Praying For One Another To Be Free From Shame
February 7, 2006
So, we keep journeying together – learning to be more loving people and learning to be a more loving community. Believing that it is in our design to be intimately related to each other – and believing that when we live out of that design, the world takes notice and wants to know Jesus – we are pressing in. Last week we focused on the truth that we will love others as we love ourselves. And we started a conversation about how shame and guilt are tools the enemy uses to prevent us from giving or receiving love.
This week as you – as we – press in, I want to ask you to do three things: (1) name your shame; (2) share your shame with someone in our community; and, (3) pray together with others for God to free you from your shame.
Name Your Shame
There is power in naming something. Adam named all the living creatures, and God gave him dominion over them. In Mark 5, Jesus addresses a demon-possessed man and asks the demons for their name. He then exercises power to cast them out. When you go to the doctor, she gives the illness a name and that allows her to prescribe a course of action to cure the illness.
For some people naming guilt or shame is easy. For others it is difficult. One member of the Harbor Community said to me this week, “I’ve finally named my shame. It’s been like a splinter in my mind. I knew something was wrong. I thought I was wrong. Naming my shame has produced a clarity that is allowing me to cooperate with God in taking some corrective action.”
Sharing Your Shame
Sharing your shame is the next step toward freedom. That goes contrary to everything we’ve been taught. The very nature of our shame is that we don’t want others to know about it. The counter-intuitive wisdom of Jesus is that sin loves darkness. In John 3:16-21 Jesus tells us that we address sin by bringing it to the light.
When we keep our shame and guilt in the dark, it is like feeding it. It grows and gains more power in our lives. By hiding it, we rob ourselves of prayer support, wise counsel, and accountability. By bringing our guilt and shame into the light, we do our part to cooperate with God so that he can heal and set us free.
Praying With Others About Our Shame
In Acts 12, Luke tells the story of James’ death and Peter’s imprisonment. In prison Peter is behind two locked gates….chained to two guards….guarded by fourteen more. His fellow church member, James, has been killed. The church has got to be questioning, “Why is this happening?” And notice what the church does. They don’t panic. They don’t get stirred up and start saying things about Peter or the other apostles. They don’t run – or gossip – or look for someone to blame. They don’t wallow in pity.
Instead they pray. The text says they prayed “earnestly.” The word means “stretched out.” This was not a rapid fire short prayer and then on to the grocery shopping variety kind of prayer. They stretched it out, made it last, didn’t stop. And they did it together.
There is a power in honest, heartfelt, stretched out prayers when prayed with other believers. And no wonder. Jesus says that when “two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20). It’s one thing to pray when you are alone. God promises to show up during those secret moments too (Matthew 6:5-6). But Acts 12 describes the power of praying together.
What did this group pray? They were “earnestly praying to God for him [Peter]” (Acts 12:5). They knew there was a battle going on and one of their comrades needed the strongest protection they could give him. Instead of rising up and storming the prison, they fell to their knees and prayed for Peter. Imagine the impact in our lives, if our first and persistent response to the presence of shame and guilt in ourselves and in the lives of others was to earnestly pray.
It was the right thing to do. Paul understood this. He said that there is a battle going on. He said that we need to “stand up against the devil’s schemes” (Ephesians 6:11). Paul tells us to see things differently. The battle isn’t against people we see—those in flesh and blood. It is against “the spiritual forces in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). So he says to get our spiritual armor on. The last piece of the armor is repeated for emphasis. And it is prayer (Ephesians 6:18)
James said the same thing. Whether it is trouble or happiness or sickness, he says “pray for each other” (James 5:16). The result is that healing can take place.
So, it seems that the wisdom of Jesus and the earliest church leaders is to pray alone and together for each other. There is nothing more damaging to our ability to give or receive love than shame and guilt. The enemy uses it to condemn us. But, God wants us to be free from it so that intimate, loving connections can be made.
This week as you prepare for our Saturday night gathering, ask God to give you revelation about your guilt and shame. Get it clear. Write it down. Then ask him to give you courage to share your shame and guilt with your community. We’ll gather on Saturday evening to pray for those who want to be free from their shame and guilt.