Shamed people rarely take stands against injustice. Such a stand would mean they would have to go public, which would only double the shame. Instead, once we are shamed, most of us try to make sense o...
You would think that anyone would jump at the chance to escape shame. But that isn’t the way it happens. Though shamed people are happy to guide others out of their dark prisons, they are always sure...
You don’t really know who you are until you have gone through suffering.
You don’t really know who you are until you have gone through suffering. We can measure our spiritual growth by the way we behave under pressure.
Yes, genuine pain and loss coexisted with the deliverance, but it did not have the last word. Its power to hurt him was weakened because he could see the bigger things God was doing in, for, and throu...
With our touch, Jesus becomes our scapegoat. In his touch, Jesus takes our sin and absorbs our shame (Psalm 69:9; Romans 15:3), and we receive his righteousness. If you prefer symmetry in your relatio...
Why do you think Adam and Eve were concerned about uncovered genitals, but not bare arms, legs, noses, or ears?
When your wants become needs, it means that you have put your trust in people. They have become like a god to you. Yet, for some reason, the true God is patient with you. Although you might reject him...
When psychological needs, rather than sin, are seen as our primary problem, not only is our self-understanding affected, but the gospel itself is changed.
What does your worship look like? Anxiety, despair, shopping, primping, acting like someone you aren’t, acting stupid when you are smart, or acting like you don’t care when you do? Why do you do it? Y...
We crave autonomy. Autonomy is closely linked to arrogance. They are both expressions of human pride, but autonomy suggests that we want to be separate from more than over. We want to establish the ru...
To look to Christ to meet our perceived psychological needs is to Christianize our lusts. We are asking God to give us what we want, or so we can have more happiness, not holiness, in our lives.
Think about the nature of depression. Life is turned inward. You already have a sense that, for all practical purposes, God is not present. Add to that your relentless condemnation and pervasive self-...
These days, shame is emerging from the shadows and beginning to have its own identity. For example, if you talk about guilt to people under thirty, you often get blank stares. But if you talk about wo...
The important thing was the shedding of blood. Sounds barbaric, but the Old Testament was reminding us that there was a significant cost involved in moving from unclean to clean. You didn’t have to pa...
The feeling of emptiness is usually a sign that we have put our trust in something that can’t sustain us. It reminds us that we were created to trust in our heavenly Father and nothing else. We were c...
The basic idea is to focus on the matchless worth of the Lord God and then get connected to him.
Shame lives in the community, though the community can feel like a courtroom. It says, You don’t belong—you are unacceptable, unclean, and disgraced because You are wrong, you have sinned (guilt), or...
He says I love you first, even when we respond with an indifferent shrug or the equivalent of a passing, Oh, thanks. And in this we discover why it might be hard for us to move toward others: the one...
When in doubt, look at the Lord. Lift up your eyes (Numbers 21:4–9). That will be something it will take all your life to master, but what better time to start than now? Still, you can’t imagine being...