JOY : From Shame to New Life

I lie in bed at night, I can’t sleep, my brain won’t stop spinning in circles, replaying, over and over that stupid thing I said during the day. I pray, I know I was wrong, I come to God for forgiveness, and I know he has forgiven me—but still I feel awful. It’s not so much the guilt, but the shame. Every time the shameful feeling surges up I roll over in bed, shudder and push it back down again. I just wish I could sleep, forget about it and wake up in the morning without even a memory of it and hopefully no one else will remember either—because I am so ashamed.

Why can’t I just forget it? Why can’t I just accept forgiveness, from God and others? Why can’t I move on?  I hear a phrase “the Joy of Forgiveness” Joy? That’s not just forgetting, that’s more. I want that.

My first baby was born on the day we celebrated my father's 50^th birthday and some of my labor (that I always intended to be totally private) was spent in front of my extended family opening presents, I struggled hard to hide the pain and embarrassment from them, I hid my face in my husband at every contraction and I remember my satisfaction at my success when towards the end of the evening my brother in law asked if I’d had any contractions yet. But there came the point when I could not hide it anymore. With my babies birth came immense pain, physical and emotional exposure, nakedness, lack of control, blood, vomit, sweat, weakness and exhaustion. Without a doubt birth has been one of the most shameful situations I have been in.

And yet—I feel no shame.

 NONE.

My baby was born and I knew Joy. I stood there within all the pain, shame, mess, exhaustion and nakedness and I held my baby with my husband and knew only joy. An intense joy in the new life God had created.

And after he was born, I told anyone I could about his birth, about the process and the shame and about the Joy and the wonderful thing God had done in our life and his.

It is the same with our spiritual birth. Our sin is the cause of great shame. Intense shame, a shame that Jesus took on himself when he died on the cross in pain, nakedness and exposure. A public shame, a shame that can’t be hidden. My sin caused a shame greater than I can ever imagine.

And yet, like my baby's birth, I no longer need to feel the shame because I “look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who FOR THE JOY that was set before Him endured the cross, DESPISING THE SHAME, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Jesus despised that shame. That shame means nothing to him because of the Joy that came after, the Joy of rising again and sitting with God—the Joy of the Forgiveness of his people, the Joy of new life.

Because of the shame of my sin, the forgiveness from it and the new life God gives me I have great Joy. The shame of sin, the shame of the cross and the birth of new life is all part of the story. I can not have joy of forgiveness without first facing the shame of sin. 

"But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

I can rejoice in forgiveness and glorify God for his grace only when I stop hiding the shame of my sin. I can have so much joy and wonder that I tell anyone I can about the shame I had, the process of change God has worked and is working in me and the Joy of forgiveness and new life he has given me and continues to give me everyday.

That Joy is so intense that the shame, the shame that all can see is no longer felt. Jesus does not feel the shame, and neither should I.