July 21, 2024 | Week 2 of Healed/Whole SHAME (Romans 8:1-4, 31-34)

Healing from Shame...

Shame is a primary means to prevent us from using the gifts we have been given. And those gifts enable us to flourish as a light-bearing community of Jesus followers who work to create space for others who wish to join it to do so. Shame, therefore, is not simply an unfortunate, random, emotional event that came with us out of the primordial evolutionary soup. It is both a source and a result of evil's active assault on God's creation...its goal is to disintegrate any and every system it targets, be that one's personal story, family, marriage, friendship, church, school, community, business, or political system. Its power lies in its subtlety and its silence, and it will not be satisfied until all hell breaks loose. Literally.
- Curt Thompson, The Soul of Shame