Shame - Mood #4 | Adam Tarnow

[Music] [Music] all right ports Dallas how we doing my name is Adam Tarr no excited to be with you guys want to welcome everybody at all the other Porsche Live locations and everybody watching online I'm excited to be here with you guys hey guys just start off with a quick question anybody ever had one of those moments in life where you just wanted to crawl and hide and like not show your face for a long period of time well since we've already connected so well I figured I'd go ahead and open up with one of my most embarrassing and shameful moments in my life and so just to set up a little bit of context it was about eleven years ago my wife and I were married and we didn't have any kids we were living in a cool part of Dallas this is back when we were cool and so we were living down in the em streets area and so those of you that aren't in Dallas you don't know that but everybody in this room knows that's where all the cool people are and so we were down there living in the em streets we didn't have any kids and so we did what a lot of young married couples will do is we got a pet but we made a bad mistake and we didn't get the dog we got a cat all right and I I know I just offended most of you but just wait it gets worse okay and so anyway we got this cat and for a lot of reasons we needed to let this cat be an outdoor cat and so usually the way things would go is we'd get home from running errands or whatever and the cat would be waiting on the porch to go inside and do whatever cats do and this one Saturday afternoon I remember it was in November one Saturday afternoon we come back after being gone all day and the cat is not on the porch and I also had kind of an unhealthy relationship with this cat meaning that I really liked it and and so I had I I like had a little bit of anxiety when we drove in and I looked around and I couldn't find the cat anywhere and just thought that's that's strange and went inside and we dropped off whatever you know groceries or whatever it was that we and so I decided I'm gonna go outside and try to find the cat and I'm walking around and I can't find the cat anywhere I come inside I'm like Jackie have you seen the cat no I haven't seen it I go back outside and I'm in the backyard and then I just hear this faint little cry and I'm like starting to look around and my heart's starting to beat a little bit faster and I'm like okay where is he where is he and I hear the crying I hear the cry and I look in my neighbor's yard up about 25 feet and I realize oh good lord my cat's 25 feet up in that tree okay and I don't know what to do but I just kind of start to panic and so I'm like aha I'm gonna get you buddy all right and so I I go running inside and I'm like Jackie Pedro is in the tree Pedro was his name and I'm like Pedro's in the tree right now and she's just like so my police over there and it's November supposed to get cold tonight it's starting to get dark outside what are we gonna do to get him out of the tree and it's like she just looks at me and she goes have you ever seen a dead cat in a tree and I was like no and she's like that's cuz they always come down okay like they don't they don't stay up there and just die and I'm like but that's what you know you heartless woman that's our baby and so I really kind of start to panic and I'm trying to figure out what am I gonna do to get this cat down I start looking around the apartment and I just gather anything I think I can throw up there and I kid you not I go out there with tennis balls and rolls of paper towel okay and I go up there and I'm like chucking these tennis balls up Adam and I nail him in the side and he does not move an inch like he just digs down in more and the paper towels was just useless I don't know why I brought those out there I tried throwing them up there they went about ten feet in the air and then came back down and so anyway I go inside and it's starting to get a little bit darker and I'm really starting to panic a little bit and I'm starting to wonder what are we going to do to get this cat out of the tree I can't let him stay out here all night and and then just an idea popped into my mind is sometimes I see on like Good Morning America that if you call the fire department they'll come get your cat out of the tree well I'm not going to call 9-1-1 so I just Google Fire Department in Dallas and I find a phone number and I call it it's like some office line and I don't know why on a Saturday this young lady answers the phone and I just say hey my cat is stuck in a tree do you guys actually do that or is that just on TV and small towns where the fire department has nothing else going on is that is that like something you do and she said oh yeah we'll do that and I said okay well how can I schedule that cuz I got a cat in a tree right now and she says well you need to call 9-1-1 and just tell them and I was like this feels like a violation but okay and so I hang up call 9-1-1 and it's like Dallas Fire what's your emergency and I'm like no emergency just want to let you know I my name is Adam hope you're doing well I called this other number and they told me to call you cuz I got a cat stuck in the tree and I heard that if like the fire guys aren't doing anything they'll they'll come get my cat out of the tree and they said sure well we'll do that where do you live game the address come and I'm like problem solved walk into the kitchen I'm all proud Jackie I called the fire department they're coming and she's like I'm having nothing to do with this okay this is all you I'm staying inside so I go outside and I'm like anxiously waiting for the fire department to show up and then literally like seven minutes later this truck comes rolling down and then it stops right in front of my house and then it turns the lights on it's dark outside now or it's like right at dusk my entire neighborhood is now lit up in lights and that was the first moment when I started to realize oh no I should not have done this okay because now the neighbors are starting to look out the window and people are starting to come on the out on their porch and they're like who had a heart attack you know what's going on and I'm I'm just sitting there going now it's just me my cat and so then three of the manliest men I have ever seen in my life you guys know those firemen calendars I promise you it was May June in July on this firetruck that get down and it's in that moment I am just like what is going on in my life right now like I in the recovery world that we call that rock bottom like I had hit rock bottom right there and I just realized I'm like yeah my my cats over here and so I walk him to the backyard and you know mr. May brings the the ladder up and then Jun climbs up it and and I start to like try to man up a little bit in that and I just think I'm gonna say something cool and I'm like if you got a gun you can shoot him down and they looked at me like you are an idiot okay and so they grabbed my cat they grabbed Pedro and they hand them to me and I take him inside you know and and I look at my wife and I'm like it's all done you know I got him and she was just like I can't believe you did that and I just said I know I've kind of lost the will to live I think now and I just as the time went by you know just a few minutes go by and now they're leaving it just I was overwhelmed with just this feeling of humiliation and embarrassment it was pretty it was prevalent it was very real and so I start with that tonight because that's what we're gonna talk about as we're going on in this series called mood as we're taking a biblical look at different human emotions and so the human emotion that we're gonna talk about tonight is shame shame and embarrassment when I say shame here's what I mean shame is that feeling that we have this deep feeling of humiliation we have after certain choices that we make shame is this thing in our life where we feel this desire to hide or conceal different parts of our life that's what shame is and so shame is prevalent in every single one of our lives and that's why I think tonight's message is so important because what I what I know is probably true about every single person in this room tonight is this is that you struggle with shame it is a universal emotion every single one of us feels shame at certain points throughout the day or we have at certain points in our life it is like a disease that has infected humanity all of us have felt it some of us in here tonight and this is exactly what we're feeling we're feeling this humiliation for certain choices that we've made and we have this deep desire to try to conceal or hide certain aspects of our life but what makes shame so interesting and so dangerous is unlike other moods or other emotions that you and I experience shame is absolutely intolerable if you think about it the other moods or emotions that we go through you can feel them for a long period of time you can feel joy for a long period of time you can feel happy for a long period of time you can feel content for a long period of time you can feel mad or angry for a long period of time you can feel depressed or sad or hopeless for a long period of time but shame this feeling of humiliation this feeling that I want to hide or conceal is unlike any of those other emotions shame is intolerable in our life and it always always always leads us to action and oftentimes as we're gonna see tonight that action what we choose to do where we choose to run it doesn't help at all shame is a big deal for every single one of us and you have got to learn how to deal with shame because if you don't learn how to deal with it it will take you out it will completely take you out in the extreme examples it will lead to suicide you will just become so humiliated with your life and so down about your life and you will lose all hope that anything in the future could ever be better and so in an extreme example if shame if you don't learn how to deal with it it will lead to you just ending your life it'll end in suicide but more commonly where it probably ends for a lot of us is this is just this knowing nagging deep-seated insecurity and low-level depression that just hangs with us and it just seems to be this thing this mood that we cannot shake shame impacts every single one of us and if we don't learn how to deal with it it is going to take us out so what we're gonna do tonight is we're gonna open up God's Word we're gonna be in this little story in Luke chapter 8 in the Gospel of Luke and it's actually kind of a story within a story and so here's a little bit of the context Jesus has been doing some public ministry there are a lot of crowds around him and he is walking through this town and this family comes up to him and they tell that him about their daughter who is sick this family member who is so sick that she's on the verge of dying and so Jesus full of compassion wants to go and help this family and try to heal this young woman to heal this young girl well as Jesus and the crowds are moving towards this house a woman comes and interrupts Jesus and it's in these few verses in this interruption as Jesus is on his way to go heal this young girl where we're gonna see a story that really parallels our life a lot when it comes to shame and so that's what we're gonna look at today so if you got your Bibles let's open up to Luke chapter 8 we're gonna be in verses 42 through 48 and so here we go Luke chapter 8 verses 42 as Jesus was on his way the crowds almost crushed him and a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years for 12 years is what I love about God's word is that it doesn't hide anything it talks about real adult human things so this poor woman was subject to vaginal hemorrhaging for over 12 years for 12 years so Jesus is on his way and this woman who had been bleeding for 12 years comes up to him and this is what happens so she had been subject to bleeding for 12 years but no one could heal her this was a plague that she had been carrying around this thorn in her side that she had been carrying around in verse 44 she came up behind Jesus and touched the edge of his cloak and immediately her bleeding stopped then verse 45 who touched me Jesus ass let's just pause here for a second she kind of get this scene there's these crowds they're crushing Jesus and he's moving on and they want to see this drama that's gonna happen as he goes and and is gonna heal this young girl and they're in the midst of all of that this woman sneaks up behind him touches the edge of his cloak and then just disappears and Jesus is kind of looking around going who touched me and you can think about this woman and why it was that would cause her what it was in her life that would cause her to want to sneak up behind Jesus and it's pretty clear and it's easy to understand why she would do that because the the thing that had been ailing her or the the ailment that she had was incredibly embarrassing I mean for 12 years to have that bleeding and you can just imagine all the different layers that were there adding to the complications that culturally because she was having this bleeding that would not stop for 12 years culturally she was an outcast she was an outcast and she was considered unclean she was this recluse she was isolated because of this problem that was going on with her own body and so because she was an outcast culturally that means spiritually she could not worship God she was an outcast spiritually and then you just think about the embarrassment physically and how uncomfortable that must have been physically in the first century when we don't have the modern medicine that we have today or even the hygiene products that we have today this was a woman who was dealing with a significant issue and she was feeling this inadequacy in her life she was feeling this inadequacy there was something that was embarrassing something that she wanted to conceal or hide something that was probably humiliating her but mixed with that inadequacy there was also probably some pride it was probably some pride in all of that and where we grab that out of the text as this is that she was one of the only people that we see recorded in the in the Gospels that wanted healing from Jesus that snuck up behind him to get that healing if you read through the rest of the Gospels what you'll see is that when somebody was physically had something going on and they came to Jesus and wanted healing they were very public about it I mean they would come up and be like Jesus see I'm blind or or I'm lame right now where they would be laying out in a spot in public where all of those who had the physical ailments were and so Jesus would show up and it was very very public for so many people this is probably or what I seem seem to think is the only the only recording of somebody who needed healing that snuck up behind Jesus and did not want to make it public so she had this inadequacy in her life this failure in her life thing that was embarrassing to her but she also had her reputation she had some pride but she didn't want everybody to know and so she snuck up behind him to try to touch his cloak and the first point her observation I want to make out of the passage and where our lives kind of parallel the life of this woman is this is that really is the formula for shame the formula for shame if there is one is this it's our inadequacies and our pride when we understand that we're inadequate but we also have some pride we have some reputation we're not okay with that inadequacy when those two things are together that's when we start to feel humiliated that's when we start to want to conceal or hide and so let me illustrate it this way because I think what a lot of us do when we look at our own lives as we end up kind of bifurcating our lives we split our lives into two we wouldn't really admit that we do this but really this is what happens is that we think that there's two you think there's two of you and I think there's two of me there's the ideal you and then there's the bad you and the ideal you is the you that really follows this let's just fill in the blank I should fill in the blank you've got your answers I've got my answers but the way you answer that in the way I answer that that's what determines the ideal you so I should always be in control of my emotions I should always want to feel like spending time with Jesus I should always share the gospel every chance that I get I should not feel anxious I should be married right now I should be in a better job right now I should be in a better financial position right now whatever it is when you have all of those things lined up you're setting these expectations on your own life saying you should do something and when you do achieve those little goals that you set out when you do behave in the way that you think you should that's the ideal you that's the you you like because you're behaving that's the you you think everybody else likes because you're performing that's the you you think God really loves though the you that is easy for God to love so we have this ideal that every single one of us wants to achieve but we also know based on our experience that that's not always happens we don't always meet up with our own expectations and so we have some failure some inadequacy that comes into our life we cannot keep up with the our own standards that we set in our own life and so inevitably even though you want to always stay in control of your emotions even though you want to never feel anxiety even though you never want to get angry again the fact of the matter is this you do get angry you do feel anxious you are ashamed of your family you are ashamed of your past you do not do everything that you wish you would do so there is an adequacy and when there's an adequacy then we think we are the bad version of us and this bad version of us down here this is toxic we don't like it we don't think other people like it we don't think God likes it and so we wallow there's to us we wish we could be some way we're inadequate and so we come down here and there is the bad us when we're down here in this toxic part of our life this is where shame pops in this is where we start to feel humiliated this is where we want to conceal or to hide everything I remember the day in my life specifically I remember the night when shame became very very real for me I was probably in my early 20s I was living in Atlanta at the time and I was an accountant I was an auditor and I had a client in Huntsville Alabama I'd gone to this client completely on my own my firm had sent me out there on my own and showed up on a Sunday night and I was there all the way through Thursday night I was gonna be driving back home on a Friday after work and I remember it was really a pretty great week until it got to Thursday night it was a great week because I was by myself and being a natural introvert I like having time to be by myself in the hotel and read and I was reading a great book and I felt like I was growing in my relationship with God that week I was reading a book about character and how you can grow to be a person of character and I remember Thursday night I read a chapter that said sometimes in order to go forward you have to go back and I remember reading that sentence and hearing that author talk about hey you've got things in your life that you've done you've got things that you done to other people you've got certain actions that you need to confess and known up to and this part of you sometimes to be able to progress and to become a person of character you've got to go back and deal with all of that before you can move forward in maturity and character and I'll never forget how hopeless I felt that night because my story is this my story is when I was three years old I was first exposed to pornography and so from age three until about age 21 pornography was a regular part of my life I look back on my childhood and there are certainly a lot of great moments I had a loving family and had a great family great parents but I look back on my childhood and there is also a tremendous amount of embarrassment being exposed to pornography at that young that meant and those those years when I was making decisions and I was involved in certain activities that were just embarrassing and I felt like there was this part of my life that the thought of going back in revisiting that the thought of going back in order to go forward the thought of going back and maybe telling somebody else about those things was horrifying and I remember there was just in that moment I just said I'm gonna conceal this I don't want to talk to anybody about this if that's what it takes to go forward I'm fine not going forward so I'll never forget that night I closed that chapter I closed that book I put it in my bag and I just said I want to do anything I can to not think about my past right now so I turned on the television and I slept that night with the lights on and I made sure for the next couple of weeks that I never was alone or quiet I always wanted noise because I did not want to go back there I was feeling humiliated to think that I was gonna have to go back and somehow deal with this I liked this Adam I didn't like this Adam I thought God liked this Adam I didn't think God like this Adam and I didn't want to go back shame causes us to hide it causes us to run and the reason that it's there is because we all feel this deep-seated inadequacy we all know we've done things we all know that we fall sort of our own standard in life and that's the formula that's the formula often is our inadequacy mixed with our pride and so that's the reason for our shame but let's keep going because the story gets much better so verse 45 Jesus said who touched me when they all denied it Peter said master the people are crowding and pressing against you so you can imagine the scene Jesus he felt that somebody had touched him and he starts going around going who was it wasn't you was it you was it you was it you and everybody denied it and then Peter finally steps up and just says listen there's a lot of people around so maybe it was just somebody touched you by accident or something like that and jesus said someone touched me I know that power has gone out from me and so let me just pause here and let's just have another observation and see where our lives kind of run parallel to this woman's life but first let me say this Jesus knew exactly what he was doing Jesus here wondering who touched him it's not like Jesus was a character or a person in a video game that when he got hit and some power went down and he's just sitting around going alright I saw my power levels go down who hit me you know he he knew exactly he knew exactly what was going on the point of this interaction and the reason why Luke was recording these details is because what was going on is that woman was gone she had run she wasn't there so the second observation that I want to make is this is that the reason the reason for our shame is in adequacy and pride but our response to shame our response to shame is often the exact same as this woman's our response to shame is to run it's to run and so when we come over here and we have this ideal you and you're inadequate and then there's this bad you you don't want to hang down here and so what do you do you run you run and you run to anything that you think is gonna get you back to the ideal you and so some of you what you do is you run to religious things I must just be honest there's probably some of you in the room here tonight and the reason you're here tonight is because you're trying to make up for something you did this weekend and so you'll run to religious things you'll run to church you'll run to these religious activities where your skin all right I'm gonna read my Bible everyday or I'm gonna serve every day or I'm gonna give or I'm gonna try to be others focused and so you'll run over there or you'll start to feel bad about yourself and that innit and inadequate and so you're gonna run to the gym you're gonna run to work you're gonna run to Netflix you're gonna run to podcasts you're gonna run to anything that will get your mind off of thinking about your own inadequacy so when we start to feel this shame we start to run there's an activity because it's intolerable we always want to do something and so we'll run towards these other activities or we'll run away from certain activities in certain people we'll run from God we'll run from our friends when when do you want to not answer the text from somebody in your community group on how are you doing you want to answer it about two or three hours after you've just face your own inadequacy again and you understand and you're feeling all of this shame what we start to realize with this with shame guys is we start to realize this is that this this shame that we feel down there it is really a gateway mood it's a gateway emotion to other things oftentimes because we feel the shame this is where we bring about other destructive habits into our life this is why we run to anger this is why we run to addictions this is why we're so anxious it's not because we struggle with anxiety it's because we struggle with shame or not because we we struggle with drugs and alcohols because we struggle with shame we're trying to hide something we're trying to get this feeling away from anything and everything except from Jesus it just doesn't work it just doesn't work and so for my story for my story the Gateway for me when I was feeling shame the Gateway for me was anger that's where I would go I would go with anger and so I remember very clearly again one of the times where this became so clear that when I was feeling shame I would act out in anger and I thought I had an anger problem and to my great shame right now I need to share with you another story about a cat and I now I'm gonna go down as the guy that came to the porch and shared two stories about cats okay so that's okay so anyway it's the same cat Pedro I am in my apartment again we don't have kids and for some reason the memory that I have is I remember I was doing a puzzle I think it was over Christmas so I just makes this story even better right I'm doing a puzzle and I remember the cat kept getting up on the table and interrupting the puzzle and like moving all the pieces away and I'm getting frustrated and I keep pushing the cat down he jumps off I push the cat down and he jumps on I pushed the cat down and I get so frustrated with him every time he jumps up there I'm getting more and more frustrated but then I also know that I'm starting to get frustrated that I'm getting frustrated and I start to think I shouldn't be getting frustrated for a cat interrupting my puzzle right now and so I finally he jumps up there and I pushed him down and he kind of scurries on the table and you know all these pieces go flying and I am so mad and so frustrated right now that I just pick up the closest thing I can find which is a bag of pretzels and I chase him around the apartment and I throw the bag of pretzels at the cat which does absolutely nothing to the cat and all it does is pretzels and salt go flying everywhere all over the apartment and all over the wood floors and now there are just little granular pieces of salt and pretzel everywhere and I'm sitting there and I'm just going what is going on and I remember I went to go talk to my friend and I was trying to process this with my friend and I was just like man here's what happened I tell you man I got an anger problem I think I've got an anger problem he said well tell me about it and I'm gone this and this and I threw the pretzels and salt went everywhere and it's like yeah maybe an anger problem but why were you angry so why was i angry well here's exactly why I was angry I was angry because I was so frustrated at how flustered I was getting I was angry because I just realized Adam you shouldn't be mad about this Adam you shouldn't be freaking out about this Adam you shouldn't you should be able to stay in control of your emotions you should be calm I mean you've been following Jesus for almost ten years now shouldn't you grow up beyond this silly little behavior where a little thing like this is frustrating you and I'm just listing out all of these should should should should should and he's just going listen man I just want to help you and connect these dots here your anger your angers you're trying to run it it's rooted in your shame that's where that anger comes from so shame causes us to run towards things and what we all know in here and every single one of us would admit this because whatever it is that you do that you run to try to get back to the ideal you what you know is this it doesn't work it doesn't work and that's why you keep going back over and over and over and over again and that's why this cycle continues in our life is because our strategies for dealing with shame that don't involve Jesus do not work because no matter where you run no matter where you try to hide you're always there and our strategies don't help us at all so the reason for our shame is this inadequacy in this pride and our response to shame is typically to run but there's a remedy there's a remedy that this woman encountered and there's a remedy for all of us that we can encounter and so let's look at this let's look how the story wraps up here jesus said someone touched me I know the power has gone out for me in verse 46 here's what he says in verse 47 then the woman seeing that she could not go unnoticed came trembling and fell at his feet in the presence of all the people she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed and then he said to her daughter your faith has healed you go in peace I don't know if we can recreate the tension and the emotion in the relief and the embarrassment and the anxiety and all of that that that woman probably was feeling but all I know is this is it seems like she was ready to quit hiding she was ready to quit hiding and when Jesus would kept calling out and she knew that the Lord was calling her and that's why he was saying where where you know I know power went out he wanted to draw this woman out and she just finally said I'm done running I'm done trying to hide and she fell at his feet and in front of everyone that whole crowd that was there she admitted here's why I touched her cloak here's what's going on in my life she was incredibly vulnerable and she laid it at the feet of Jesus and what she wanted when she went to go find and sneak up to Jesus what she wanted was healing and she got healing but she got something way more than that to is that she got a relationship a relationship with God she got grace she was now no longer this recluse she was now a daughter of the king she came looking for healing and what she got was not just that but she got a restored relationship with God she was no longer a social outcast and so this third observation that will make just as we wrap up tonight is this is that the remedy for our shame is to come to terms with reality this woman just came to terms with reality I can't hide anymore I got to go just bring it to Jesus she came to terms with reality and so the remedy for my shame and for your shame is not just to keep running because if we keep running we're just gonna stay on this cycle and it's just gonna keep going and going and going so I have some bad news for you the bad news is this is true this is true about you there are moments in your life where you can be the ideal you there's moments in your life for whatever it is that you think you should do you can do it you can achieve that you can act a certain way for a certain period of time in your own strength but what else is true about you is that you are wholly inadequate to keep it up for a long period of time and what's also equally true about you is there's a lot of bad in every single one of us and the bad news is this is that there is more bad in us there's more inadequacy in us and there is ideal in us good news is this is that God is not surprised by any of that and what's even better even better news is he loves you anyway that's that's what's called the gospel that God saw here that we all fall short of the glory of God that the wages of sin is death he knows that this is who we are and that not only not only do we feel bad about ourselves in this but this fractures our relationship with the god of the universe and the wages of that sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus and so not only does this lead us on a cycle where we just feel this shame and this humiliation this separates us from God and God didn't want to leave us there and so he sent Jesus to die on the cross on our behalf that's the good news and so the reality though for us the reality that we need to embrace is this is that you and I we need the gospel every single day of our life you don't just need it one time to receive forgiveness for your sins and then you don't need the gospel anymore you need the gospel every single day of your life because every day you are faced with your own inadequacy you cannot be the person that you want to be apart from Jesus and I think for so many of us part of the shame that we feel is that we feel a shame that we need the gospel every day we just we're just tired that we have to keep that we keep failing and that we can't seem to string together a good season and what really is going on is our pride is so high that we just are ashamed that we need the gospel every day that we're a sinner and need of a savior not one time for a lifetime and may we never be ashamed of the gospel may we be like Paul look at what he says here in Romans chapter 1 verse 16 he says for I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes first to the Jew and then to the Gentile for in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed a righteousness that is by faith from first to last just as it is written the righteous will live by faith what Paul is saying there is listen I'm not ashamed of the gospel I need the gospel every single day you know why because my righteousness my relationship with God is not based on my own activities if it were based on my own activities I'm sunk I don't need a second chance I've already blown the second chance I need a Savior and I need that Savior every single day and I just want to remind us tonight of this is that when you say you're a Christian when you claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ that is a self-deprecating statement you know what you're telling the world when you say I follow Jesus you're saying I'm not good enough I can't save myself I can't string together enough good days left to myself I'm going to hell and I don't need a second chance what I need is I need a Savior and that Savior is Jesus Christ and so I love that you get to hear that if it's your first time here at the porch because I'd imagine you come into a room like this and you see all these beautiful people in here raising their hands and they're singing and you're maybe feeling shame and just going all these people must be so good it must be so good that they can sing and they smile and they look like they're in a good mood and I just want to let you know if that's you and it's your first time this room is not full of good people this room is full of very bad people in fact let's just take a moment make sure your wallet is still there ladies make sure your purse is still around okay because your are bad people in here this is not a museum of awesome this is a hospital full of sick people who have found the healer in Jesus Christ amen amen the only way the only way to get off this shame cycle is you've got to run somewhere else the only way is that you've got to run to Jesus that's how you get off the shame cycle so the source the reason for our shame is inadequacy and pride because we know that we cannot be who we want to be and yet we're prideful and we're embarrassed about that so that's why we feel this need and there's humiliation to conceal and hide and we end up running because shame is intolerable we run to something we run to things or we run from people are from God and those solutions never work the only remedy is to come to terms with reality and that we need the gospel every single day and so I'll close with this one last story when the end of the shame cycle became very clear in my life and so I had that night in Huntsville Alabama I read that book and I was like I just want to forget all of my past I don't want to go back and talk about anything and I drove back to Atlanta and went a few days of just trying to isolate and trying to ignore and it just it was overwhelming the shame was overwhelming and I finally just said I've got to tell somebody so I got a couple friends together and I just said listen we've been friends for a while you know a lot about me but you don't know everything and I'm feeling overwhelmed with the sense of humiliation and I just I don't know how you're gonna react to this I'm afraid of how you're gonna react to this but I'm just gonna tell you everything and so here's what happened when I was three and then here's what happened in my elementary school years and then here's what middle school was like and here's what high school was like and here's what college was like before I came to know Jesus and I did this and then I thought that and then I used to believe this and then there was this experience and I just laid it all out there and it was so terrifying because I had no clue what they were gonna do I didn't know if somebody would love me anyway so I laid it all out there and I was just amazed at the amount of grace and mercy that was shown to me as I shared all of those things and my friends looked at me and they said me too yeah maybe it looks a little bit different Adam maybe it's not the exact same facts and circumstances but let me tell you all the things that I'm embarrassed about let me tell you all the things that I am humiliated by we just in that moment just got into this habit of being able to share these things that normally would plague us and be this cycle of shame and try to drive us to run from God or run to some religious activity to try to make ourselves feel better and we just got in this habit of trying to just confess these things to one another so now for the past ten or fifteen years that's how I deal with shame that's that's the remedy is that you run to Jesus and you often buy running to Jesus you run to Jesus's people when you run to Jesus and you run to Jesus's people and you just start to go listen this is what I'm afraid of this is what I think you're gonna leave me over what you realize is that proverbs 28 is true that whoever conceals their sins does not prosper but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy so my challenge for all of us here tonight is this it's just really simple it's just to run to Jesus get off that cycle we all do it we've all got the cycle we've all got inadequacy in our life we've all got these things that are humiliating that we want to hide we've got stories that we don't want to share and so my challenge to you is to get off the cycle in the run to the cross and the first and foremost recognize and realize that God loves you anyway there's intimacy there he's not afraid of that he knows all of those things you've been found out already and by running to Jesus you can then run to his people and you can you can tell someone so if that's you here tonight you walked in and you're just plagued by this shame and you know that it's this gateway mood or this gateway emotion and there's all kinds of other destructive behaviors in your life tonight I'm telling you you can get off that cycle you can stop it tonight the people that brought you here tonight you can talk to them be a group of us down here at the end we'd love to talk to you or to point you to other people that can help there's a way off that cycle so we're all inadequate we all struggle with pride we all want to run somewhere and the remedy is found when we embrace this reality that we are sinners in need of a savior and that Savior is Jesus and we're unto Him amen amen let's pray nor we thank you for the cross thank you that we can share embarrassing stories and inadequacies in our own life with one another and we're just grateful we can do that guy I'm grateful that we can confess these things to you and that you love us anyway I'm grateful Lord that our deepest fears of rejection are just cast aside when we come to the foot of the cross grateful Lord stories like of this woman that our lives parallel that we can identify with and I pray that all of us here tonight will experience that same grace and mercy that that woman experienced when she fell at your feet Jesus so Lord we just thank you for the gospel that our relationship with you is not founded on what we do but what on what you did so god we worship you not because we're good we worship you because you're good and you forgive and you are full of grace and mercy so Lord my friends tonight that are just trembling that are afraid to tell somebody I pray that you'll give them courage Lord if you'll talk to friends that they'll talk to other followers of you and they'll be able to experience the freedom comes from running to the cross when we pray all this in Jesus name

Channel: The Porch

Views: 7,109

Rating: 4.9220781 out of 5

Keywords: the, porch, dallas, watermark, community, church, young, adults, christian, christianity, ministry, movement, jp, todd, wagner, david, marvin, jonathan, fort, worth, faith, sermon, dating, truth, bible, advice, biblical, counsel, mood, emotions, emotion, feelings, feel, shame, guilt, regret, embarrased, embarrasement, Jesus, jesus, god, cycle, run to

Id: sOsusH-d1ck

Length: 43min 0sec (2580 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 15 2019