What in the world do you say to those who have been through evil circumstances that are so horrendous you can barely wrap your mind around them? What do you say that will touch hurts that run so deep?
I recently was asked to speak to a group of girls in a children's home while in El Salvador for a missions trip. These precious girls had all been victims of unthinkable evil in their short lives. Their stories are so incredible that my mind, while hearing them, began to process them as fiction to buffer the effects of coming face-to-face with unadulterated evil at it worst. But these stories are not fiction. They are all tragically true. They include elements like kidnapping, rape, beheadings, abuse, children being sold as prostitutes by their own family members, familial sexual abuse, hunger, squaller, beatings, neglect, and the like. These girls had all been sinned against grievously! And sin always leaves it mark.
I wondered what to say. I asked God for the words. I was desperate to be used by Him to say something that could bring some measure of healing to the hurts they had endured. He not only gave me words, but many tears as well. My heart broke for them as I prepared to speak to them. This is a portion of the words that He gave...
If God were to walk through the doors of your home and look right at you, do you think he would be smiling? Or do you think He would be frowning or have an angry look on His face?
How do you think you would feel when He looks right at you? Do you think you would run to Him or away from Him? Do you think you would want to hide? Is it often hard to believe that He loves you? I have struggled with these thoughts.
Do you know what the word shame means? Shame is that feeling that we have when we believe that we are bad, or dirty, or worthless. Shame makes us feel like outcasts who can't be included in on the good things in life. It makes us want to hide and not be seen. It makes us feel like we have stains on us that won't come clean no matter how hard we try to scrub them away. We are afraid that everyone can see them on us. We are afraid that God sees them too. We just want to hide. Have you ever felt that way? I have.
We feel shame for many reasons. We feel shame for the sins we have committed. We know that the Bible says that if we confess these things, we can experience the forgiveness that Christ offers. Yet, we may continue to wallow in shame because we cannot believe the relief and comfort of forgiveness is possible for us because of the terrible things we have done. We feel so ashamed of ourselves.
We also feel shame for the things that have been done to us, for the sins that were committed against us. Maybe we have been violated, abused, criticized, attacked or rejected. We can't confess these sins because they were not our sins to confess. Yet, they still leave a mark. They make us feel dirty, used and worthless. These sins committed against us make us feel the same sense of shame as though they were our own sins. What do we do with these feelings? Can we come out of hiding? Is there any hope?
Our hope is not found in ourselves. We may try to clean ourselves up to make these feelings of shame go away. We may follow all of the rules perfectly in our attempt to cover our shame with our own good works. But it doesn't work. We always end up believing that the bad stuff that we have done or that has been done to us is just too bad. We could never do enough. The good will never overtake the bad. If we can't make ourselves clean enough, where do we turn?
Lets look at a man in the Bible who felt shame. He was a leper. He had a disease that made him untouchable. No one would come near him or touch him for fear that he would taint them. People had to call out, "Unclean!" when he passed by.
The leper had a disease that brought him shame, but there are others in the Bible who felt shame for other reasons. There was a Samaritan woman who felt ashamed of her nationality because some thought that her people were dirty and unclean. There was a sinful woman who had a sexual past that she was ashamed of. She felt so dirty she could not even look into the faces of people because of her shame. She may have thought that if she looked at them, they would be able to see all that she had done. There were tax collectors who were despised because of the jobs they did. There is a woman in the Bible named Tamar who was sexually abused and then mistreated and shamed by the very one who sinned against her. There are many examples in the Bible of people who lived with shame for different reasons.
Let's look at the story of the leper from Matthew 8:1-3.
When he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. And behold, a leper came to him, saying, "Lord, if you will, you can make me clean." And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, "I will; be clean." And immediately the leprosy was cleansed.
What do we see here that could help us?
• Jesus came toward the people. He didn't stay away. He came toward the outcasts and the lepers and all those who live with shame. He comes near to us too.
• The leper responded to Christ in faith (Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.) We too must cry out in faith to the only One who has the power to make us clean. We must believe that He has the power to forgive the sins we have committed. But we also must believe that He has the power to make us clean from the things that have be done to us that make us feel dirty.
• Jesus touched the untouchable leper and healed him. Though others may have touched us to harm us, Jesus touches us to forgive us, heal us and make us clean.
• We must believe that he is willing to make us clean. We must believe Him when He says, "I will; be clean." We must believe that when he does make us clean, we are truly and thoroughly washed as white as snow.
When we trust Jesus and put our hope in Him, He takes away all of our sin, shame and dirtiness. He takes it all and gives us forgiveness of our sins, healing for our hurts and cleansing for our shame.
Cry out to Him and trust in Him like the leper did. He knows you by name. He sees you. He will forgive you. He will make you clean. He will accept you. He will love you. He won't reject you. He won't mistreat you. He will include you in His family and tenderly call you His precious, loved child. He will take away your shame. You can believe that when God sees you, He is smiling. It's not too good to be true. You don't need to hide from Him, or anyone else, when you have been made clean and new in Christ.
Do you believe this?
I am praying that the beautiful girls that I met in El Salvador would believe. I am praying that we all would believe, and be transformed by, the forgiveness and cleansing that Christ purchased for us when He took our sins and bore our shame on the cross.
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