May 23, 2025 • 31 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to pray dot com. I'm Ben Peterson, the CEO
and founder of Engage Your Destiny. Please follow this profile
from more engaging content that we have crafted specifically for
military veterans and the warriors at heart. Also head to
our website to see how you can support ministry to
our active duty military. Now I charge you to take
(00:21):
today's message and use it to engage your destiny. Every
single day, the enemy is trying to steal from your life.
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He's trying to kill your destiny. He's trying to destroy
the dreams that God has for your life every single day.
And so, reading from Ephesian six, that says, now, my
beloved ones, and y'all can look at this up on
the screen. We got the scriptures here. I have saved
these most important truths for last. Be supernaturally infused with
the strength through your life union with the Lord Jesus,
and stand victorious with the force of his explosive power
(01:05):
flowing in and through you. Who wants some of that,
let's freaking go put on God's complete set of armor
provided for us, so that you will be protected as
you fight against the evil strategies of the accuser. All right,
listen to me. Now, your hand to hand combat, say
hand to hand combat. Your hand to hand combat is
not with human beings, y'all, but it is with the powers,
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the highest principalities and authorities operating in rebellion in the
heavenly realms. For they are a powerful class of demon
gods and evil spirits that hold this dark world in bondage.
Are y'all hearing this? This is what we are battling.
This is why we battle anxiety, suicidal thoughts, depression, issues
with addiction, all this kind of stuff, all right, And
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so now getting into the armor of God, which we've
been teaching on for the last several weeks. Because of this,
you must where all, say all all the armor that
God provided so you're protected as you confront the slanderer,
which is the devil. For you are destined. Say destined.
Say destined. You are destined for all things, and you
(02:11):
will rise victorious. Say victorious. Let's go, bro. Put on
truth as a belt to strengthen you as you stand
in triumph. Put on holiness as a protective armor that
covers your heart. Stand on your feet alert, and you'll
always be ready to share the blessings of peace in
every battle. Take faith as your wrap around shield, for
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it's able to extinguish the blazing arrows coming at you
from the evil one. And now embrace the power of
Salvation's full deliverance like a helmet to protect your thoughts
from lies. Say lies. So what we are on tonight
is the helmet of salvation, the helmet that protects our minds.
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Who now, y'all the words salvation legitimate means wholeness, say wholeness.
Now for those who I want you to have your
phones out. I'm actually a pastor. I like having phones out.
I just call myself a pastor. I'm scared. Now all right,
open up your notes. I want you writing stuff down,
all right, retaining information so that we are contributors, not
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just consumers. We don't consume around here. We contribute. We
go to war together. So I want you to write,
Salvation equals wholeness. Salvation equals wholeness. And what God is
promising here through the helmet of Salvation is wholeness in
our minds. So now I want you to read, Salvation
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equals wholeness in my mind, Wholeness in my mind. Now
look up at me, who in here can honestly say
that they feel completely whole in their mind. We got one.
My hand's not up. I feel like my mind is
under assault constantly. Hull, absolutely, Okay, this is the battle
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that we are in, and what we are striving and
getting closer to Jesus for is to have wholeness in
our minds. Now, in warfare, psychological warfare refers to the
tactics tactics intended to reduce in opponent's morale and their
willingness to fight. So all psychological warfare is we want
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to beat you down and make you lose your willingness
to fight, and this includes tactics that relate to fear
and intimidation. Now, going back thousands of years, who's heard
of the Roman Empire right conquering the world all right now?
When they got to Africa and they were trying to
take parts of Africa, you know what the Africans used.
They used war elephants, like legit Lord of the Ring style.
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They took elephants and they would mount up on these elephants,
all this armor and all this kind of stuff to
terrify the Roman armies because they had never seen elephants before.
And when they realized that they couldn't match the strength
of the Roman army. They used fear to intimidate them.
This is the earliest form of psychological warfare. Then fast
forward to the Mongols. Who's heard of the Mongols conquering Asia?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Right?
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Brutes like brutal, brutal, brutal people, Okay. And what they
would do is they gained a reputation of how they
would savagely rip apart villages, and so they would go
into a village or a city or a town and
they would basically say, look, we're gonna come and kill y'all,
and we're taking everything. But if you don't want that
to happen, you can just surrender your allegiance to us
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and we will conquer you and no one will die.
And a lot of people did it. So they would
just come in and use fear and intimidation and then
get everything they wanted, y'all. Tracking fast forward to World
War One? Who is here? When I talked about World
War one a few weeks ago, wasn't that fun? I
love talking about war? So talking about World War One?
This was the first time that they would actually use propaganda.
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They would drop leaflets on the opposing side of other
armies that would have hey, and it would say this
is from our own people, So like the Americans would
drop things on the Germans that was written in Germans
saying we're losing on the front. Everyone's dying and we're
losing the war. To cause fear and intimidation, y'all, tracking
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these are the weapons of warfare. Now this is a
very very simple question. But what emotion do all of
those things bring out? Fear? All right? Now, who remembers
back to our training. Fear, right, Fear has the power
to hijack the brain. Fear has the power to take
over our nervous systems. Okay, Now, what's fascinating about fear.
(06:43):
We're gonna put a little acronym up here. It's fear.
You know what fear stands for? F everything and run.
Has anybody ever felt that way? F everything and run? Right,
That's where everything when it comes to fear, everything you
see in your life, everything you see in the world,
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everything that takes place, It begins as a thought. We
have a thought, okay, which invokes a feeling of fear,
which then leads us into shame, I'm sorry, sin, which
then brings out the emotion of shame, y'all. Tracking everything
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begins as a thought, then we have this sense of fear,
which then leads us into committing sin, and then the
feeling of shame. Okay, And what we are diving into
tonight is shame. Shame. I want you to write that
word down, shame. I gotta tell y'all, I had a
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horrible morning, like my mind was off. I was struggling
in so many different ways, and I know the enemy
was trying to get at me because of how much
he does doesn't want shame broken off of our lives.
And I'm going to get more into my story a
little bit later in this message, but I'm telling y'all,
shame is a stronghold that we have to break if
we're going to live in freedom. And I have been
a prisoner with shame for thirty years, and I would
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say it's only been within the last few months that
I've been getting set free from shame. Amen. And I
want to bring to you the things that I'm learning
that are setting me free from shame. And I have
felt more freedom in my personal life than I ever
have than I ever have. So here's what's key, all right,
I want y'all write this down and go to this
next one. So guilt and shame were can in hand.
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They were can in hand. Okay, Guilt says I did
something bad, all right, We go look at porn. Afterwards,
we feel some guilt, all right, I shouldn't have done that,
all right. Shame says I am bad, y'all. Tracking. This
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is fundamental in the way that we do life because
we experience guilt and shame on a daily basis. So
what does guilt say and what does shame say? Are
y'all seeing the difference? So what I'm proposing to you tonight,
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and what we're going to dive into to find freedom,
is that you can make a mistake and do something
quote unquote bad and not let it become your identity.
Y'all tracking. I have lived in the identity of shame
since I can remember having a conscious thought. And what's
fascinating is that shame is the first emotion ever talked
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about in the Bible. How important is a foundation for
a building, a house, it's everything. The first emotion ever
talked about in the Bible is not joy, it's not love,
It's not any of the things that you would think
The first emotion ever mentioned was shame, and it says
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an Genesis two twenty five, and the man and his
wife were both naked and they were not ashamed. So
our question for tonight is how does the enemy use
shame to attack our minds and rob our destinies. I
want you to write this question down, because this is
what we're here to solve. How does the enemy use
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shame to attack our minds and rob our destinies? Number one,
write this down. Shame assaults our identity. Shame assaults our identity.
Who's been Aerosolt school. You know what it's like to
assault something, right. Shame is the assault on your identity
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of Aerosolt school. Your level of assault an Aerosolt school.
That is shame coming on your identity. All right, I'm
gonna read about ten. I'm gonna read the story of
when sin first entered into the world from Genesis. Okay, Now,
it says the serpent was more crafty than any of
the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said
to the woman, Did God really say you must not
(11:03):
eat from the tree of the garden? Who knows? This story?
Got some people heard it? Right? I feel like in
the last few weeks, I've read it for the first time.
Did God really say you must not eat from the
tree of the garden? And the woman said, we may
eat from the tree from uh. I'm sorry. We may
eat fruit from the trees in the garden. But God
did say you must not eat fruit from the tree
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that is in the middle of the garden, and you
must not touch it, or you will die. You will
not certainly die, the serpent said to the woman, for
God knows when you eat from it, your eyes will
be open, and you will be like God, knowing good
and evil. When the woman saw that the fruit of
the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye,
and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took it and
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ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who
is with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes
of them both were opened, and they realized that they
were naked. So they sowed fig leaves together and made
coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard
the sound of the Lord as he was walking in
the garden in the cool of the day, and they
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hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
But the Lord called out and he said, where are you?
And he answered, I heard you in the garden, and
I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.
Do you guys see the cycle? A thought came, created fear,
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which then led to sin and now shame and hiding.
Y'all tracking, all right, now, we're really going to get
into this now. What's fascinating is that the lies of
the enemy, okay, is based in one thing, you are
not enough. Write that down. His core lie of what
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he wants to trip you up in every time is
I am not enough. That's fascinating about this moment is
Adam and Eve are literally clothed in the presence of God.
They have no shame. They are walking in this literally
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like God presence. And the enemy comes and he says,
you won't surely die if you take and you eat this,
you're going to become like God. And what was he saying.
He was saying, you're not enough, y'all tracking. He's literally saying,
if you don't have this piece of fruit, if you
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don't take this, you're not going to be enough, which
created the thought of I am not enough. And when
they had that feeling of I am not enough, a
created fear, which then led to sin. And then what
did they go and do they hid? They hid in shame.
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Now even going deeper into this, when Jesus was fasting
in the desert for forty days, no food, no water,
and Satan came to tempt him. He took him up
high on a mountain and he said, if you are
the son of God, command these stones to become bread.
Jesus answered and said, it is written, man shall not
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live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds from
the mouth of God. Then the devil took him up
into the Holy City and set him on the pinnacle
of the temple and said, if you are the son
of God, throw yourself down, for it is written he
shall give his angels charge over you, and in their
hands they shall bear you up. Satan is going to
the most powerful man and the most successful man that's
ever walked the face of this earth, Jesus Christ, and
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he's trying to plant a seed into him of you
are not enough, are y'all? Seeing that, he literally goes
and said, if you are this, if you are the
son of God, take and eat or turn these stones
into bread. And he's questioning the identity of the son
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of the Living God and saying to him, if you're enough,
do this, y'all see in the start, if you're enough,
go and make this choice. Who's married in here? All right?
Catch the apple? I'm there? Would you give up her
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for that apple? No, you wouldn't call back Number two.
Shame isolates us. It isolates us. The man and the
woman gave up relationship and intimacy with the living God
for a piece of fruit. Y'all see that? Would you
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give up her for this? That's what they did. And
how often do we give up intimacy and life union
power with the living God for a piece of fruit
and break our relationship with him? Y'all? Tracking this is
the power that shame has. So it literally says, then
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the man and the man and his wife heard the
sound of the Lord as he was walking in the
garden in the cool of day, and they hid from
the Lord among the trees of the garden. Shame isolates us,
and it causes us from turning to others because shame
is self reinforcing. It literally causes us. When we feel
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shame and the identity of I am not enough, it
makes us want to get away from people how many
of you have felt ashamed and you've isolated yourself absolutely
because the idea, Josiah, the idea of someone knowing who
you think you really are, presents more shame you tracking.
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So my man feels shame, and the idea of opening
up his shame to another person actually makes him feel
the fear of I am going to feel and more
shame when I can't even handle the shame I'm feeling.
And that is why shame isolates us, because it just
keeps multiplying and multiplying and multiplying into our lives. I
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love this quote. It says we are only as sick
as the secrets we keep, and shame is committed to
keeping us sick. And we have a closet that we
just keep filling with secrets, just keep filling with secrets
until we can't keep the closet door shut anymore. And
then the clauset just keeps getting more and more full,
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and we isolate, and we isolate, and we isolate, and
we have to realize that shame isolates us. Adam and
Eve gave up relationship for this, and the only antidote
to shame is relationship. It's connecting with other people. It's
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been scientific lea mental health, behavioral health proven that the
only antidote to the shame that we carry is this.
It's being with another person and opening up our hearts
to someone else and being vulnerable about what we're going through,
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y'all tracking, And that's exactly what Adam and Eve gave
up when they chose the fruit. They gave up that
relationship with God. Number three, Shame robs our pursuit. Shame
robs our pursuit. Probably the biggest breakthrough that I've had
in the last several weeks is recognizing that when I
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run towards sin, I am not running towards something that's
going to make me feel good. I'm actually running from
something i'm in pain with. I'm not running towards food
or lust or any of those things to try to
fill my cup. I'm running from pain that's behind me,
and I'm trying to get something to meet my need.
Y'all tracking, it's driving us. And this is where the
(19:02):
serpent stead of the woman. You won't certainly die for
God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes
will be open and you will be like God, knowing
good and evil. When the woman saw that the fruit
of the tree was good for food and pleasing to
the eye and desirable for gaining wisdom. She took some
and she ate it, and she also gave some to
her husband who was with her, and he ate it.
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There's this moment where they literally are looking at each other,
and they're looking at the enemy, who is tempting them
with something that is can completely take them away from God.
And instead of pursuing God, instead of pursuing relationship with
each other, instead of pursuing relationship with God, they feel
the feeling of I am not enough from the enemy,
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and they pursue that it robs their pursuit, leading to
sin and leading to shame. I'll tell you from my life,
as I've pursued fitness in my life had nothing to
do with getting fit. It had to do with running
from that twelve year old fat kid. You know what
I'm saying. I grew up in a family that was
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emotionally a disaster, and the first thing that I found
comfort in was sugar, and so I would eat and
eat and eat. And by the time I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, dude,
I was a chub and in the back of my
mind as I'm driving towards a better squad, a better deadlift,
a better bench press, a better mile time, better rock time,
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all those kinds of things. I'm running from that fat kid.
I'm not running towards a goal. And that is why shame,
the very identity of shame, is robbing our pursuit, because
we will never be able to be filled on something
that isn't truly from God. If we are running from
that person, if we're running from who we don't want
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to become, instead of running to who God's calling us
to be, it will never be enough. Amen, It'll never
be enough. It'll never be enough to satisfy pursuing success
in my life. How much of pursuing success in my
life has actually been running from the people in high
school who made me feel like I wasn't enough, The
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people in high school who bullied me, who beat me
up in front of teachers, and the teachers looked and said,
will you probably deserve it? How much of in my
life has been even put the bullying moments aside. It
was being forgotten, not being included, and being isolated and
alone in high school and driving my life to say
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I'm going to prove them wrong. Driven my whole twenties,
even into my thirties. I'm going to prove them wrong.
And what's so mind bothering me about shame? And I
had this breakthrough when I was in counseling. I'm sitting
and I'm going through this, and I'm like, I hate
these people from high school. I hate them and I
want to beat them. I want to beat them in
life because of what they did to me. And we're
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processing that and we begin to talk about my high school,
which I graduated with like two hundred people. Okay, has
anybody ever heard of it? Been on Saint Margaret's not
one person? Okay. Has anybody ever heard of North Central University? Nope?
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Has anybody ever heard of eight thirty fourth HSC Nope? Okay.
So that's where I went to high school, That's where
I went to college, and that's the unit that that's
the headquarters that I deployed with. None of y'all have
even heard of it. In my mind, those were the
biggest and most important places in the world, and yet
none of you have ever even heard of it. But
in my mind with shame, because I was running from that,
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beating those people which are minuscule to the size of
the world. Beating them was my world, limiting my view
of what my world can be, in who I can become,
in God being used by him, y'all tracking, So, how
many of us are running from something that is so
small A street, a high school, a family, group of people,
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and shame has been our motivation to pursue things that
we're gonna run away from this, We're gonna beat this,
and it becomes everything to us. And God is saying, dude,
I want to heal you of all that because I've
got a world out there that I want you to
go in touch. I've got a world that I want
to lead you to that is so much bigger. But
you're so consumed with shame that is limiting the focus
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of your mind and focus of your heart because you're
just trying to beat something that He's already overcome. I
know that's been my journey, and I've been getting free
from learning. I've been getting free from the way that
I learned to have motivation, the way that I learned
my drive. And so right now my focus, my drive
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is going from instead of I'm gonna stop running from this,
I'm starting to run towards this and that has a
lot less emotional turmoil or pain or shame. Oh, and
that's what God has for us. Night, when I was
four years old, some older girls in my daycare came
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and fooled around with me, and I was introduced to
sexuality and sexual things at four And so I can
honestly say, like, I've been masturbating since I was four.
That's the world that I knew. I lived in a
home where my parents were insane, and what those girls
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introduced me to was a feeling of pleasure that gave
me an escape from the insanity of my life. And
that's shame that I've been trying to run and heal
from and trying to find wholeness from has held me
in bondage for thirty years. What abuse does, or it
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doesn't even have to be abuse, It can be anything
that was introduced to your life that shouldn't have been
introduced at that time. Amen, If you were introduced to
pornography before sixteen, that is sexual trauma. Pornography is sexual trauma.
How many of us can relate when it comes to
a sexual experience between what happens on the pornography screen
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then when you're actually with a woman that you love
night and day, experience pornography is rape and trauma, and
we are exposed to that as children. What that does
is it puts a wounding in us that we are
spending our lives rooted in shame, trying to run from
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instead of experiencing the complete wholeness of God. Because here's
what happens. You go back to when you're two, five, ten, whatever,
you have that shameful moment that takes place, you view
the pornography, someone touches you, that the sexual moment happens
when you weren't ready any of that, and it puts
a shame in you of I didn't just do something bad,
I am bad. And then now we we're in our
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twenties and we're thirties, and we.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Screw up, we make a mistake, we get too drunk,
we sleep with someone, we look at porn, we do whatever,
and that identity comes right back of not I did
something bad, but I am bad.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
And we live in the cycle of death that I
know for years I haven't been able to get out of.
And it's only since understanding these things that I'm beginning
that when I make a mistake, you know what, I
made a mistake, but that does not define who I am,
because I'm a child of God. And I'm feeling some
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guilt because I did something bad, but that doesn't make
me bad. And I want to become a greater man
in Jesus, and shame is losing its power in my
life and I'm experiencing more victory in my life. Are
y'all tracking? What's a about what God did after Adam
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and Eve sinned, is he went and he slaughtered some animals,
and he made clothing for Adam and Eve to cover
their shame. And this was a foreshadowing of Jesus, the
lamb that was slain, dying to cover our shame. Jesus
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was the peer and spotless land. I talked about this
in Bible study. Right, going back, just for a quick lesson,
y'all still good? All right? The whole reason that Jesus
died is Jesus was Jewish, all right. He was a Jew,
like super Jewish. Okay, he was not a Christian. Jesus
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grew up as a Jew to live a pure and
spotless life because there's like six hundred different rules that
the Jewish people have to live up to to be righteous.
They break one rule and they are completely sinful and unrighteous.
And once a year, on the day of Atonement, they
would have to go to the temple and bring a
spotless lamb, a pure, young lamb, and they would put
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their hand on the head of the lamb while the
priests slit his throat, and as the lamb bled out
and died, the Jewish person would look at the lamb
and say, that's what I deserve for everything I've done wrong.
That's my penalty that this lamb is taking for me.
Are y'all tracking? And that is why Jesus came to
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fulfill and live a sinless life as a pure and
spotless lamb to take on the sins of humanity. And
in that moment when he died on the cross and
said it was finished, he paid for all of it,
and it meant it is finished. And so as we
look at him, we're looking at the lamb that was
slain for what everything that we have done. And that
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means in that sacrifice, just like Adam and Eve, Adam
and Eve's shame was covered, Jesus is here tonight to
cover our shame and to heal it and to bring
wholeness to it, to bring life to it, and to
free you from your mistakes and the guilt that would
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then rob you or the shame that would rob you
when you know what, you just need to have a
little guilt and say I did something and receive God's
forgiveness and drive on to the next next move. That's
the freedom that God's calling us to tonight. So I
want to take a moment of reflection for us to
sit and think about the areas of our lives where
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shame is robbing from us. And then we're going to
enter into a time of discussion if we want to
put these discussion questions up, and I want us to
gather up into twos and to start to process these
together so that we can go deeper in community together.
And we're really passionate about this, you guys, because so
much of the quote unquote church world is we show up,
(30:03):
we consume, and then we leave. Sounds like Americans, right,
just a bunch of consumers. Not here, not at engage.
We're all contributors, amen. And so there's people next to
you that need to talk. There's people next to you
that have things they need to get out of them,
and I guarantee you do too. And so what we're
(30:23):
doing in this moment through doing discussion is we are
activating you into your gifting to listen and to show
up for someone else and to have a discussion about
God together so that we can all grow together. So
we don't bring you here just so you can consume
we're bringing you here to make leaders out of you,
because I actually believe there's someone in here who could
change the world. And then
Welcome to pray dot com. I'm Ben Peterson, the CEO
and founder of Engage Your Destiny. Please follow this profile
from more engaging content that we have crafted specifically for
military veterans and the warriors at heart. Also head to
our website to see how you can support ministry to
our active duty military. Now I charge you to take
(00:21):
today's message and use it to engage your destiny. Every
single day, the enemy is trying to steal from your life.
(00:42):
He's trying to kill your destiny. He's trying to destroy
the dreams that God has for your life every single day.
And so, reading from Ephesian six, that says, now, my
beloved ones, and y'all can look at this up on
the screen. We got the scriptures here. I have saved
these most important truths for last. Be supernaturally infused with
the strength through your life union with the Lord Jesus,
and stand victorious with the force of his explosive power
(01:05):
flowing in and through you. Who wants some of that,
let's freaking go put on God's complete set of armor
provided for us, so that you will be protected as
you fight against the evil strategies of the accuser. All right,
listen to me. Now, your hand to hand combat, say
hand to hand combat. Your hand to hand combat is
not with human beings, y'all, but it is with the powers,
(01:29):
the highest principalities and authorities operating in rebellion in the
heavenly realms. For they are a powerful class of demon
gods and evil spirits that hold this dark world in bondage.
Are y'all hearing this? This is what we are battling.
This is why we battle anxiety, suicidal thoughts, depression, issues
with addiction, all this kind of stuff, all right, And
(01:51):
so now getting into the armor of God, which we've
been teaching on for the last several weeks. Because of this,
you must where all, say all all the armor that
God provided so you're protected as you confront the slanderer,
which is the devil. For you are destined. Say destined.
Say destined. You are destined for all things, and you
(02:11):
will rise victorious. Say victorious. Let's go, bro. Put on
truth as a belt to strengthen you as you stand
in triumph. Put on holiness as a protective armor that
covers your heart. Stand on your feet alert, and you'll
always be ready to share the blessings of peace in
every battle. Take faith as your wrap around shield, for
(02:32):
it's able to extinguish the blazing arrows coming at you
from the evil one. And now embrace the power of
Salvation's full deliverance like a helmet to protect your thoughts
from lies. Say lies. So what we are on tonight
is the helmet of salvation, the helmet that protects our minds.
(02:53):
Who now, y'all the words salvation legitimate means wholeness, say wholeness.
Now for those who I want you to have your
phones out. I'm actually a pastor. I like having phones out.
I just call myself a pastor. I'm scared. Now all right,
open up your notes. I want you writing stuff down,
all right, retaining information so that we are contributors, not
(03:18):
just consumers. We don't consume around here. We contribute. We
go to war together. So I want you to write,
Salvation equals wholeness. Salvation equals wholeness. And what God is
promising here through the helmet of Salvation is wholeness in
our minds. So now I want you to read, Salvation
(03:40):
equals wholeness in my mind, Wholeness in my mind. Now
look up at me, who in here can honestly say
that they feel completely whole in their mind. We got one.
My hand's not up. I feel like my mind is
under assault constantly. Hull, absolutely, Okay, this is the battle
(04:05):
that we are in, and what we are striving and
getting closer to Jesus for is to have wholeness in
our minds. Now, in warfare, psychological warfare refers to the
tactics tactics intended to reduce in opponent's morale and their
willingness to fight. So all psychological warfare is we want
(04:25):
to beat you down and make you lose your willingness
to fight, and this includes tactics that relate to fear
and intimidation. Now, going back thousands of years, who's heard
of the Roman Empire right conquering the world all right now?
When they got to Africa and they were trying to
take parts of Africa, you know what the Africans used.
They used war elephants, like legit Lord of the Ring style.
(04:49):
They took elephants and they would mount up on these elephants,
all this armor and all this kind of stuff to
terrify the Roman armies because they had never seen elephants before.
And when they realized that they couldn't match the strength
of the Roman army. They used fear to intimidate them.
This is the earliest form of psychological warfare. Then fast
forward to the Mongols. Who's heard of the Mongols conquering Asia?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Right?
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Brutes like brutal, brutal, brutal people, Okay. And what they
would do is they gained a reputation of how they
would savagely rip apart villages, and so they would go
into a village or a city or a town and
they would basically say, look, we're gonna come and kill y'all,
and we're taking everything. But if you don't want that
to happen, you can just surrender your allegiance to us
(05:35):
and we will conquer you and no one will die.
And a lot of people did it. So they would
just come in and use fear and intimidation and then
get everything they wanted, y'all. Tracking fast forward to World
War One? Who is here? When I talked about World
War one a few weeks ago, wasn't that fun? I
love talking about war? So talking about World War One?
This was the first time that they would actually use propaganda.
(05:58):
They would drop leaflets on the opposing side of other
armies that would have hey, and it would say this
is from our own people, So like the Americans would
drop things on the Germans that was written in Germans
saying we're losing on the front. Everyone's dying and we're
losing the war. To cause fear and intimidation, y'all, tracking
(06:20):
these are the weapons of warfare. Now this is a
very very simple question. But what emotion do all of
those things bring out? Fear? All right? Now, who remembers
back to our training. Fear, right, Fear has the power
to hijack the brain. Fear has the power to take
over our nervous systems. Okay, Now, what's fascinating about fear.
(06:43):
We're gonna put a little acronym up here. It's fear.
You know what fear stands for? F everything and run.
Has anybody ever felt that way? F everything and run? Right,
That's where everything when it comes to fear, everything you
see in your life, everything you see in the world,
(07:05):
everything that takes place, It begins as a thought. We
have a thought, okay, which invokes a feeling of fear,
which then leads us into shame, I'm sorry, sin, which
then brings out the emotion of shame, y'all. Tracking everything
(07:27):
begins as a thought, then we have this sense of fear,
which then leads us into committing sin, and then the
feeling of shame. Okay, And what we are diving into
tonight is shame. Shame. I want you to write that
word down, shame. I gotta tell y'all, I had a
(07:51):
horrible morning, like my mind was off. I was struggling
in so many different ways, and I know the enemy
was trying to get at me because of how much
he does doesn't want shame broken off of our lives.
And I'm going to get more into my story a
little bit later in this message, but I'm telling y'all,
shame is a stronghold that we have to break if
we're going to live in freedom. And I have been
a prisoner with shame for thirty years, and I would
(08:14):
say it's only been within the last few months that
I've been getting set free from shame. Amen. And I
want to bring to you the things that I'm learning
that are setting me free from shame. And I have
felt more freedom in my personal life than I ever
have than I ever have. So here's what's key, all right,
I want y'all write this down and go to this
next one. So guilt and shame were can in hand.
(08:35):
They were can in hand. Okay, Guilt says I did
something bad, all right, We go look at porn. Afterwards,
we feel some guilt, all right, I shouldn't have done that,
all right. Shame says I am bad, y'all. Tracking. This
(08:56):
is fundamental in the way that we do life because
we experience guilt and shame on a daily basis. So
what does guilt say and what does shame say? Are
y'all seeing the difference? So what I'm proposing to you tonight,
(09:16):
and what we're going to dive into to find freedom,
is that you can make a mistake and do something
quote unquote bad and not let it become your identity.
Y'all tracking. I have lived in the identity of shame
since I can remember having a conscious thought. And what's
fascinating is that shame is the first emotion ever talked
(09:39):
about in the Bible. How important is a foundation for
a building, a house, it's everything. The first emotion ever
talked about in the Bible is not joy, it's not love,
It's not any of the things that you would think
The first emotion ever mentioned was shame, and it says
(09:59):
an Genesis two twenty five, and the man and his
wife were both naked and they were not ashamed. So
our question for tonight is how does the enemy use
shame to attack our minds and rob our destinies. I
want you to write this question down, because this is
what we're here to solve. How does the enemy use
(10:20):
shame to attack our minds and rob our destinies? Number one,
write this down. Shame assaults our identity. Shame assaults our identity.
Who's been Aerosolt school. You know what it's like to
assault something, right. Shame is the assault on your identity
(10:42):
of Aerosolt school. Your level of assault an Aerosolt school.
That is shame coming on your identity. All right, I'm
gonna read about ten. I'm gonna read the story of
when sin first entered into the world from Genesis. Okay, Now,
it says the serpent was more crafty than any of
the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said
to the woman, Did God really say you must not
(11:03):
eat from the tree of the garden? Who knows? This story?
Got some people heard it? Right? I feel like in
the last few weeks, I've read it for the first time.
Did God really say you must not eat from the
tree of the garden? And the woman said, we may
eat from the tree from uh. I'm sorry. We may
eat fruit from the trees in the garden. But God
did say you must not eat fruit from the tree
(11:24):
that is in the middle of the garden, and you
must not touch it, or you will die. You will
not certainly die, the serpent said to the woman, for
God knows when you eat from it, your eyes will
be open, and you will be like God, knowing good
and evil. When the woman saw that the fruit of
the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye,
and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took it and
(11:46):
ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who
is with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes
of them both were opened, and they realized that they
were naked. So they sowed fig leaves together and made
coverings for themselves. Then the man and his wife heard
the sound of the Lord as he was walking in
the garden in the cool of the day, and they
(12:06):
hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
But the Lord called out and he said, where are you?
And he answered, I heard you in the garden, and
I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.
Do you guys see the cycle? A thought came, created fear,
(12:28):
which then led to sin and now shame and hiding.
Y'all tracking, all right, now, we're really going to get
into this now. What's fascinating is that the lies of
the enemy, okay, is based in one thing, you are
not enough. Write that down. His core lie of what
(12:52):
he wants to trip you up in every time is
I am not enough. That's fascinating about this moment is
Adam and Eve are literally clothed in the presence of God.
They have no shame. They are walking in this literally
(13:13):
like God presence. And the enemy comes and he says,
you won't surely die if you take and you eat this,
you're going to become like God. And what was he saying.
He was saying, you're not enough, y'all tracking. He's literally saying,
if you don't have this piece of fruit, if you
(13:35):
don't take this, you're not going to be enough, which
created the thought of I am not enough. And when
they had that feeling of I am not enough, a
created fear, which then led to sin. And then what
did they go and do they hid? They hid in shame.
(13:57):
Now even going deeper into this, when Jesus was fasting
in the desert for forty days, no food, no water,
and Satan came to tempt him. He took him up
high on a mountain and he said, if you are
the son of God, command these stones to become bread.
Jesus answered and said, it is written, man shall not
(14:18):
live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds from
the mouth of God. Then the devil took him up
into the Holy City and set him on the pinnacle
of the temple and said, if you are the son
of God, throw yourself down, for it is written he
shall give his angels charge over you, and in their
hands they shall bear you up. Satan is going to
the most powerful man and the most successful man that's
ever walked the face of this earth, Jesus Christ, and
(14:40):
he's trying to plant a seed into him of you
are not enough, are y'all? Seeing that, he literally goes
and said, if you are this, if you are the
son of God, take and eat or turn these stones
into bread. And he's questioning the identity of the son
(15:01):
of the Living God and saying to him, if you're enough,
do this, y'all see in the start, if you're enough,
go and make this choice. Who's married in here? All right?
Catch the apple? I'm there? Would you give up her
(15:23):
for that apple? No, you wouldn't call back Number two.
Shame isolates us. It isolates us. The man and the
woman gave up relationship and intimacy with the living God
for a piece of fruit. Y'all see that? Would you
(15:45):
give up her for this? That's what they did. And
how often do we give up intimacy and life union
power with the living God for a piece of fruit
and break our relationship with him? Y'all? Tracking this is
the power that shame has. So it literally says, then
(16:07):
the man and the man and his wife heard the
sound of the Lord as he was walking in the
garden in the cool of day, and they hid from
the Lord among the trees of the garden. Shame isolates us,
and it causes us from turning to others because shame
is self reinforcing. It literally causes us. When we feel
(16:27):
shame and the identity of I am not enough, it
makes us want to get away from people how many
of you have felt ashamed and you've isolated yourself absolutely
because the idea, Josiah, the idea of someone knowing who
you think you really are, presents more shame you tracking.
(16:50):
So my man feels shame, and the idea of opening
up his shame to another person actually makes him feel
the fear of I am going to feel and more
shame when I can't even handle the shame I'm feeling.
And that is why shame isolates us, because it just
keeps multiplying and multiplying and multiplying into our lives. I
(17:12):
love this quote. It says we are only as sick
as the secrets we keep, and shame is committed to
keeping us sick. And we have a closet that we
just keep filling with secrets, just keep filling with secrets
until we can't keep the closet door shut anymore. And
then the clauset just keeps getting more and more full,
(17:33):
and we isolate, and we isolate, and we isolate, and
we have to realize that shame isolates us. Adam and
Eve gave up relationship for this, and the only antidote
to shame is relationship. It's connecting with other people. It's
(17:54):
been scientific lea mental health, behavioral health proven that the
only antidote to the shame that we carry is this.
It's being with another person and opening up our hearts
to someone else and being vulnerable about what we're going through,
(18:16):
y'all tracking, And that's exactly what Adam and Eve gave
up when they chose the fruit. They gave up that
relationship with God. Number three, Shame robs our pursuit. Shame
robs our pursuit. Probably the biggest breakthrough that I've had
in the last several weeks is recognizing that when I
(18:40):
run towards sin, I am not running towards something that's
going to make me feel good. I'm actually running from
something i'm in pain with. I'm not running towards food
or lust or any of those things to try to
fill my cup. I'm running from pain that's behind me,
and I'm trying to get something to meet my need.
Y'all tracking, it's driving us. And this is where the
(19:02):
serpent stead of the woman. You won't certainly die for
God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes
will be open and you will be like God, knowing
good and evil. When the woman saw that the fruit
of the tree was good for food and pleasing to
the eye and desirable for gaining wisdom. She took some
and she ate it, and she also gave some to
her husband who was with her, and he ate it.
(19:23):
There's this moment where they literally are looking at each other,
and they're looking at the enemy, who is tempting them
with something that is can completely take them away from God.
And instead of pursuing God, instead of pursuing relationship with
each other, instead of pursuing relationship with God, they feel
the feeling of I am not enough from the enemy,
(19:46):
and they pursue that it robs their pursuit, leading to
sin and leading to shame. I'll tell you from my life,
as I've pursued fitness in my life had nothing to
do with getting fit. It had to do with running
from that twelve year old fat kid. You know what
I'm saying. I grew up in a family that was
(20:10):
emotionally a disaster, and the first thing that I found
comfort in was sugar, and so I would eat and
eat and eat. And by the time I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, dude,
I was a chub and in the back of my
mind as I'm driving towards a better squad, a better deadlift,
a better bench press, a better mile time, better rock time,
(20:31):
all those kinds of things. I'm running from that fat kid.
I'm not running towards a goal. And that is why shame,
the very identity of shame, is robbing our pursuit, because
we will never be able to be filled on something
that isn't truly from God. If we are running from
that person, if we're running from who we don't want
(20:53):
to become, instead of running to who God's calling us
to be, it will never be enough. Amen, It'll never
be enough. It'll never be enough to satisfy pursuing success
in my life. How much of pursuing success in my
life has actually been running from the people in high
school who made me feel like I wasn't enough, The
(21:14):
people in high school who bullied me, who beat me
up in front of teachers, and the teachers looked and said,
will you probably deserve it? How much of in my
life has been even put the bullying moments aside. It
was being forgotten, not being included, and being isolated and
alone in high school and driving my life to say
(21:35):
I'm going to prove them wrong. Driven my whole twenties,
even into my thirties. I'm going to prove them wrong.
And what's so mind bothering me about shame? And I
had this breakthrough when I was in counseling. I'm sitting
and I'm going through this, and I'm like, I hate
these people from high school. I hate them and I
want to beat them. I want to beat them in
life because of what they did to me. And we're
(21:55):
processing that and we begin to talk about my high school,
which I graduated with like two hundred people. Okay, has
anybody ever heard of it? Been on Saint Margaret's not
one person? Okay. Has anybody ever heard of North Central University? Nope?
(22:16):
Has anybody ever heard of eight thirty fourth HSC Nope? Okay.
So that's where I went to high school, That's where
I went to college, and that's the unit that that's
the headquarters that I deployed with. None of y'all have
even heard of it. In my mind, those were the
biggest and most important places in the world, and yet
none of you have ever even heard of it. But
in my mind with shame, because I was running from that,
(22:39):
beating those people which are minuscule to the size of
the world. Beating them was my world, limiting my view
of what my world can be, in who I can become,
in God being used by him, y'all tracking, So, how
many of us are running from something that is so
small A street, a high school, a family, group of people,
(23:00):
and shame has been our motivation to pursue things that
we're gonna run away from this, We're gonna beat this,
and it becomes everything to us. And God is saying, dude,
I want to heal you of all that because I've
got a world out there that I want you to
go in touch. I've got a world that I want
to lead you to that is so much bigger. But
you're so consumed with shame that is limiting the focus
(23:21):
of your mind and focus of your heart because you're
just trying to beat something that He's already overcome. I
know that's been my journey, and I've been getting free
from learning. I've been getting free from the way that
I learned to have motivation, the way that I learned
my drive. And so right now my focus, my drive
(23:44):
is going from instead of I'm gonna stop running from this,
I'm starting to run towards this and that has a
lot less emotional turmoil or pain or shame. Oh, and
that's what God has for us. Night, when I was
four years old, some older girls in my daycare came
(24:07):
and fooled around with me, and I was introduced to
sexuality and sexual things at four And so I can
honestly say, like, I've been masturbating since I was four.
That's the world that I knew. I lived in a
home where my parents were insane, and what those girls
(24:31):
introduced me to was a feeling of pleasure that gave
me an escape from the insanity of my life. And
that's shame that I've been trying to run and heal
from and trying to find wholeness from has held me
in bondage for thirty years. What abuse does, or it
(24:56):
doesn't even have to be abuse, It can be anything
that was introduced to your life that shouldn't have been
introduced at that time. Amen, If you were introduced to
pornography before sixteen, that is sexual trauma. Pornography is sexual trauma.
How many of us can relate when it comes to
a sexual experience between what happens on the pornography screen
(25:19):
then when you're actually with a woman that you love
night and day, experience pornography is rape and trauma, and
we are exposed to that as children. What that does
is it puts a wounding in us that we are
spending our lives rooted in shame, trying to run from
(25:43):
instead of experiencing the complete wholeness of God. Because here's
what happens. You go back to when you're two, five, ten, whatever,
you have that shameful moment that takes place, you view
the pornography, someone touches you, that the sexual moment happens
when you weren't ready any of that, and it puts
a shame in you of I didn't just do something bad,
I am bad. And then now we we're in our
(26:05):
twenties and we're thirties, and we.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Screw up, we make a mistake, we get too drunk,
we sleep with someone, we look at porn, we do whatever,
and that identity comes right back of not I did
something bad, but I am bad.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
And we live in the cycle of death that I
know for years I haven't been able to get out of.
And it's only since understanding these things that I'm beginning
that when I make a mistake, you know what, I
made a mistake, but that does not define who I am,
because I'm a child of God. And I'm feeling some
(26:41):
guilt because I did something bad, but that doesn't make
me bad. And I want to become a greater man
in Jesus, and shame is losing its power in my
life and I'm experiencing more victory in my life. Are
y'all tracking? What's a about what God did after Adam
(27:01):
and Eve sinned, is he went and he slaughtered some animals,
and he made clothing for Adam and Eve to cover
their shame. And this was a foreshadowing of Jesus, the
lamb that was slain, dying to cover our shame. Jesus
(27:25):
was the peer and spotless land. I talked about this
in Bible study. Right, going back, just for a quick lesson,
y'all still good? All right? The whole reason that Jesus
died is Jesus was Jewish, all right. He was a Jew,
like super Jewish. Okay, he was not a Christian. Jesus
(27:46):
grew up as a Jew to live a pure and
spotless life because there's like six hundred different rules that
the Jewish people have to live up to to be righteous.
They break one rule and they are completely sinful and unrighteous.
And once a year, on the day of Atonement, they
would have to go to the temple and bring a
spotless lamb, a pure, young lamb, and they would put
(28:09):
their hand on the head of the lamb while the
priests slit his throat, and as the lamb bled out
and died, the Jewish person would look at the lamb
and say, that's what I deserve for everything I've done wrong.
That's my penalty that this lamb is taking for me.
Are y'all tracking? And that is why Jesus came to
(28:32):
fulfill and live a sinless life as a pure and
spotless lamb to take on the sins of humanity. And
in that moment when he died on the cross and
said it was finished, he paid for all of it,
and it meant it is finished. And so as we
look at him, we're looking at the lamb that was
slain for what everything that we have done. And that
(28:57):
means in that sacrifice, just like Adam and Eve, Adam
and Eve's shame was covered, Jesus is here tonight to
cover our shame and to heal it and to bring
wholeness to it, to bring life to it, and to
free you from your mistakes and the guilt that would
(29:17):
then rob you or the shame that would rob you
when you know what, you just need to have a
little guilt and say I did something and receive God's
forgiveness and drive on to the next next move. That's
the freedom that God's calling us to tonight. So I
want to take a moment of reflection for us to
sit and think about the areas of our lives where
(29:39):
shame is robbing from us. And then we're going to
enter into a time of discussion if we want to
put these discussion questions up, and I want us to
gather up into twos and to start to process these
together so that we can go deeper in community together.
And we're really passionate about this, you guys, because so
much of the quote unquote church world is we show up,
(30:03):
we consume, and then we leave. Sounds like Americans, right,
just a bunch of consumers. Not here, not at engage.
We're all contributors, amen. And so there's people next to
you that need to talk. There's people next to you
that have things they need to get out of them,
and I guarantee you do too. And so what we're
(30:23):
doing in this moment through doing discussion is we are
activating you into your gifting to listen and to show
up for someone else and to have a discussion about
God together so that we can all grow together. So
we don't bring you here just so you can consume
we're bringing you here to make leaders out of you,
because I actually believe there's someone in here who could
change the world. And then
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