Shame Blocks God’s Love…Do you struggle trying to experience or believe in God’s love for you? Most believers understand that God loves them. They can quote the Bible verses. But many believers are never able to receive God's love because they don't think they deserve it. In their mind, God's love is for people who have cleaned up their act.

Have You Created Hell on Earth?

But there's an inherent problem to this kind of thinking: you can't clean up your act without God's love. If you insist on becoming a better person so God can love you, that "carrot" will always be in front of you. You'll never get there. You've consigned yourself to your own personal "hell on earth," that is, separated from God, but you don't even know what you've done because you think you know all about God's love.

Yes, you KNOW about God’s love but you haven't RECEIVED it. So, it’s important that you let the knowledge drop from your head to your heart and bring the healing that's needed.

Can God Love Unholy People?

The problem is: we can accept God's love on our good days...when we are doing well. But we can’t accept God's love when we need it the most...when we screw up and fail miserably. We resist the offer of God's love and forgiveness because we don't think God wants to, or is able to, come into our unholy place.

The Self-Destructive Power of Shame

A good example is something that happened to me 20 years ago. I had done my initial study of shame (which I've written about in “Healing the Hurts of Your Past”). I realized that shame was not just a topic for other people. Shame was MY issue. My dad shamed me and I faithfully passed it on to my kids.

I felt sick about it for three months. It haunted me. I felt like I had passed on an incurable disease that would affect my kids forever. But then it dawned on me that hating myself and being depressed wasn't doing anyone any good. It only made things worse.  

I was letting my shame rob from me again. It robbed my self-worth as a child and adult. It robbed from me as a parent. And even when I recognized what the problem was, it kept robbing from me, sentencing me to a life of guilt for not being the perfect parent.

So I decided to agree with God that I was loved and forgiven. If he could love me in my failure, then I could too. I stopped berating myself and owned my shame. I sat my kids down and told them about how shame had impacted me and subsequently, them. And then I actively sought to not only change my behavior but teach what I learned to others. Instead of wallowing in self-pity I broke the cycle of shame that my dad passed onto me.

I mention this because you might do the same thing...beat yourself up over failure and not allow God to love you and forgive you. But if you want to find the freedom that God has for you, please follow my lead. Just think who you might become if you loved yourself like God does?

If you’d like to read about what I learned about shame, check out my book, Healing the Hurts of Your Past.

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