One of the hardest things for us as men to deal with in being wholehearted is the shame that we
carry from our childhood, from our background. We don't like to talk about it. It's one of those
unmentionables. And many of you that are listening to this have been
through some deep shame areas of sexual pain, of hurt, of condemnation that has marked you for the
rest of your life and you still think about it. You wake up in the morning and you're thinking
about what that coach said about you or what your mom or your dad said about you or the way that you
were bullied when you were a kid. It could have been a sexual abuse in your background. It could
have been some violence in your background where you were struck by your dad or by your mother or
by a relative when you were a kid growing up and you didn't know how to respond and you carry this
shame, this weight on your shoulders. And because of that, demons come and demons will come and they
will use anything they can to take you out and to destroy you. And the scriptures talk about the
lion comes to devour. And that's what demons do. Demons get their walking orders. They get their
commands from Satan. And Satan is like a lion. It's interesting. I was recently looking at a
video by National Geographic and they were showing how lions hunt. And the way that lions hunt is they
move in on a usually a herd, buffalo or antelope or something like that. And then they creep in
looking for one of the animals to either be wounded or to be isolated. And they're always
looking for a wounded animal or isolated animal. And then they come in and they start wedging their
way into the isolated animal away from the herd. They come in between there and then they start to
surround the isolated animal or the wounded animal and then they jump it. And then they jump. There's
always one in the back and then there's two on the sides. And so what lions do is they move in getting
the animal to not know what's happening on the right and the left. And then the one in the back jumps on
the back of the wounded animal and the other two move in too. And that's the way demons are. Demons are
always looking for a wound in your life. They're always looking for a sin area or a shame area. And
then they're looking to isolate you from other people. They have other Christians in your life we
call blood-stained allies. And so when we talk about the lion hearted and this lion heart that
God is giving us we have to learn also that there's a reason why we're not lion hearted. And it's
because of shame and the demonic. But here's what's interesting in the ministry of Jesus one of the
first things that he gave us authority over as Jesus' disciples is to cast out demons. In Luke 10
19 he says behold I give you, that means us, the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and
over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means hurt you. So men and women you have
the power to cast out these demons. You have the power to be set free from the demonic because
you've been given a new heart. You've been given a lion heart when you were born again. When you
gave your heart to Christ God gave you a new heart. And in Ezekiel 11 we read then I will give
them a new heart. I'll put a new spirit within them and take the stony heart out of their flesh
and give them a heart of flesh. So God's given you a new heart. You have a fighting heart now. But
these these demons come and the last time I talked I talked about what I think are three big areas
that men struggle with. First is lust, the second is lethargy, and then the third is isolation. And
that's what demons use. Demons want you tame. Demons want you shackled down. Demons want you
to be harmless, to make no impact whatsoever with your life. So some of you have been living a
shackled life, a half-hearted life, and you felt that weight of the shame that you carry because
demons now have control over your life. Now I'm not saying you're demon possessed. Don't hear me
saying that. I'm saying you could be demonized. And what's the difference? The difference is demon
possessed are...
Those individuals that are basically owned by demons and these are people generally speaking
who are in our mental hospitals. These are people that have major massive mental issues.
If you are living in an environment where there's people like that they could be certainly demon
possessed and you know what their demons can be cast out too. They can be set free if they want
to be set free. But what I'm saying is the majority of the influence of demons on most
even believers is the influence that they carry through fleshly sins or shame areas that we allow
them to work in. So I like to use my fingers as an example and in my series on Satan, Demons,
and the Fourth Dimension I talk a lot more about this. But imagine here's my left hand
and these are shame areas of our life. Shame because of sexual abuse or shame because of
being beaten up or shame because of bullying. Whatever it might be there's also a corresponding
demon that corresponds with that and they're always hovering around looking how they can come
in. Remember I talked about the lions? Same thing. So the lions are trying to isolate the water
buffalo or they're trying to isolate the antelope so they can take them out and jump on them. Well
same way with demons. So this is the demon rim, the cosmic rim, and here's our fleshly rim of
where we struggle with particular sins or a particular area of shame and they kind of move
in like this and so because of sexual abuse you now carry this shame area toward homosexuality
or toward immorality or something like that and there's also a corresponding demon and so as you
continue to fester on that and dwell on that in your life this demon at some point comes and
attaches itself into your spirit and now you no longer have just a fleshly sin
or an area of depression or something. You now have a demon that's attaching itself to your heart
and that's really really tough to get set free from. So what are shame? How does shame work? Let
me give you a definition I think of shame. Shame are those things that we have done or have been
done to us that we cover up and hide but it's even worse than that because shame becomes our
false identity. We begin to identify with our shame. So instead of saying I struggle with lust
we say I'm a lustful person or instead of saying I struggle with insecurity we start to say I'm an
insecure person. If we start to say sometimes I have anger problems we begin to associate with
ourselves being an angry person. See that's that's taking a shame area that probably a demon is
empowering and that becoming your identity and you have a new heart. If you've received Christ,
if Jesus is living in your heart, if the Holy Spirit is within you, the scriptures say greater
is he that is in you meaning Jesus than he meaning demons that are in the world. You can overcome.
This does not have to be your identity because when it is your identity what happens is these
areas of shame are the fertilizer. They become the fertilizer of lust and lethargy and loneliness and
isolation in our lives. So what's the answer? The answer is to confront it. You've got to start to
confront these areas and become vulnerable and the best example I can think of is when I tore my ACL
a few years ago when I was skiing and I could I could mask the ACL injury by skiing more heavily
on my other leg my good leg to cover up my torn ACL. If I did that for very long guess what's going
to happen? I'm going to tear the ACL in the other knee because I'm not made for that. Rather what we
need to do what I did is I rested the ACL. I went through therapy with the ACL. I began to exercise
that ACL. I began to do the stretching that was needed and the strengthening of the ligaments all
around it that was needed and before long I was skiing again even with a torn ACL. So even though
I carry that torn ACL which will never probably completely heal
I can now ski again because I recuperated by taking care of the ACL.
And so in the same way, we're going to have these shame areas.
And sometimes in our life, men and women, you're never going to be completely 100% healed.
But you can learn to compensate by walking in the power of the Holy Spirit and getting healing.
So I want to tell you about three steps, three courageous steps to freedom from shame.
Three courageous steps from freedom from shame.
I'm going to start it here, and then in my next episode, I'm going to finish it out.
But the first step, and this is really important, nobody talks about this very much,
but to root out shame, you have to be vulnerable with some bloodstained allies.
That means you've got to be open about your shame.
You've got to have some people that you trust, that you can share what you've been through,
that you can share what you battle with.
And I know this is super hard for a man to do, but I'm telling you,
it's the only way to get started in the way, in the route, in the road less traveled to freedom.
And that is being vulnerable about your shame.
Let's say, for example, you were sexually abused as a kid.
Let's say you were sexually abused many times as a kid.
Maybe over years, there was a person in your life who was older than you, stronger than you,
and they sexually abused you.
What are you going to do about that?
Hate them?
That's what most people do.
That doesn't take any courage.
That's natural to hate.
Be angry about it for the rest of your life.
Again, that's natural.
That's normal.
I'm not condemning you for having that.
I'm just telling you that doesn't take any courage.
Get depressed about it for the rest of your life.
That doesn't take courage.
That's natural and normal.
I'm talking about three courageous steps.
So the courageous step is to have some blood-stained allies,
to have some other men in your life that you can be real with, that you trust,
and to say, look, you guys, I want to walk in freedom.
I want to be a Jesus follower for the rest of my life.
I don't want to walk shackled down.
So I'm going to tell you what happened to me, and I need your prayers,
and I need your help, and I need your strength.
So when I was six years old, I was sexually abused, and it went on until I was 10 years old.
For four years, this other guy in my life did this.
And it might have been somebody in the church.
It might have been somebody in your family.
It might have been your dad or your brother who did it.
I don't know.
But you share that, and then you share your anger about that.
You share your feeling of insecurity and helplessness and weakness that you went through during that.
And then you begin to forgive.
Well, how are you going to do that?
Well, you can't.
You can't forgive in your own power in most cases.
I mean, some of you can, but a lot of us can't.
So we need others in our lives.
So we agree together for God's power to come to help us forgive, and then we're going to get a breakthrough there.
And so then you start to claim those promises of God that you, as a captive, have been set free in Christ,
and these other men can weep with you.
These other men can understand where you're coming from.
So that's the first step.
The first step is vulnerability.
It could be with a counselor.
But I'm suggesting that blessed and allies, and maybe the blessed and ally is a counselor.
Sometimes it's a fellow Christian brother at your church.
It could be that it's someone else in your life.
And I think a couple guys is really good.
I mean, if you've got one good friend, that's super.
But if you have a couple good friends or more, that's super duper.
But that's where we become vulnerable, and we're able to share our hearts.
Well, that's the step one.
That's not all of it.
That's what I'm going to do in the next episode.
I'll talk about the others.
But step one is vulnerability with some blessed and allies.