Breaking Free from Shame
Shame can stop us from building good friendships, doing what's right, having more joyful days, receiving God’s blessings, and much more.
Do you carry shame from something in your past that holds you back from God’s best for your life?
In Jesus’ time, women often went to the well together in the cool of the morning, but John 4 tells us about a woman who came alone during the heat of the day. Jesus met her there and gently exposed her shame. She had had five husbands and was then living with a man who wasn’t her husband. This would have made her an outcast among the other people in the town.
The enemy wants us isolated because we are much easier to defeat when we are alone. He uses many tactics to deceive us into thinking we need to be alone; he wraps shame around us like a chain and chokes out our will to move forward.
The enemy is called the “accuser” and the “father of lies.” In the beginning of the book of Job, we see the Accuser in action. If you read through this book, you will see the manipulation and lies he used through Job’s friends to attack Job. But in the end, God reveals the truth of Job’s innocence and frees him.
From Job’s story to our own lives, the Accuser uses lies to distort our identities and confidence in hopes of preventing us from doing God’s will. He is a thief whose only purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy. This is not the one we should be listening to. We need the Truth. We need to listen to Jesus.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1; ESV)
Read that verse once more. Allow the words to sink in.
If there is no condemnation for us, then there is no reason to stay in our shame. We should not keep living in sin. There might still be consequences of our choices but those condemning accusations are not ours to accept anymore.
After talking with Jesus at the well, that Samaritan woman was freed from her shame. She ran back into town, telling everyone who would listen about Jesus, and she did so with great joy and excitement.
As followers of Jesus, we are no longer condemned but are forgiven to live in God’s grace. We all make mistakes, and we do our best to learn from them and to make right what we can but let us not remain in the chains of shame and guilt.
What shame have you been carrying? Take a moment to name it before God, then open your hands—literally, if you need to—as a way of releasing it to Him. Let it go. It is no longer yours to carry. Jesus has paid for all of it and will remove your sin as far as the east is from the west.
Let us press forward in the love, mercy, and grace that Jesus died to give us. Let us live boldly in grace. Like the Samaritan woman, our story doesn’t end in shame; it begins with Grace.
This week, I encourage you to share with someone you trust what God has freed you from and let your story bring freedom to them.
Freed people, free people.
If this encouraged you, check out more articles from our Flatirons Spiritual Formation Team for practical tools, encouragement, and ways to grow in your faith and leadership. Click here.