Isaiah 54:4-5 “Do not fear, you shall not be put to shame; do not be discouraged, you shall not be disgraced. For the shame of your youth you shall forget, the reproach of your widowhood no longer remember. For your husband is your Maker; the Lord of hosts is his name, Your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, called God of all the earth.” This episode reminds us that shame is not from the Lord and that we can release it and let God heal us. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Let Go Of Shame
Isaiah 54:4-5 “Do not fear, you shall not be put to shame; do not be discouraged, you shall not be disgraced. For the shame of your youth you shall forget, the reproach of your widowhood no longer remember. For your husband is your Maker; the Lord of hosts is his name, Your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, called God of all the earth.”
This verse starts out with some pretty familiar words, “Do not fear.” Is it just me or do we hear those words a lot? In this verse it is referring to a specific fear. The fear of being put to shame. Shame is a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. I think we fear shame because we know we can be the ones that cause it. We feel that we will do something that will humiliate ourselves. Especially in this world where everything is on display for the whole world to see. Our lives are lived more in the open now than ever before. It is almost as if we are living in a fish bowl and every else is looking in. It used to be that you could mess up, make a mistake and the whole world wouldn’t know about it, but now, we worry this is no longer true. We worry that because we live our lives so openly everyone will see our mistake and we will be humiliated. Do you ever feel like this? Do you ever feel like some small silly little mistake you made caused you so much shame because it happened in public in front of others? Do you ever feel shame over things that once upon a time you wouldn’t have cared less about?
The definition of shame says you have a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior, and yet we tend to take shame on for all different reasons. Sometimes we feel shame for things we didn’t even do, but that others did to us. We feel shame for things that other people said to us. Sometimes we feel shame for decisions we made even though they were absolutely the right decision for us at the time and yet we feel shame due to other people’s opinions of our decisions. If this is you, and I am pretty sure we have all felt shame before, I hope you take comfort in this verse. The Lord says, “Do not fear, you shall not be put to shame; do not be discouraged, you shall not be disgraced. The Lord is telling us that we won’t be put to shame and that we won’t be disgraced. The Lord is protecting us. We do not have to feel shame because we are children of God. Shame does not come from the Lord. The Lord wants us to repent for wrong doing, but he doesn’t ever want us to feel shame from it. That is the enemy and he is good at telling us all the ways we should feel ashamed for things. Ignore him! He is a thief and a liar. He is trying to destroy your happiness, your self esteem. He is trying to pull you away from God. Don’t let him. When you are tempted to feel shame for something remind yourself that you are a child of God and that God is protecting you. Stand up to the enemy and tell him you refuse to feel the shame he is throwing at you.
The next line is another important line that I think we all need to hear. “For the shame of your youth, you shall forget.” Some of us think that we can’t be forgiven for things we have done in the past. We are ashamed of the things we did and we think God couldn’t possible forgive us for something so terrible. We hold onto these things and we don’t surrender them to God because we are ashamed. This verse can bring us some comfort. If it is possible for us to forget the sins of our youth, then surely God can too. God does not hold these things against us. He is up there, just waiting for us to realize that He loves us more than our actions. He loves us more than anything. He waits patiently while we learn this the hard way. He waits patiently while we figure it out on our own because we don’t trust it when we hear verses like this one. I don’t think I am the first person to tell you that shame is not from God. He doesn’t want you to be ashamed. However, I am hoping that you can finally hear it this time. Let go of your shame. Release it to the Lord and let Him heal you from it. You will feel good afterwards. It will be like a weight is lifted off your shoulders. You don’t have to carry that weight on your own. Hand it over to the Lord, He will carry it for you.
Next the verse says, “the reproach of your widowhood no longer remember. For your husband is your Maker; the Lord of hosts is his name, Your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, called God of all the earth.” I love learning new names for the Lord, in my prayer group we have several periods of praise during our meeting. I have a list of various name for the Lord and I recite them during the praise parts of the meeting. Here are some examples of the things I say:
You are the Great “I AM”
YOu are the Just One
YOu are the King of Kings
You are the Lord of Lords
You are the Lamb of God
You are the Light of the World
You are the Lord God Almighty
This verse says that you don’t have to be worried about widowhood because your husband is the Lord. He is the Maker; the Lord of Hosts is His name, Your redeemer, the Holy one of Israel, called the God of all earth. Those are some pretty amazing titles, and He is your husband. How great is that? You can use these titles when you are wanting to praise the Lord for anything. You can praise Him when something good happens, you can praise Him when something bad happens, you can praise Him when you need something and you can praise Him when you don’t. He is there for you and He loves it when we praise Him. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time and you can do it anywhere. Even in the line at the grocery store, although you might want to be praising Him in your heard while you are in the the grocery store like. If you are unsure what I am talking about when I say praising Him with these names, I just repeat them. For instance: Lord God you are the Maker, you are the Lord of Hosts, you are the Redeemer and the Holy one of Israel. Lord you are the God of all earth. I love you Lord. It can be as simple as that. Just a few seconds and yet makes a world of difference to our Lord who loves our praise.
This verse is making some pretty big promises but you have to accept them in order to benefit from them. You have to be the one to decide if you are going to let go of your shame or not. You are the one that needs to decide if you will let go of the shame of your youth. Once you make the decision, the Lord will take care of the rest. He doesn’t need you to figure out how to let go of it, He just needs you to hand it over to Him and release the control of holding on to it. He will do the rest. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could all remember that shame does not come from the Lord and we could reject it when the enemy tries to pile that on us. We can, if we ask the Lord to help us. He is waiting for us to invite Him in to all of our troubles. Can we do that today? Can we invite the Lord in and turn our troubles over to Him?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to release any shame we may be feeling. Help us to see that shame does not come from you and help us to reject it and let it in our lives. Help us believe that you can help us forget the shame of our youth. Help us to see that you love us regardless of any shame we may feel. Help us to understand that there is nothing you won’t forgive. There is nothing in our past that is beyond your mercy and forgiveness. Help us to feel how much you truly love us Lord. We love you Lord, you are truly amazing. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. My guest tomorrow will be my friend Corinne. She has an amazing witness of her faith journey. She even gives us some stories of angels. Corinne has an amazing faith. She has been part of a few different healing ministries, currently she lives in Arizona and is part of a healing ministry there. I know you will enjoy her witness. I look forward to sharing it with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!