Discover the transformative power of embracing your past and using it to glorify God. Learn how God can transform your shame and guilt into a source of strength and motivation.
From Shame to Strength: How to Glorify God Using Your Past
Writing can be a joy and a pleasure, but there have been numerous times when it has positioned me smack dab in the middle of vulnerability. First, you must know I can’t write without speaking from experience. I address topics we face as Christian women walking through a broken world. These topics frequently invoke a feeling of being raw and exposed. If you have read through a few of my past articles, you have heard me state, “This is embarrassing.” or “I can’t believe I am saying this, but here I am.”
I have allowed the enemy one too many times to escort me into what I thought was a safe place. His whispers always confirming the visible accuracy of what I objectively witnessed. The enemy, with a subtle and reoccurring plan, offers an attractive passageway to his ploy.
With negativity in one hand and guilt in another, he knows how easily we can slip back into our natural temptations. Satan can shift our perspectives of physical and spiritual worth if we are not on guard. He loves to manipulate us into thinking that God’s plan for our lives is taking too long. He will entice us to join him on a journey of catastrophic thinking.
One of his most useful moves is showing us visible truths that require urgent decisions. Keeping us boxed behind steel prison bars of uncertainty.
Functioning as critical thinkers, we analyze each situation to find the best workable solution. During this time, we overlook Christ as the key to our dilemmas. Satan takes pleasure in being our prison warden. He sits proudly in his watchtower of falsehood. He keeps us securely in his prison of control by speaking his native tongue of lies.
The Tension Between
Each of us has spent time in the wilderness of temptation. Some of us are currently struggling to get out. This place is not new, nor is it concealed. Out of our past hurts and decisions, Satan will provide us with pop-up memories of our past to reassure our ongoing present with shame and guilt.
However, God has a redemptive plan for all of us. It isn’t just for those people we find in the Bible. Scripture can serve as a source of inspiration. People then and people now are dealing with similar struggles.
Let’s take a visit back in time, roughly two thousand years ago. We read about a woman in the Bible who was, in fact, “unlucky with love.” She was an outcast, a sinner, and considered unclean by the standards of her time. We don’t know her name, yet we know her story well. Because of her monumental shift from living in shame to receiving the power of God’s redeeming grace, preachers and the like will continue to tell this story.
You may have tried to guess which testimony I am referring to. It is the one about Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well written in John 4.
Because of her questionable past, we find a woman drawing water from a well at noontime. This is far outside of the norm. To escape the day’s heat, women would journey to the well during morning or evening hours to obtain water. As a woman and an extrovert, I would assume that these vessel-filling times were a social hour of sorts.
Picture it as our modern-day water cooler chit-chat. I can imagine this is when the day’s news was heard and spread. On the other hand, the Samaritan woman, being smart, avoided the daily news. Mainly because her situation would provide enough conversation to support major headlines. Interestingly enough, she was married five times and is presently living with a man she is not married to.
We don’t know if she was the black widow of her time or if her past husbands each decided she was not the woman for them. The martial status of women in the ancient world is much different from today. Without question, there was an imbalance of power when it came to marriage. Divorce was relatively simple for men, but practically impossible for women.
So whether they died, or each decided they wanted out, the Samaritan woman wore this shame in her heart and on her sleeve. It burdened her so much that she avoided the interaction with the women from her town.
An Encounter With Christ Changes Everything
This is when Jesus steps in and changes everything. He and his disciples were on their way to Galilee. However, Jesus had an appointment in the town of Sychar in Samaria at Jacob’s well with a woman He was not about to miss.
Jesus approached the well and sat down for a rest. He directed the disciples to go into town and acquire food for nourishment. As they left, our new friend arrived. And in line with how Jesus operates, He asked her a question. Will you give me a drink?
As smart as the Samaritan woman was, she cleverly posed a rebuttal question. You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? She was right! The hostility between Jews and Samaritans went far back in history. To be a Samaritan, you were a mixed race, not fully Jewish. In the eyes of any law-abiding Jew, you would be considered unclean.
Despite her question of visible accuracy, He ignored her and got right to the point. If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. Jesus was speaking about spiritual fulfillment and not physical water.
As the conversation progressed, the woman began to understand and realized she was talking to the prophesied Messiah. He knew of her past and current situation and she, in utter amazement, left her jar of water and ran into town shouting, Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah? She was not questioning whether He was the Messiah, but rather stating that He will prove it to you by His words.
An encounter with God can change what we can conclude as embarrassing, shameful, or dishonorable.
God Turns Our Past Into Purpose
At that very moment, the Samaritan woman became the first evangelist in the gospel of John. She went and told her people about Jesus and brought them to Him, ensuring them the same opportunity. What was once a burden to bear became a powerful story of holy transformation. She spiritually shifted from shame and dishonor to having freedom and joy in Christ.
Satan will forever try to keep us bound in darkness. The opposition works when God is at work in our lives. You see, when Jesus moves, Satan does, too. His goal is to keep us from aligning with God’s purpose. The further the enemy can keep us set back, the less we glorify God’s goodness. The devil is vicious, but he’s not victorious.
Peter warns all believers in 1 Peter 5:8, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” This should not surprise us. However, when our mind shifts from the saving grace of God to the past mistakes we have made, we dismiss Christ’s sacrifice.
He died on the cross for ALL our sins, ALL our mistakes, and ALL the ugly that once lived inside us. Don’t let the enemy tell you otherwise. My friend, are you willing to step into the freedom that God offers us? Then let’s pray together.
Let’s Pray Together
Dear Heavenly Father,
We come together in prayer to be in your presence today. First and foremost, we ask for your forgiveness for failing to recognize your identity. We know you are the almighty God who can move mountains and turn hearts. But we can forget with the enemy’s hands upon us daily, working opposition. We are sorry for tuning our visible lens onto what the enemy is showing us. Help us to shift our perspectives to see the hope we have in the invisible. You know how easily we can question and doubt your motives when we focus ourselves on the darkness. Today, Father, we choose life over sin. We choose your word over what Satan will try to show us. And we choose to follow you. Give us the strength to do your will by following you daily.
In this, I ask in your precious name, Jesus. Amen!
Read More From Jen Schreiner
- How to Move Forward When You Feel Stuck
- Recognizing Our True Enemy: A Call to Focus on Faith
- The Power of Godly Friendships – 5 Key Qualities
- Why Isn’t God Answering My Prayers
- 5 Astonishing Facts About God
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