No Shame, No Worries [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. And in the world, you're going to find this out if you had never seen it before, that people are always looking for a scapegoat.

Not knowing how to bring their shame to God and be cleansed by the grace and the mercies of God's love, people, instead of bringing it to God, will take their shame and try to shift it to someone else. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, No Worries, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer.

You can learn more about it. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on all of this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. You made me think back to our honeymoon. Honeymoon, as much as any time in life, is a time where there's no pressure on you. Nobody calls you up on your honeymoon and says, have you been doing any work this week?

Have you gotten that project done? Nobody will ever bother you on your honeymoon. And you have just said, I do, and she said, I do. And you're just fresh in this covenant of love and a honeymoon. Oh, it was just wonderful. We, courtesy of The Price is Right, that's another story, flew out to New Orleans. And for the first time in my life, we stayed in a nice hotel. I've stayed in a lot of motel sixes in my life and camped.

But this was the Sheraton in the French Quarter of New Orleans. And we rented a car. I think it was the first time I'd ever rented a car, pulled up to the fancy hotel.

Never had I had valet parking before. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know who to tip. I didn't know how to act. And it was obvious. And I looked like a kid. And I remember the valet attendant just looking down at the two of us and with this little smile saying, honeymoons?

Honeymooners? And I'm like, yes. And I felt ashamed that I was so naive. We went up to the room and it was the first time they had just recently come out with these magnetic keys that you now see even in the cheapest hotels.

But it was only the fancy ones. And I didn't know how to work it. I wanted to just carry her across the threshold. But I was just struggling to get into the room. We came back to the room after a lovely dinner one night and there was some sounds, music or something, voices playing in the room. And I thought, Ann said, there's somebody in the room. And so I was nervous as could be. And I said, I bravely went on in to see who was in the room.

Nobody was there. But obviously the room had been disturbed. Something had happened to the bed.

The TV was playing. And she said, call downstairs. Tell them. I picked up the phone. I called. I said, someone has been in our room. And as I was talking to the front desk clerk, I looked on the pillows and saw chocolate mints and thought, why would a thief put chocolate mints on our pillows? And they told me, just our nightly turndown service. Oh yeah. I acted like, yeah, oh, I forgot about that.

Never had heard of such a thing as that. And I felt ashamed that I was naive. I'm just saying, even in the most blissful moments, even on my honeymoon, it's like it just tries to sneak in. And what happens is that as soon as we feel ashamed, we start feeling anxious. That's what happened to Adam and Eve right from the beginning. Genesis 3 verse 7, we read, the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. Why are they hiding?

We're told at verse 9, but the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid. I was afraid because I was naked and so I hid myself. See, what happens when we're afraid is we want to cover up.

Think of it this way, if shame is this diabolical lie that says you don't measure up because you're not good enough yet, you haven't proven yourself enough to be acceptable and you're sitting here going, but I don't know if I ever can be. What's your first instinct to try to get rid of the anxiety? The first instinct is to try to cover up any of your flaws. I just won't let people see anything that's wrong with me and then I'll feel covered and less ashamed.

There are so many ways of covering ourselves. One way is my chosen path was I'll cover myself by I'll do everything I can to prove that I do measure up and I'll just, you need me to run harder, I'll run harder. You need me to jump higher, I'll just jump higher. I felt like I was one of those greyhound dogs chasing that mechanical rabbit and it was like that mechanical rabbit just keeps moving in front of the fastest dogs on the planet and they chase it and they chase it and they chase it. If I could just get that rabbit and no dog ever gets the rabbit. And that rabbit for me was love and acceptance and it just felt like it was always moving.

No matter how much I performed, it always would move and it probably was mainly in my own mind that I was moving it, but other people will move it on you too. Chances are you'll find out there's somebody that if you will run faster if they withhold their love, they'll withhold it. Other people don't try to cover up by being perfect, they try to cover up by not trying at all. Listen, people that are in utter rebellion, people that the student says I'm not going to study, I'm not even going to go to class. It's just another way of covering up the same shame that led me to be a straight A student. It's just another way of saying if I try and I fail then I'll feel so ashamed, but if I don't try at all then I won't feel that.

I'll just cover myself up with chronic failure. Whichever way we try to cover ourselves though, we're still anxious. We worry about what others think of us because we'll feel more ashamed if they look down on us. We worry about whether we've done enough because we don't want to feel ashamed if someone disapproves of the job we've done. We worry about whether our past mistakes are going to make us lose face with others and so we cover up our past mistakes. We worry about upcoming assignments and tests and parties that we're hosting and anything that you could imagine because we're worried if we don't do well enough then we will be ashamed and we worry about trying new things because we're afraid if we stumble then we'll feel ashamed and the feeling of shame is so awful we'll do almost anything in the world to avoid it. Adam and Eve covered themselves and we'll try to cover our shame in any way we can and sometimes the way we cover it gets even more destructive and we misuse substances or we abuse relationships or we abuse our own lives. All in attempt to not feel so anxious and Jesus came to give us a different way. Jesus came as a second Adam who was utterly shame proof to take the shame from us so that you can live your life not motivated by the fear of messing up, not motivated by the anxiety of shame but motivated by assurance of the love of God. People who really really understand the grace of God in their lives who are set free from shame and know what Jesus has done for them those hearts get so full of faith that they get to live life trying harder than anybody but out of joy and gratitude and expectancy.

That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Can you imagine what it would be like to be accepted perfectly? Envision it. Being free to be yourself with no fear of rejection. If you mess up people don't roll their eyes, make fun of you or love you less.

Imagine no more of that anxious feeling that you get deep down in your gut that makes you feel like the pressure is always on so you can never really relax. What you're imagining and longing for is a life with no shame. In paradise before sin came into the world the Bible tells us only one thing about Adam and Eve's relationship.

They were naked and felt no shame. Ever since the fall the human heart has been riddled with shame. It's a lie that says until you measure up you can't be truly acceptable. Shame causes some to say I'll try to be perfect in order to be accepted and others to decide since I'll never measure up I might as well rebel.

Either way the heart is poisoned by shame and there is only one antidote. The grace of God in Jesus Christ. In his highly acclaimed book Free Yourself Be Yourself Pastor Alan Wright not only exposes the lies of shame he leads you into a revolution of God's love that heals your soul.

Discover freedom joy and destiny as you shed performance based living and let God take the shame off you for good. It's a life changing full length book from Alan Wright Free Yourself Be Yourself. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. When I was growing up one of the things that was a paradox in my life was the taking of academic tests. I say a paradox because it seems like these two things don't go together. On the one hand I loved the test because I was good at it and I would generally make an A and it was almost like a drug to get another A. And I not only wanted to make an A I wanted to have the highest grade in the class. And yet on the other hand I hated tests.

My stomach would churn. In college I'd stay up sometimes the whole night just cramming stuff in so I could regurgitate on the test, forget most of the stuff because I was just studying for the test and all of that. By the time we had kids and I had started learning all about this and about the grace of God and I started being set free of shame, I did not want to raise my kids in that. And starting from second grade for a lot of different reasons we homeschooled and it gave us the advantage of being able to shape the environment that our kids were in. And one of the things we didn't do in homeschool was give tests. We just wanted our kids to have the joy of learning. And I know eventually later in their lives that you've got to learn to take tests and you're going to take tests and they did become skilled at that. But for many, many years we didn't take tests except once a year.

Because the state of North Carolina requires rightly so that homeschool families administer at least once a year a standardized test to assess where their children are. And so when Ben was in second grade and he hadn't ever taken any tests and we had arranged to hire someone to come in and give him some standardized tests and we told him it was coming. And inside of me I'm feeling kind of nervous for him because he's going to sit there and have a full morning of somebody sitting down with him and going over these tests and he's going to sit there and take tests all morning.

And I'm just thinking to myself, oh, you know. Well the night before the test we were going to bed and every night our ritual was included that we each share two blessings, two things we're thankful for before we go to bed. And then it shared something he was thankful for playing, you know, with his toys that day or something.

I said, and what's your second blessing? He thought and he thought and he said, oh, tomorrow I get to take those tests. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

I thought, whose boy is this? And what does that even feel like to look forward to taking the tests? I think to this very day in law school Bennett Stills sort of enjoys taking a test. There's only one way that you could ever feel that way. There's only one way. You have to be unconditionally loved and fully accepted so you know that no matter how well you do or don't do that you're just taking an exercise of faith and trying to show what you've learned and that can be fun. This is the way God wants us to live. How'd God feel about Adam and Eve's shame and their hiding? Did he want them to just wallow in it? Did he want them to just feel worse about themselves? No. Here's what happened.

Look at it closely. Genesis 3 verse 14, the Lord God said to the serpent, because you've done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field on your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. He did not curse the man and the woman. He cursed the serpent and he promised immediately a redemptive son who would one day overturn the serpent's evil deceptive work. Verse 15, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring, literally your seed and her seed and he, the seed of the woman shall bruise your and he, the serpent shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. You shall crush the son of man will crush the serpent's head and you'll just bruise his heel. God was saying from the moment that they fell into sin, I have a plan to redeem you.

I've got a plan to lift your shame and then he pictured it and what he did. Look at the grace of God. Look at the grace of God. As soon as sin came in the world, he cursed the serpent who had deceived them. He promised a seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head one day and then God covered them. God covered their shame. They didn't cover their own shame. They didn't know how.

They made some fig leaves for clothing. But in verse 21, the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife, garments of skin and clothed them. It was the first blood sacrifice and God made the sacrifice, not the people. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not about your sacrifice by which you cover your shame. The gospel of Jesus Christ is about the sacrifice that God made in the person of Jesus to cover your shame.

He loves you so much. You know that there were two goats on the day of atonement? On that day of Yom Kippur as described in Leviticus chapter 16, that day that we remember in the Christian tradition so well because we know and understand about the blood of the lamb that takes away the sin of the world and how Jesus is the lamb of God in that sense. We understand that throughout history in the Old Testament, they'd offer blood sacrifice after blood sacrifice in order to temporarily have their sins covered up. But did you know there was a second goat in Leviticus 16, 8? He is to cast lots for the two goats.

The instructions went to the priest. One lot for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat. And described in verses 9 and 10 what's supposed to happen, Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the Lord and sacrifice it for a sin offering. But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to be used for making atonement by sending it into the wilderness as a scapegoat. The scapegoat wasn't killed. Instead, they laid their hands on it and they shamed the goat.

They spoke all manner of every kind of shameful thing on that goat and then they sent it out into the wilderness to be alone. And in the world, you're going to find this out if you had never seen it before, that people are always looking for a scapegoat. Not knowing how to bring their shame to God and be cleansed by the grace and the mercies of God's love, people instead of bringing it to God will take their shame and try to shift it to someone else.

That's why there's racism. That's why people put you down. That's why people shame you. It's because of their own shame and they're trying to find a scapegoat, someone who will bear the shame for them. Sometimes in a family, they'll pick out one person and they'll blame everything on this person so we don't have to talk about all of our other issues. Don't ever let anybody make you into a scapegoat.

You don't need to be. Jesus has already taken the shame because at the cross, Jesus Christ not only became the lamb who shed blood was the payment for the debt of your sin and mine, but he also was the scapegoat, the one upon whom every demon of hell mocked. They just shamed him. They spat on him. They mocked him as a king, put a crown of thorns on his brow.

They gambled for his clothes. They left him isolated. It was the whole fiery shame of hell that was resting upon Jesus that made the cross so severe. But he went so that you could know for sure you don't have to live like that. You can never escape the voices of shame.

There's always going to be some voice. It's like it's in the atmosphere, but you don't have to breathe it in and it doesn't have to cling to you because Jesus has forgiven you. When you accept Christ, your sin is as far away as the east is from the west. It means that you, baptized into Christ, are clothed with him. That's what Paul said in Galatians 3.27. All of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

God clothed them with animal skins, but it was just a picture of the day that would come in which you're clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. You're so accepted that you don't have to worry. And the more you walk in the grace of God, the more the stuff doesn't cling to you.

I'm not perfectly free from shame, but boy, it just doesn't cling to me like it used to. I was chuckling with Ann this week, remembering a time, I think our second year of marriage, in which the phone rang in the middle of the night and she answered and said, hello. And there was a whispering voice on the other end.

She was so young and sweet and naive, she didn't even know there was such a thing as an obscene caller. And she said, what? And the obscene caller said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Whispered a little louder. She said, what? And then a third time he whispered a little bit louder whatever obscenities and things he was trying to say. She said a third time, what? Finally he just spoke up and said, can you not hear me? And she said, oh, I can hear you now.

He said, never mind. I just have a picture for your life that God has intent for you to be so healed by His grace that when the devil comes whispering with the voice of shame that you almost let him go, what? That doesn't apply to me at all. I'm clothed with Jesus Christ. I've become the righteousness of Jesus Christ. I am not perfect.

I fall down a lot, but God loves me perfectly and I am accepted in the beloved. And when you really get hold of that, then all the shame comes off you. And that's the gospel. Alan Wright and today's teaching of freeing thought, no shame, no worries.

And it comes from scripture. We've got more from Alan in the studio here in just a moment with our parting good news thought for the day. Can you imagine what it would be like to be accepted perfectly?

Envision it. Being free to be yourself with no fear of rejection. If you mess up, people don't roll their eyes, make fun of you or love you less. In his highly acclaimed book, free yourself, be yourself. Pastor Alan Wright not only exposes the lies of shame, he leads you into a revolution of God's love that heals your soul. Discover freedom, joy, and destiny as you shed performance-based living and let God take the shame off you for good. It's a life-changing full-length book from Alan Wright.

Free yourself, be yourself. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back here with Alan Wright in the studio. Some may come to know Alan Wright because of the phrase, shame off you. And so this message is really one of your finest.

No shame, no worries. Well, shame off you was the message that I preached so, so many years ago. Two decades ago. And then it became a book.

It got re-released as Free Yourself, Be Yourself. And Daniel, this is something that has been something of a life assignment to help share how wonderfully the grace of God can heal that nagging question mark that's down in our souls that says, what do I need to do to measure up? Because when we're thinking like that, it's a very anxious thought. And chances are to our listeners, somebody in your life has withheld approval or withheld their acceptance and love in an effort to motivate you to run harder, jump higher, or maybe they withheld it just because they didn't know how to show it. And it can leave your soul thinking, what is wrong with me and what do I need to do to change it so I can really be loved and accepted as shame? And the gospel offers healing to shame. There's healing and there's hope. When the grace of God really comes into you deeply, deeply, you say, I am already accepted in the beloved. And when you are like that, you feel covered by God and the shame lifts and with it, worry evaporates. That's the answer to a lot of our worries, the healing of shame. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.