fueled by shame?

• Shame tells you you are guilty.
• Shame causes you to feel you have to "work off the dirt" or the weight of guilt over sin that wasn't yours to begin with.
• Shame causes self-pity.
• Shame takes your joy.
• Shame brings hostility and bitterness.
• Shame hinders your view of God.
• Shame causes you to reject relationships, even your relationship with God, because you feel you are not worthy of love or acceptance. 

God gives special promises in His Word about relief from shame.

Let none that wait on thee be ashamed: let them be ashamed which transgress without cause. {Psalm 25:3}

I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed. {Psalm 34:4-5}

Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded, for thou shalt not be put to shame... {Isaiah 54:4} 

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. {Hebrews 12:2} 

Crucifixion was the most painful and humiliating form of execution in ancient times. When Christ died on the cross, He despised the shame that kind of death brought. He rejected it because He knew He was innocent. He can help you reject the shame, the depression, the false guilt that comes from shouldering the burden of sins that are not yours to bear.