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How to Handle Your Shame

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shame

All of us to one degree or another carry around shame. Things we’ve done, things done to us. Things we’ve said, things said to us. Things we wished we had done, and things we wish that others had done. Shame shows up in all kinds of places and in all kinds of people.

What we often overlook is how much shame shapes our identity and our lives. It becomes a driving force in our lives, how we work and how we relate to others and God.

In Future Grace: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God, John Piper says shame comes from three causes:

  1. Guilt. This is the one many of us know well. The addiction, the hidden sin, the abuse we don’t talk about, the affair, the divorce, the poor parenting, our failure at work and in life. We carry around guilt for ourselves and often without thinking, for others. When guilt becomes public knowledge, we have shame. Now we are known for what we have feared.
  2. Shortcomings. Shortcomings and failures are something all of us experience. Some of them are real and others imagined. Some are life shaping, and other shortcomings we simply shrug off. It is the ones that are life shaping that lead to shame. When our frame of mind says, “You are a failure, you aren’t good enough, you aren’t beautiful, strong enough or worthwhile”, we experience shame.
  3. Improprieties. These are the experiences in our life where we feel silly, look stupid or are embarrassed. We make a mistake, and it feels like everyone knows about it.

What do you do with your shame?

According to Romans 10:11, if you are a follower of Jesus, you will not be put to shame.

Yet shame is a driving factor in the lives of so many.

Shame is a driving factor in the lives of so many.

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Here are six ways to move forward from your shame:

6 ways to move forward from your shame.

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1. Name your shame. If you don’t name something, it takes ownership of you. This is a crucial step. You must name the hurt, the guilt, the shortcoming, the impropriety, the embarrassment, the abuse, the loss, the misstep, the sin. If you don’t, you stay stuck.

Whatever you can’t name in your life takes ownership of you.

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I’ve met countless people who couldn’t say the name of an ex, name the situation of hurt or talk about something. This doesn’t mean that you are a victim or wallow in your pain, but naming something is crucial. Without this first step, the others become difficult to impossible.

The saying, “Whatever we don’t own, owns us”, applies here. This is a crucial, crucial step.

2. Identify the emotions attached to it. Many times when we are hurt, we are an emotional wreck and can’t see a way forward. All we know is that we are hurt, that life isn’t as we’d hoped, but we aren’t sure what to do.

What emotions are attached to your shame? Is it guilt? Loss? Failure? Missed opportunity? Sadness? Hopelessness? Indifference?

Name them.

Name the emotion that goes with your abuse, abandonment, divorce, failed business, dropping out of school, not meeting your expectations or the expectations of someone else.

Often times we feel shame when we have a different emotion attached to it, but shame is far more familiar to us. Do you feel neglected or hurt or sad? What emotion is conjured up from a memory?

3. Confess the sins that are there. Do you always have sin when you feel shameful? No. Sometimes it is misplaced shame. It is shame you have no business owning. You didn’t sin; someone else sinned against you.

Sometimes, though, there is a sin on your part. You may have sinned, and that’s why you feel shame. Sometimes your sin might be holding on to that person or situation.

Sometimes you need to confess that your shame is keeping you from moving forward and keeping you stuck.

Bring those sins to light.

4. Grieve the loss. When we have shame, there is a loss. This loss might be a missed opportunity or missed happiness. It might be bigger than that and be a missed childhood, a loss of your 20’s, a loss of health or job opportunity.

It might be a relationship that will never be, something you can never go back to.

As you think about your shame, what did you lose? What did you miss out on? What did that situation prevent you from doing or experiencing? What hurt do you carry around? What will never be the same because of that situation?

5. Name what you want. This one is new for me, but it has to do with your desires.

Often the reason we stay stuck is because we know what stuck is. We don’t know what the future holds. Beyond that, we don’t know what we actually want.

We carry shame around from a relationship with a father who walked out. Do you want a relationship? Do you want to be in touch?

We carry shame from a failed business. Do you want to get back in the game?

Can you name, in the situation associated with your shame, what you want?

Sadly, many people cannot.

If you can’t name what you want, if you can’t identify a desire, you will struggle to move forward.

6. Identify what God wants you to know about Him. When we carry around shame, we carry around a lie. In identifying that lie, we are identifying the truth that God wants us to know about Him.

If you feel unloved, the truth that God wants you to know is that you are loved. If you feel unwanted, God wants you to know you are wanted. If you feel dirty, God wants you to know the truth that in Him you are clean.

All throughout scripture we are told that God is a Father, that He is as close to us as a mother nursing her child, that God is compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love, gracious, tender, strong and for us.

The list goes on and on.

In that list, though, is the truth, the antidote to your shame and what you need to remind yourself of to move forward and live into the freedom of Jesus.

6 ways to move forward from your shame.

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Freedom is hard.

Let’s be honest, freedom is difficult. Living in sin, shame, guilt and regret is easy. It is what we know. It is where most people live and reside.

Freedom is scary. Freedom is unknown. Freedom leaves us vulnerable. Freedom leaves us not in control.

Yet, this is what it means to be a child of God. To live in freedom. Overflowing freedom.

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Why a Pastor Should Work Ahead (And How to do It)

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Work Ahead

Most pastors, because of all that is on their plates have this revolving conversation in their head: It is Monday, they are tired and worn down and they don’t know what they are going to preach on this coming Sunday.

They start scouring the internet to see what their favorite megachurch pastor is preaching on or they read a book in hopes of finding some kind of inspiration or story to steal, or they read their Bible in hopes that God will speak to them and show them their sermon.

Not all pastors are like this, but sadly, many are.

There is another way: work ahead. 

Why a Pastor Should Work Ahead on a Sermon (And How to do It)

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By working ahead, you are prepared for what is coming up, your sermons are not last minute. In fact, I just had two pastors tell me they spend 8 hours Saturday night working on their sermons. 8 hours! That’s crazy.

Every pastor wants to work ahead and when we hear pastors say that they have their next 3 sermons written, a part of seethes in anger.

While I don’t work like that, I write the sermon I’m going to preach on Sunday leading up to Sunday, I can tell you what I am planning to preach on for the next 12 months.

One of the biggest benefits to this is how it helps you to research. By knowing the topics I will cover over the coming year, when I read a blog or article that connects with that, I’m able to save it into Evernote.

But how do you work ahead? How do you know what you are going to preach on for the next 12 months? Here are some ways I’ve learned to do it:

  1. Write out books of the Bible or topics you’d like to cover. Don’t underestimate your passion for a topic or books of the Bible. Often, the next series you should do is one you are passionate about. What is God saying to you right now? How are you growing personally? Can you make that into a series? Is there a book of the Bible speaking to you right now?
  2. Ask your church, staff, and elders for suggestions. On a yearly basis, I ask for input. Granted some people give me input throughout the year and when they do, I add it to my growing list. A pastor should always have a running list of possible series or sermons they are thinking about. Often, the questions that come up in counseling or conversations lead to great sermon series as well.
  3. Get away for some solitude. When I finally decide what I’m going to preach on, I get away. I pray through the books that have been on my heart, topics that are bouncing around in my head and things others have said to me. I often do this in the summer time to lay out the following year. So, this past summer I was laying out 2015.
  4. Map out the series for 12 months. To effectively work ahead on prep, research, and creativity, I find a year a good standard to be working from. I am always amazed when I am reading a book that has nothing to do with a sermon topic and I find a great quote that I can use in 8 months. This saves so much time the week I work on the actual sermon. In fact, just this past week I landed on my big idea for a sermon I’ll preach in 9 months.
  5. Create Evernote folders. Evernote is something every pastor should know and use often. If you are unfamiliar with it, here are two resources I’d recommend: Evernote Essentials: The Definitive Guide for New Evernote Users and A Guide to Evernote for Pastors. I have a folder for different topics: leadership, gay marriage, marriage, dating, eating, health, divorce, parenting, schedule, pace, etc. I also have one for each book of the Bible, whether I am planning to preach through it soon or not. When I’m reading a blog or article online I simply use the Evernote shortcut for Chrome and send it to the correct folder.
Stop waiting til the last minute on your sermon

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I can’t tell you the benefits of this. I am never wondering “what am I going to say this coming week” which drastically lowers my stress level and raises the quality of a sermon because whenever I preach, it has been in preparation for a year.

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When Eating Becomes a Sin

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food

I get asked a lot about losing the weight I have and keeping it off. Losing 130 pounds was really hard, but keeping it off and is incredibly difficult. I’ll often get asked about eating habits as that is where most people get hung up.

One of the things that rarely gets talked about is that eating can be a sin, an idol. The reality is, we are told our bodies are the temple of the holy spirit and we are to take care of them (1 Corinthians 6:19). Most Christians use this verse to say drinking and smoking are wrong while eating their next 2,000 calorie church potluck meal.

The reality is that eating is a sin when:

  • We do it mindlessly.
  • We do it when life feels out of control.
  • We do it to feel better or find comfort (ever hear someone talk about comfort food?).
  • Or, when we eat too little to be prettier or skinnier.

So what do you do?

The first thing you must do is understand why you eat. What drives you to food. It is not that you are hungry, we often eat when we aren’t hungry or continuing eating when we are full, so there is more to it than that. If you never uncover why you eat, you will continue to eat in a sinful way by finding your god in food.

Because overeating or not eating enough is a sin and can be an addiction, you have to approach the way you would someone who is addicted to porn, shopping, drugs or working too much.

When you approach those sins, you make a plan, create some accountability around them to keep you from falling into those patterns. It is the same with food.

Here are some ideas:

  • Get an accountability partner for exercising or eating.
  • Don’t buy the snacks that are bad for you. If it isn’t there, you can’t eat it.
  • Make a meal plan so you eat well. If you make a last minute meal it is rarely good for you. If you go out to eat, always know what you will eat before you arrive. Looking at the menu causes you to eat more than you should or food you shouldn’t.
  • Drink at least 100 ounces of water a day. Water fills you up and helps to clean out your system which helps to move things through better. Also, if you drink that much you eat less. If you drink this much water, you are less likely to drink soda. I’ve read cutting soda out of your diet can drop 10 pounds in less than 2 weeks.
  • Eat higher protein meals which will lead to less hunger in between meals. I eat 5 eggs every morning and am rarely hungry before lunch. Not snacking makes a huge difference.
  • Start slow. The big mistake most people make is to jump from what they are doing to eating like Bob Harper tells you to eat on the biggest loser. While that’s great if you can do that, it is often unrealistic. Take small steps and then add to it. It took me 18 months to lose 130 pounds but I went slow and have kept it off for almost 4 years now.