The Lie: "A Slave to Shame" The Truth: "Freedom in Christ"

Shame.

This is one of the greatest lies the enemy has ever told a believer. It is also one of the greatest lies we allow ourselves to be held captive to. It binds us to our past sins, it holds us at constant war with guilt and enslaves us to the enemy's deceit.

Shame held me captive for so long. I found myself carrying the unwillingness to accept that I was forgiven because I listened to so many lies that the enemy was whispering. I believed so many lies that he was feeding me that I began to speak them over myself. Before I knew it, I stopped believing His truth about my sins and could barely look at myself in the mirror.

When I first became a believer, I was overcome with the thought that I was not only forgiven, but I was made clean.

1 John 1:9 (esv) proclaims, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just

to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Psalm 103:12 (esv) says, "as far as the east is from the west, so

far does He remove our transgressions from us."

These verses were so powerful to me. Before I was a believer, I knew right from wrong and I had a moral compass. It wasn't long before a conversation with someone brought back a deeply rooted past pain and opened the door for the enemy to swoop in and start feeding me lies.

I am going to focus on the sin that was most used and the hardest to find freedom in as I fought the battle from shame to freedom. This wasn't the only lie I believed, but it is the one that crippled me the most.

Early in my teen years, I was sexually assaulted. I won't go into all the details and I won't rehash the memory, but I will tell you that this broke something in me, very deep and took something from me that I did not completely understand or realize.

I became very sexual active in my teen years. I don't know if I just was doing what I thought I needed to because I didn't want to lose a boyfriend, I thought I was in love and/or I was just trying to fill some kind of void. No matter what the reason or the why, I was doing things that I didn't fully understand the repercussions of.

When I started dating Aaron and realized that the feelings I had for him were more than anything that I had ever felt before, I knew that I needed to fill him in on my past - at this point in time, I did not fill him in on my assault, but as I told him about my past physical relationships and found out that he did not have a sexual history, it was the first time that shame found its place in my life. Aaron never gave me a reason to feel this way. He was understanding and forgiving...truly, I could not have been more fortunate to have him, but we too started a physical relationship before marriage and before long, we were expecting and married.

It was not until years later that faith found its place in our life. Once I began to learn and read the Bible, I realized just how much my sexual decisions grieved Him, but I believed the verses above....then the conversation came into play...

I don't believe for one second the person that started the conversation meant any judgement or malice. I had shared my testimony and they asked me if it was hard to reconcile my past decisions with my current faith. I had never thought about my sins that deeply once I had found His grace and forgiveness.

I found myself consumed with the thoughts and before I knew it, I was questioning everything. Was Aaron really hurt by my past choices? What was it like for him knowing that I was the only person he had shared that type of relationship with, but that his wife couldn't say the same? Did the people in our Christian circle judge me because they waited until marriage? I could make a list a mile long of the questions I let sink into my head, but the enemy had a foothold and he used that foothold like a revolving door to shame me, to guilt me, to make me feel like I was dirty. I mean, why else would someone have felt it was okay to assault me? That was where I lost myself.

I didn't have the understanding and mentoring to know that what I should have done was seek His truth. To fill my mind with His Word and wash myself in the grace and forgiveness He gave to me. Instead, I began to lose myself. I began to look at myself in the way the enemy wanted me to believe and I began to look at every other bad decision, sin and convince myself that they too were too much for God.

For years, I was filled with anxiety about my past choices, when I wronged in the present and nothing Aaron said helped and I began to struggle in my walk with Him.

For years, I hid this struggle. For years, my relationship with Him was back and forth. For years, I doubted my salvation, my freedom, my place...

But God....

And isn't that the way it always is? It wasn't that He hadn't been trying to reach through the lies for years, it was that I wasn't able to see past the wall I had allowed the enemy to help me build. The deceit that I let the enemy creep into my heart, but most of all the cloak of shame, the scarlet letter that I thought everyone could see...one day it just became unbearable and I began to break. Why could I not find what everyone else had in Him? By this time in my life, I had met people who had been freed from so many things...why could I not find the same freedom? Why was He not giving that to me?

What I needed, what I didn't understand was how deeply important of a weapon I had at my disposal all alone. His Word. It wasn't that I never read my Bible...I just had never learned how to use it.

Through an amazing teacher, He began to show me how alive His Word was. Through a powerful weekend, He gave me the breakthrough I needed to began to combat the shame I had covered myself with for so long.

I wish I could say that it was a fast a furious clearing. I wish I could say that I found myself free from those chains in an instant...I can't. But what I can say is that the journey I have walked through to find freedom has brought me to a place that has made me realize just how much trauma plays into what I believe about myself. Triggers can push me into an unhealthy mindset when I am not in a daily relationship with Him. I need daily Truth. Sometimes the anxiety creeps in and my depression can take over, but what I continue to learn is that to combat the lies of the enemy whose only desires to keep me from walking in His truth is to use the truth to fight back.

When I live in submission to Him, I can resist the enemy.

James 4:7 (esv) says, "Submit yourselves therefore to God.

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."

When I remind myself of His truths, I can resist the cloak of shame.

Romans 8:1 (esv) says, "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ

Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit."

2 Corinthians 5:7 (esv) says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have

passed away; behold, all things have become new."

I am free.

Let me say it again, I am free because Jesus came to the earth to set me free from the bondage of my sin and shame so that I may live wholly accepted and loved in Him.

I am a child of the King and that doesn't mean I am perfect or that I do not still sin, it means that I am forgiven and washed clean. It is when I don't believe in the Truth of His Word, when I don't daily spend time in that truth that I can become stuck in the revolving door of believing the enemy.

I am free. I am clean. I am new. I am whole in Him.

True freedom can only be found in Jesus. It is the only freedom that will sustain us, save us and make us see just how amazing life can be when you walk in a purpose that is greater than anything you can find in this world.