Last Topic – Becoming Shameless
Every person has experienced childhood hurts. The depth of the wounds depends on the depth of the experience and also how you as a child perceived the hurt. Two people can experience the same hurt in childhood and one person is completely wounded by it, and the other person can seem unaffected. Nevertheless, pain is a part of childhood, because we go into this world, full of love, full of trust and ready to live the way God created us to live, and soon life throws a baseball in our face and we are forever squinting at life through a swollen eye.
As a mother, I am constantly flooded with thoughts on how I can best protect my children from life’s hurts. I realize that this is merely impossible and the truth is, that through my own imperfections I may even be a cause to some of those hurts. It’s sad to say it, but the truth is, pain in childhood is unavoidable. However, we can get live in freedom from it, heal the past, so we can improve our future.
Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Isaiah 64:8
The potter knows he can’t aggressively shape clay, it takes a gentle hand, patience and he ca not stop until it is complete, or it will harden. Healing the past takes time, but so many of us quit because it is too much work to deal with, or it causes too much pain, or we just don’t know how. Resisting the call to heal the past, no matter how old you are, is a very dangerous place to be, because like I said, if the clay stops being moulded it hardens and sets. I have gone through so much healing in my life, and just when I think I am good to go, another pain surfaces. Sometimes a deeper wound will poke its head up, unannounced, and I realize that that thing is asking to be healed.
Have you had moments where a childhood hurt will just appear out of nowhere? Maybe triggered by an event, or a smell, or another person?
When these hurts arise, we must know that this is the Holy Spirit, putting his finger on a sore spot and promising you restoration – if you are willing to go there. I realize that some people’s past can bring on such extreme pain and suffering that they feel they may die if they have to face these pains. I promise you, you will die, but then you will rise again, and be changed into a new person. A freer person, a healed person.
And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 1Peter 5:10
What 4 things does God promise to do in us after suffering?
We are going to use this verse as an anchor to the 4 stages of healing God brings us through.
Restoration, Confirmation, Strengthening, and Establishment.
Restoration
Several years ago, God asked me an odd question. “If a house has a broken foundation, how does it get repaired?”
Let me ask you the same.
If a house has a broken foundation how does it get repaired?
Having used only high-heeled shoes to hang pictures, I had to do some research on the subject. In the worst cases of foundation damage, the entire house has to be lifted off of the foundation. Then the old foundation is hammered and chipped and removed. It is a long gruelling process. Then a new foundation is poured in, and set. Then, when it is all repaired and renewed the house can be laid back on the new foundation.
This is not an easy repair and the reason God asked me that question was because He was about to lift me off of my broken foundation, and do a total overhaul. It was not an easy process in-fact, it was the most intense season of my life. However, God has slowly been laying my future back down on the new foundation and I feel free!
Allowing God to dig around and jack hammer your heart, is part of the process of healing the past. God wants to restore what is broken. All you have to do is let Him in.
Confirmation
This sounds like a Catholic ceremony, and I had to look up the word to define exactly what God means and here is what I found… establish the truth or correctness of (something previously believed, suspected, or feared to be the case).
We have walked through how shame is a result of lies that we believe about ourselves and about God. So OF COURSE God’s way of healing our past is exposing lies and establishing truth. Without this process, we can so easily fall back into old shame habits, and get stuck in our pain.
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:32
What does truth do?
Revealing truth can sometimes be like falling asleep at the wheel, opening our eyes slowly and realizing that we are on the wrong side of the road and a semi truck is coming at us. Having truth revealed to us, can be really, really hard to handle sometimes, but I cannot express enough with the keys on a keyboard how freeing it really is.
We seek the truth, by asking God for it. To ask Him to reveal the lies we believe about ourselves and about Him, and then take His hand as He leads us through it.
Do you have an example of a time God exposed a lie, and revealed the truth? Can you share the experience?
Strengthening
One of the lies many of us believe about God, is that He makes us deal with our crap and then He abandons us there. That is exactly how the Israelites felt when God brought them out of Egypt.
They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Exodus 14:11
I felt like that many times. However that wilderness time, that period between revealing the truth, exposing the pain and freedom (The Promise Land) can be so overwhelming, BUT SO NECESSARY!!!
God brought them through the wilderness, to strengthen them. To strengthen their dependence on God, to strengthen their dependence on one another, to teach them the ways of God. The only problem was, it was their resistance to fully trusting God that kept them there, way past what God had planned.
Your spirit can die in the strengthening phase of growth if you do not fully trust what God is doing.
In the day when I cried out, You answered me, and made me bold with strength in my soul. Psalm 138:3
We lead up to David’s strengthen?
What did God strengthen in him?
Establishing
I love this so much. God wants to establish His people. The definition of Establishement is : set up on a firm or permanent basis.
Does that definition not make you think of the house foundation again? God is so good, and all that pain, and the revealing of lies, and the strengthen in the wilderness, is all so God can lay you back down on a SOLID Foundation, and establish you firmly.
Picture yourself establish, what does that look like in your personal life?
How did you picture yourself? Well guess what? That’s the same picture God has for you too!
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 16 – 19
What are we established in?
What is the result of being established?
The process of healing our childhood can seem so impossible, or too painful, but so worth. If we can live out our days, healed, walking in truth, strengthened and established in love, then we are promised to be FILLED TO THE MEASURE OF THE FULLNESS OF GOD.
I’m in, are you?
Next topic : Resisting The Voice of Shame
One thought on “Healing The Shamed Child – The Shame Project”