Sunday, July 8, 2012

185. He Can Handle The Shame


If you know Christ, you are no longer guilty of your wrong. That’s basic stuff, and yet, so many of us still get taken off track by guilt. The enemy loves to make you feel guilty and ashamed of what you’ve done because He knows that shame makes us feel like we can’t go near the Lord. Again, this is beginner-level theology we’re talking here, but the enemy does it to all of us, and it almost always works. Now here’s a trippy thought: What if the reason it works so well is something we’ve never thought about before? What I mean is this: We think that the enemy makes us feel guilty because ‘if we feel bad enough about us, we won’t go near Jesus,’ but what if it’s the other way around? What if the enemy makes us feel ashamed as a way to accuse Jesus? In other words, the devil wants you thinking you’re not the problem, Jesus is... The devil knows we’re aware of the fact that we’re sinful messes. What if he’s using guilt to make us doubt Jesus? In John 8, the enemies of Jesus brought a woman caught in the act of adultery to Jesus and it says they were using her and her sin as a trap - so they could ‘accuse Jesus.’ What if the devil is doing that? What if he uses shame against you because he wants you to think something untrue about Jesus? You see, the devil doesn’t hate you. He doesn’t care enough about you to hate you. He hates Jesus. The problem is, Jesus doesn’t mind our shame. He loves us so outrageously that He gladly bore it all. Satan’s accusations simply don’t stick.

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