When You Believe in God but are Ashamed of Your Past
- Scott Bullerwell
- 23 minutes ago
- 12 min read
I have a confession to make. It’s been long in coming, I admit. It’s not the kind of confession I’m proud to report. I can still feel the weight of my round mother sitting on my 9-year-old chest, while I tried to convince her that the half-eaten bag of cookies I had hidden under my bed was really my brother’s doings – not mine. “Confession is good for the soul,” she would say – trying to be serious. So, I’d like my soul to be as healthy as possible. Besides, I think I’ve carried my heavy conscience far too long. “Yes, I was the one who ate the cookies, not my brother.”
There are few people who have not experienced shame at some point in their life. And let me be clear here, I am talking about ‘shame’ — not ‘guilt’.
Guilt ― is when I know I have done something wrong;
Shame ― is when I say ‘There is something wrong with me.’
Guilt says ― ‘I’ve made a mistake’
Shame says ― ‘I am a mistake’
Guilt says ― ‘What I did was not good’
Shame says ― ‘I am no good’
They exist! Folks weighed down by shame ― the shame of irresponsible debt, secret addiction, sexual abuse and endless other things. When this cycle of shame over a regrettable past is allowed to keep claiming victory ... it swallows up our identity and throws a dark veil over our present and future as well. This is NOT what God intends, for we are NOT our sins and we are NOT what other people have done to us. We ARE who God says we are.
This is where I draw encouragement from the Book of Philippians, because time and again Paul points me to Jesus and gives me confidence in God as I work to make progress in my sanctification.
“For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work among you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6)
“Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (2:12-13).
“I can do all this through him who gives me strength” (4:13).
And then comes one of my favourite Pauline statements: “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (3:13-14). More about this passage in a moment.
The Book of Philippians is the 11th book in the New Testament. It is often referred to as the “Hymn of Joy” ─ and for good reason. The music in these 4 chapters is against the backup sounds of loneliness, poverty and pain. That’s because ─ the letter is written by a prisoner, the Apostle Paul himself. He is in a tight jam, but you would hardly know it.
While in prison, Paul writes the happiest book in the
entire Bible – Philippians, reminding us to not allow
circumstances to steal our joy.
Paul is in prison in Rome (or Caesarea or Ephesus), for the sake of the Gospel. Earlier the church at Philippi had sent Epaphroditus to see Paul and bring to him a gift. While visiting Paul, Epaphroditus contracted some sort of life-threatening illness. It was so serious he almost went toes up (2:27)! Thankfully, he recovered, and when he did, he returned home with this letter from the apostle, who expressed (1) his gratefulness to the Philippians (2) his upcoming trial and (3) and his optimism in the face of death. The date is about 62 A.D.
Truthfully, the entire book of Philippians deserves a fresh reading, to get the full impact of the apostle’s letter to a church he had visited and planted in the winter of 49-50 AD. 1 Comprised of four chapters, about 1600 words, the entire book can be read in about 14-16 minutes ... Chapter Three, in about 2:33 minutes ... and Chapter Three, verses 12-14 no more than 30 seconds.
If you feel emotionally crippled from past events in your life ― secrets that have left you fighting depression, inadequacy and self-hatred ... then I encourage you to invest 30 seconds in yourself right now ... and read a deeply powerful, psychologically liberating message; one that encourages all of us to dump the heavy baggage of previous mistakes or cruel experiences and lay claim to a life of graceful forward motion. Here it is ...
12 Not that I have already grasped it all or have already become perfect, but I press on if I may also take hold of that for which I was even taken hold of by Christ Jesus. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not regard myself as having taken hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
(Philippians 3:12-14)
You have to love Philippians — full of warmth
and brightness, even when trouble bubbles to
the surface in Chapters 1, 3 and 4.
In Philippians 3, Paul explains that his present life is a pursuit in a new direction and he has not yet been brought to that perfect completeness to which he has aspired. Using the metaphor of a foot race, Paul describes his Christian life with a couple of helpful truths ... truths which victims of past shame will find life-giving, seems to me.
1) Something has to happen to US (v. 12)
“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”
You gotta love Paul! In a very honest moment, he confesses he’s not there yet. This confession is seen in the phrase, “I press on” – a phrase he uses twice (vv. 12, 14). “Listen,” says the apostle, “I’m not where I want to be, but I’m going to keep moving in that direction.” In our spiritual life, direction makes all the difference — just as it does in ordinary life. After all, it makes no sense to visit Port Renfrew (“Tall Trees Capital of Canada), British Columbia (pop. 250), if you really want to go to Witless Bay, Newfoundland (pop. 1640) to see Puffins, the “parrots of the sea.” Yes – direction is important.
The Apostle Paul reminds us that spiritual freedom comes from intentionally releasing past regrets,
failures, and even past successes, and instead
"straining toward what is ahead" and pressing
into Christ's calling for YOUR life.
Paul’s words “I press on” lead to that all-important phrase in v. 12 “Christ Jesus took hold of me.” Something happened to Paul and we can probably guess what that was. On his way to Damascus (150 miles NE of Jerusalem) to threaten Christians ... the hunter became the hunted. In mid-mission and mid-stride, he gets knocked off his horse in Acts 9 ... his arrest warrants to bring Christians to Jerusalem scatter in the wind. God intervened, and in that moment made him the means of construction, not destruction. It was a seminal moment!
Now Paul’s ultimate purpose is to ‘live out God’s mission’
Now the apostle is to become God’s instrument of the Gospel
Now Saul – turned Paul, is expected to grab onto and pursue heaven’s divine purposes, not his own.
To frame this in the language of the military, Paul is to become God’s weapon ... so he needs to re-acquire his target ... but it’s a different target ... not one that brings death, but life ... one that focuses on proclaiming salvation to the Gentiles and people of Israel ... not playing cop to every imagined Jewish grievance. A new direction!
In Luke 5 a leper comes to Jesus. “Lord if you are willing, you can make me clean.” He did not say "Lord, I demand that you make me clean … I have a right to your healing power … you owe it to me to heal my leprosy". After all, we are all lost sinners ─ so frankly, the Lord owes us nothing, absolutely nothing! Surprisingly Jesus replied, “I am willing” and says to the leper – “You’re clean”. Jesus took hold of the leper and touched him (v. 13). And when he did, something happened to the leper.
I hope you heard that? “You’re clean” ... and said by Jesus no less! It’s the same announcement that comes to us the day we invite Christ into our life. No longer are we unclean ... unworthy ... dirty ... defiled! This is not to ignore that some of yester-years garbage moments remain ... or that unresolved past traumas still dance in your head at night, or that your nervous system frequently feels stuck in survival mode. Nevertheless, I am fully persuaded that these sorts of towering walls can be breached in the power of Christ. I mean, Paul would always be the ‘killer of Stephen’, in that he played a direct role in his death (Acts 8:1; 22:20) ... but that past shame did not define his future. So, it is with us! We are forgiven! We have value! We need to believe that we are capable, moldable, and bound by the unlimited love of God who can help us break free of any cycle of shame that has been a part of our life.
If you watch Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, (SVU) you will remember that Christopher Meloni, that popular actor who played that iconic NYPD Detective Elliott Stabler (1999-2011) — got written out of the script. Well, God does not do that with us.
We need to believe that when God said we are a new creation, He knew what He was talking about. “Wherefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
We need to accept the authority of Scripture that says, “There is no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1)
We need to believe that God does not make junk ... and I remind us of the truth of Ephesians 2:10 ... "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."
My recommendation: Lose your sight [of past shame] and gain your vision [of new possibilities].
If you need to talk this over with someone first,
the Apostle Paul has some experience.
It is easy to look at our mistakes and think that we are useless to God. Not so! No life is so messed up ... so broken ... so physically imperfect that it cannot be restored into a beautiful life — one that will bring help to others and glory to God. Like the apostle Paul, I encourage you to think of your Damascus Road encounter, confession and invitation from God ... as the start of a turnaround in your life. Reject what your shame says ... begin to hear what God says. Let Jesus “take hold of you”. Like he did Paul.
2) Something has to happen to our PAST (v. 13-14)
“One thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead ...”
We need to accept what we cannot change! We do not move forward by looking in the rear-view mirror. We can learn from the past, but we should not (cannot) live in the past.
Some years ago, I was speaking at a church in another province on the theme of forgiveness. Unknown to me was a person in the audience taking great exception to what I was saying ― an occupational hazard that goes with pastoring, as many pastors can testify to.
After the service, this lady made a bee-line straight for me. No hello; no introduction, no small-talk. It was quite the conversation. Long story short, she had been sexually abused 1st by her father ... and then her brother ― and so my message on ‘forgiveness’ did not sit well with her.
Someone once asked their friend: "Hey, why are you looking so depressed for?” “I’ve been thinking about my future.” “Your future? What makes it look so hopeless?" "My past." Whether true or another urban legend, the illustration described this lady. Admittedly, it is difficult for me to get my head around such a devastating personal experience. I could have said “I understood,” ... but that would have been a lie.
Sitting there in the pew, my message on ‘forgiveness’ was to this lady, like a matador waving the proverbial ‘red flag’ (muleta – red cape) to excite the bull into charging — which she metaphorically did as soon as I gave the benediction. “I live my past every day,” she declared. Her pain was obvious ... too vivid to ignore ... too deep to describe ... too personal to share, except in snippets!
I said, “It would be nice to simply hit the delete button, to regain your innocence, virginity, and naivety, but it does not work that way in life.”
Now, I am not a therapist, make no claim to being a counsellor (let alone a good one), and factually speaking, those who know me best would likely say I am more a “Son of Thunder” (James, John) than a “Son of Consolation (Barnabus). I don’t disagree! “Say what you mean; mean what you say” is as close to truth-telling as I can get. So, after listening politely and sympathetically ... I offered “If you hold to your past, you will shrivel up and die inside.” I mean, it was not like I could validate her destructive policy, or affirm the sin of non-forgiveness.
Nor was I trying to be callously indifferent to her pain or suffering. But my words set off a nuclear bomb in her spirit – she started to weep and fell like a rag doll to the carpet.
With the fall of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3), all of us have been born into a war zone. Add to this, other explosive devices like failed marriage ... financial disaster ... controlling / addictive behaviour ... dysfunctional family ... death of a cherished loved one ... and physical, sexual or verbal abuse —— and unless we learn how to walk in freedom, these bullets are going to do a lot of serious damage. “I have two suggestions,” Paul seems to say:
A) First - Remember your Past (v. 13)
The phrase "forgive and forget" is not found in the Bible! While we are commanded to “forgive one another” (Matt. 6:14; 18:22; Eph. 4:32) ─ which by the way is a decision of the will ... to forgive is NOT to forget. We might fail to recall … overlook … even intentionally neglect what someone has done to us in the past ─ but God gave us memories for a reason ─ and all of our memories (good and bad) go to one mind, one place.
When Paul says (v. 13) “forgetting what is behind” he is not talking about obliterating the memory of the past ― because he just recalled it in vv. 5-7. He is talking about a conscious decision to not let the past absorb his attention and impede his progress.
“Our instructions in the New Testament all add up to the necessity of looking forward in faith—not spending our time looking back.”
A.W. Tozer
B) Second - Disarm your Past (v. 14)
We should not act as if our history never happened or does not matter – because frankly, it does. Writing “... and straining toward what is ahead,” (v. 13) the apostle is reminding us that, that ‘history’... his history, has been displaced by his present, all-consuming preoccupation of moving forward “toward the goal to win the prize...” (v. 14).
In his former life, Paul persecuted the church. When Stephen was stoned, Acts 8:1 says, “And Saul was there, giving approval to his death.” Pretty heavy stuff, seems to me! Yet Paul later came to understand that his past shame was a weapon that could be disarmed. He does it here by talking about his past (Acts 8:5 – 7) And he does it in Galatians 1:13 as well.
“You know what I was like when I followed the Jewish religion--how I violently persecuted God's church. I did my best to destroy it.” That’s a heavy thought!
When Jesus faced death by crucifixion, we are told in Hebrews 12:2 that …
“He saw the joy ahead of him, so he endured death on the cross and ignored the disgrace it brought him.” (God’s Word transl.).
The NIV says … Jesus “endured the cross and scorned the shame”
Do you see it? Jesus (a) embraced the suffering AND (b) rejected the shame that others were trying to pin on him. Others treated Him as someone with little or no value ... but it was all a lie ... a lie that Jesus refused to accept. We tend to do the opposite in life, don’t we? We reject the suffering — we deny it ... run from it ... and tune it out — but we embrace the shame as if it were the truth. Shame, however is a lie!
We do not forget our past, but we can disarm it — by talking about it. When we do, it eventually will become a museum piece ... a place where we can visit whenever we want to ... but it will have no power over our life. Something has to happen to your PAST.
So where does all of this get us then? The answer is located in Philippians 3:14. To quote Paul one final time, we “... win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
On the Damascus Road Paul had been blinded by light, and knocked off his horse by love. Now, years later,
in Philippians 3 we have a front row seat to the consequences of his reset: an expansive vision
of the all-surpassing affection of God.
Paul is committed to his ongoing spiritual maturity. His devotion is to press “up” because that is where the call came from — God’s throne. He is not willing to allow his moral and spiritual progress to be hindered by the burdens of memory. He is not willing to fix his mind so permanently on the PAST that he has no strength or courage left for the FUTURE. He is not willing to relax his effort because he knows that God has called him to ... a bright future ... a tremendous hope ... an exalted destiny. It does not get any better than that. “Only Saying ...”
1. The city was named for Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great (339 BC). Four centuries later Philippi would become the first church the apostle Paul planted in Europe.
2. The Hebrew verb “remember” (zakhor) is prominent in the Bible ─ found about 169x. Often it is found as a command. Its purpose was not to make historians out of anyone, but to remind us all of God’s intervention in history.