Talk
INTRODUCTION
BRO. AUDEE VILLARAZA:
I want to introduce our complicated and technical series called
FEEL: Why Your Emotions Matter.
While there are some people who are good at managing their emotions, some of us are not very good at that. Why? We have two reasons:
- We have trouble labelling our
- We have trouble leading our
Those two problems go hand-in-hand. You cannot lead something that you’re unable to label. If you cannot label it, you cannot lead it. What you cannot name, you cannot tame. Our goal in the next five Sundays is to learn how to navigate our emotions– not just to label and lead them, but so we can love God, others, and ourselves better.
Our goal at the end of our series is that when you feel like praising God, then you praise Him. When you feel like saying “Amen,” then you shout it.
We Filipinos are so shy about our emotions. We learned from our parents that whenever we expect guests at home, we need to dress up the place because it’s nakakahiya– shameful– when we’re not properly dressed.
We are afraid of what might people say. It’s our culture. But we want to stray away from that. We want to get in touch with how we feel.
Jesus Grappled with Emotions
Emotions have been there since time immemorial. It started even before the Creation of the world. It’s not a 15th century invention.
In the Old Testament, in the Book of Psalms,
David had so many extreme emotions.
One time, he was joyful. The next time, he was praising the Lord. The next minute, he was lamenting.
That’s why lament is a word that means prayer through intense pain. That’s why you see David grappling through his emotions.
But so did Jesus. The Bible says that Jesus grieved over the death of His friend,
Lazarus. The Bible says that Jesus was enraged (when he saw people turning the Temple grounds into a marketplace). So, He turned over the tables at the Temple.
Jesus felt emotions.
But so does God. The Bible says that the Lord felt anguished when the Israelites turned away from him.
People have two extreme spectrums when it comes to emotions.
1. Logical
These are for people who feel through their mind. They always have a rational explanation to what they feel.
2. Emotional
These are for people who basically feel everything. They are those who like to speak out what’s in their mind. They wear their heart on their sleeves.
Two Kinds of Emotions:
a. Cry like a waterfall
b. Erupt like a volcano
There is nothing wrong with both emotions. There are those who don’t belong to any of those two– people who have mixed emotions. Sometimes, they’re logical. Sometimes, they’re emotional.
We want to know how to sort our feelings so we will know how to communicate them, how to embrace them, and how to learn from them so we can bring even the most difficult pains to the Lord.
BRO. BO SANCHEZ:
We’re going to talk about shame today. My one big message is:
You are already loved.
Where did shame start? It’s in the first two pages of the Bible.
We know the story of the Genesis where God creates man and woman. He loves them and wants them to rule with Him. He makes them in His image and likeness. But they listen to a serpent who plants the seed of distrust in them.
(God forbids them to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden of Eden– Genesis.They disobey Him. Prompted by the serpent, they eat the fruit and gained knowledge– like, they were naked.)
The serpent says, “Your God is not for you. Your God is against you.
Your God is keeping stuff from you.” And they believe the serpent.
Let’s read that in Genesis 3:7:
This is the first time in the Bible where shame appears. This is right after the man and the woman disobeyed God because they did not trust Him.
They suddenly felt ashamed of their nakedness. So, they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. They hid themselves.
Shame Threatens Your Identity
So, why do you hide? Why during the Coronavirus Disease (COVID) Pandemic you hid– using your mask. And then you isolated yourself. Why? Because there was a virus that was going to harm you.
When people feel shame, they want to hide.
And why do they hide? Because there is something out there that will attack them.
Shame signals that your identity is being threatened.
But in our story, who were they trying to hide from?
When I was a kid, when I read this story, I imagined God with a ruler…
That was what my Math teacher held in her hand when I made mistakes in Math. She’d be angry and brandish the stick…
I imagined God holding a ruler, shouting, “Where are you? Aha!
You ate the fruit!”
I imagined God like that..
But if you read the original Hebrew of the text, you’ll note there was no such inflection– there was no tone in God’s voice in that regard. No.It was a father looking for his child. “Son, let’s play…” That kind of tone.
And this is how the man answered:
What Is Shame?
My Friends, shame will always be based on a lie.
Imagine, you are hiding from a God who loves you.
And you think, “He might harm me… so, I’m going to hide.
Friends, it is so difficult if someone comes up to you and says, “You’re a failure.” If your teacher tells you, “You’re good for nothing.” If your mother tells you, “You’re stupid.”
But because it was spoken to you by another person, you have the urge to debate with that person. Even if you don’t debate face-to-face with that person, in your mind, you will say, “What does he know? I’m better than this.
Yes, I failed in the exam, Teacher, but don’t call me a failure. I just failed. But I am not a failure. ”
You can debate with the person.
But this is the problem: If you tell yourself, “You’re a failure, you’re stupid…” it’s 10x harder to remove self-labels than to remove the labels of other people give to you.
The problem is this: You begin to feel ashamed of who you are — because shame is based on the lie.
What is shame? Yes, shame is threatening your identity… But shame is also questioning, doubting your worth.
Let’s read this definition:
Extend your hands towards the Word:
Thy Word is a Lamp unto my feet and a Light unto my path.
There’s one thing that you will learn in the next six talks of this series. God created us with emotions. He could have created us as robots.
If He made us as robots, we would have been more efficient. But why did God give us emotions?
I have a hunch. Every emotion has a purpose– even the darkest ones.
For many people, emotions like happiness, gratitude, and peace are all good emotions. But emotions like anger, fear, and worry are all bad emotions.
We need to re-program our mind and say, “No, there are no such things as bad emotions.”
There are only bad ways of leading them. Each emotion carries a gift. What is the gift that shame wants to give to you?
When you feel shame, run to God and explore if it’s a real threat– based on truth or based on lie.
4 Prisons of Shame
The problem with shame, the more you believe in the lie, this is what happens: 4 Prisons of Shame.
1. Obsessive Perfectionism
Not always, but many times, a person is a perfectionist because of shame.
When you feel you’re not worthy, you strive hard to become better and better — to be perfect.
When you’re perfect, you can give a sigh of relief: “I’m now worthy.”
2. Shame-Based Identity
When shame becomes a fixed mindset, this is bad.
This was my life for 20 years. When I was younger, I woke up one day with this dreaded feeling of utter sadness. I couldn’t point a finger on what I was feeling. So, I would dive into work and I would be very busy with serving God.
At the end of the day, I would feel exhausted. I would go home and I would go to sleep.
When I wake up the next day, it would be there again– sitting at the bottom of my gut.
As time went on, I realized what it was. It was shame. I realized that I actually felt ashamed that I was alive. I was ashamed of who I was.
I researched and I found out that most victims of molestation have a shame-based identity.
I was molested when I was eight years old. Irrationally, I was blaming myself for why it happened. A kid is not very logical. As a child, I thought that I must had done something bad. That’s why I deserved to have been abused.
But thanks be to God, in the process of God loving me, God corrected the lie. God healed me.
You don’t have to be molested as a child to feel shame.
I see it everywhere. I see it in that little girl who comes from a broken home.
I see it in that little boy who grew up with absentee parents. I see it in that young woman who had an alcoholic father and a narcissistic mother…
Feel your pain but don’t wallow in it. Go to God and be naked before Him with your emotions. By wrestling with God, you begin to label your emotions.
Some people tell me that they have an anger problem — but their real problem is that they have a fear of problem and they’re afraid of admitting it.
3. Blaming
When you are ashamed, you will start to blame.
Eve did that with the serpent. Adam did that with Eve.
We all do that when we’re ashamed. At the end of blaming others, you begin to blame yourself.
There’s a big difference between taking responsibility and self-blame.
Guilt is good. It’s knowing that you’ve done something wrong. The worst thing that can happen to you is when you have no guilt. When your conscience doesn’t bother you. Hitler did not feel guilty for killing six million Jews. Corrupt politicians do not feel guilty.
4. The Poison of Isolation
When you feel shame, you want to isolate. You want to cut off yourself from other people and from God. But when you do that, you’re cutting off yourself from the sources that can heal you. What you need to do is to do the opposite thing.
The truth is that you are already loved, accepted, celebrated, and blessed. You are worthy.
The Truth
A friend of mine gave me this pen with my name engraved on it. It’s P2,000.00. It’s expensive!
Of course, I was grateful.
A few months later, I gave a talk in a company. This company gave me another pen.
They said, “Bro. Bo, thank you for giving the talk.
This pen is a Montblanc pen.”
They said it with a heavy emphasis on “Montblanc.”
I googled it and I found out that the pen was worth P20,000.00– which happened to be their cheapest one.
I studied the technology of both pens and they’re almost the same technology. But why is the other one way more expensive than the other?
The answer is because of the manufacturer. The maker of Montblanc decided that they would not make pens lower than P20,000.00.
Why? Because they want to.
I have an announcement to make. Your Manufacturer said that you are a person of worth.
You may be flawed but He says, “I’m going to repair you.”
You may be dirty now but He says, “I’m going to cleanse you. Do you know how valuable you are? My Son Jesus left Heaven for you– for you are more precious than all of Heaven. Jesus left His throne for you. My Son Jesus, He died on a cross for you. Why? Your price tag is so much higher than His own life.”
This is the truth. The Devil is lying to you by saying you’re not worthy, you’re stupid, you’re a failure, and you’re a nobody.
You have a God who is saying, “You are already loved, accepted, celebrated, and blessed.”
In Isaiah 49:16, God says:
“Father in Heaven, Thank You that we can just not wallow in shame and in the lie. But we can be immersed and marinated in the truth that You made me beautiful and amazing. You made me celebrated and accepted and blessed. Thank You, Father, that I can love you today. Amen.”
