SHAME IS a healthy emotion. It is there to tell us when we have screwed up. It calls us to apologize and reconcile with people we have wronged. And it always calls us to make things right with God in both repentance and faith.
HOWEVER, shame is a horribly debilitating emotion because we
hate feeling that way. We learn early on in life that shame can feel like the
worst attachment-pain ever because it is often partnered with rejection and
demoralizing criticism.[1]
THIS MORNING, God got me up early, so I asked him what he
wanted me to pray about and who he wanted me to pray for. It wasn’t long before
I found myself praying for all kinds of men in my life, some close and some
distant, that God would deal with our shame so we would be healed and free to
fully join his work as beloved sons of the Almighty.
IN A BOOK I recently started reading, I was confronted with
this quote: “Boys and men need to know that the foundation of life is to be
able to receive what we have not earned without shame."[2]
I am one of the many men who have never been given such a foundation, so what
do we do?
THAT’S WHERE prayer comes in. I was led to begin praying
through this verse again, not only for me, but especially for all the men who
were coming to mind: “Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not
confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the shame of
your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.”[3]
YES, I KNOW that the imagery is a simile of God as a husband
relating to his sinful people as an abandoned wife, a widow who has shamed
herself. But we can just as much make this a real-life picture of God as Father
speaking to his boys who have screwed up in life and left a trail of shameful
sins and relationships. The promises definitely apply in the New Covenant we
have with Jesus Christ our Lord.
SO HOW do we pray this comforting expression from God our
Father (and, yes, this easily applies to any women who carry a shame-based
reaction to God as Father)?
FIRST, we ask that God would speak his “fear not”
into the hearts of every shame-filled heart we are praying for. We pray that
God would speak an end to fear into our storms of shame as obviously as he spoke
his peace into the storm that had stirred his disciples to hopeless despair.
SECOND, we pray that God would fulfill in all these men we
are praying for (and more) his promise that we “will not be ashamed”
after all. We are not asking God to make it so we haven’t done shameful things.
It is far too late for that! In Isaiah’s time, God was not saying that the
people would not do anything shameful. Rather, he was promising that after
their horribly shameful sin and rebellion, the end of the matter was that they would
not be ashamed. They would be so restored to him that their shame would be gone.
AND THAT is what so many men need, not Good-Boy Christianity
that says we can only be free of shame if we act like good Christians and don’t
do anything wrong, but Good-God Christianity that says that every instance of
shameful sin in our lives will be cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ so that,
when we repent and return to God, we will not be ashamed any longer because all
our sins are forgiven in Jesus Christ.
THIRD, we ask God to proclaim over all these men his, “be
not confounded, for you will not be disgraced.” Some men have abused their
children and need to be called to Jesus with this promise of cleansing that,
even if they must bear the disgrace of what they have done in one way, they
will not be disgraced before the throne of grace where they will receive the
help they need to walk through reconciliation and healing with those they have
wronged.
BUT WE ALSO have men who are simply carrying so many
shame-wounds, perhaps because of what was done to them instead of what they
have done, and they need to know that if they open their hearts to Jesus about
it, and surrender the cesspools of secret-hearted shame to him, they will not
be left in a state of confoundedness, and nor will they live a life of
disgrace with God and his Spirit-filled boys.
FOURTH, we pray that God would speak into the hearts of all
these men his promise, “you will forget the shame of your youth”. In
fact, David gives us help in how to pray about this with a ready-made prayer
request when he says, “Remember not the sins of my youth or my
transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of
your goodness, O LORD!”[4] We
join him by praying that God would assure men that their repentance and faith and
reconciliation will result in everyone forgetting the sins of our youth, or
whatever sins are in focus, because they are forgiven and covered by the blood
of Jesus Christ our Lord.
FIFTH, while the last phrase speaks of “widowhood” as
a simile of what things were like for the disciplined people of God, we can
pray it specifically for men something like, “Father, assure all these men
that the reproach of their disconnect from you will be remembered no more.”
We are asking God to do such a work on attachment-pain, abandonment issues,
hidden worlds of self-protection, even the painful self-justifying of
narcissism, so that men will face their reproach, the sins they have committed
against others, and bring them so honestly before God and whoever they have
wronged that the reproach of anything shameful at all would be forgiven and cleansed
and washed away into the sea of God’s forgetfulness, as they say.[5]
I KNOW it would be easy to expand this verse into even more in-depth
prayer for specific situations, for both men and women, based on the real-life
stories of what has happened in our lives. I share this as an example of how
God ministered it to me this morning, even getting me up quite early to direct
me into this kind of prayer. And when I go out on my prayer walk in a bit, I
will pour my heart out all the more for all the men (and women) God brings to
mind.
AND YES, for any women who have read this far, men need you
praying for them like this as well. And pray for women who have been shamed by
men to experience all these things so they can forgive the men who repent of
their shameful acts and seek to reconcile with the people of God.
THE BOTTOM LINE is that God has revealed his heart in his
word with scriptures like this one from Isaiah, and we can pray his word back
to him in confidence that he will guide us into his will as we do so, and then
will answer the prayers we pray.
FOR ME, this has been a morning of prayer that almost
demanded that I share this to try and get others to join me, or to join with
others where you are, so the horrible wounds of shame would be healed, and all
the ground we have surrendered to the evil one by hiding our shame from God
would be restored to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and life-after-life, and
generation-after-generation, would experience the powerful and wonderful work
of Jesus setting the prisoners free.
© 2023
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
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