As a homeschooling, stay-at-home wife and mom, it’s not often I get a moment. Very rarely will my grocery trips be unaccompanied, and 99% of the time, at least 1 of the kiddos is with me. Then my mother-in-law decided to make to visit. She was going to stay with my sister-in-law, about 4 hours away from where we live. The problem: I had signed up to volunteer at church that weekend and they were already short-staffed. I love my mother-in-law, but I decided to keep my word with the church nursery. I stayed home while my husband and kiddos piled into the van to spend the weekend with the family. I was alone… for an entire weekend.
You’d think that I would have done something interesting or worthwhile, but instead, as soon as they pulled out of the driveway, I started to clean. I cleaned and cleaned… and cleaned some more. Then I rearranged, sifted through, and whittled down some of the stuff that just seems to accumulate. Not a very glamorous start, but it was so nice to have a clean home that stayed clean the rest of the weekend. Then I did something a bit crazy: I bought a book at full price!
It’s not very often I go to a bookstore unless it’s a used bookstore. I’m just too cheap that way. I hate spending $15 on a book that I can find used for $5 (and even $5 is more than I like to pay). But I had been listening to this author on social media, I had been reading some of her stuff online, and I was hoping that I could find a book that I could glean some new perspectives from. Y’all, I’ve only gotten through 3 chapters and have quite a bit to chew on. I’ll officially give my recommendation once I finish reading it.
One of the chapters got me thinking about my internal dialogue. We all have one – or several – going through our heads throughout the day. Just as the words we say hold power, the words we say in our minds hold the same power. We might say one thing out loud and something slightly different in our head. There’s a significant difference between saying I did something bad, and saying I am bad. Many times, the hooks the devil can sink into us are more self-inflicted than we’d like to admit.
The devil likes to mess with us using our own words, thoughts and actions against us – even the good things we say and do. Sometimes the doors that God closes for us the devil craftily tries to twist into something we’re now missing out on. Maybe God closed that door because we’re not ready to walk through it. But then the devil comes in and uses our internal dialogue to berate us for not being ready. Anybody? You might give a sandwich to the person begging at the intersection, but what kind of person are you to only give a measly sandwich?
I once read a quote about how the devil calls us by our sins, but God calls us by our name. The devil really doesn’t want us to hear our name spoken by the voice of God, so he lies by playing the shame-game and utilizes tools of rejection. He wants us to hear him – he wants to be louder than all the voices that might oppose him, especially God’s voice. If the devil can keep us trapped in shame and feelings of rejection, then he can keep us from being victorious in this life.
What exactly is shame? Many simply know it by how they feel while they’re trapped in it. Shame is a very basic emotion that drives people to hide or deny their wrongdoings. It’s based on self – we’re emotionally self-conscious with self-evaluation that focuses only on the negative that we see in ourselves. It motivates us only to quit and brings with it feelings of guilt, pain, condemnation, powerlessness, distrust, and worthlessness. It also blinds us to who we are to God based on Jesus’ sacrifice.
Shame can precede or follow rejection. These go hand-in-hand. I’m sure that everyone has experienced some form of rejection. It might be a memory of being picked last for a game of kickball, it might be in how a relationship ends (it’s rarely a mutual dumping), it might involve being passed over for a promotion, or it might be a stinging rejection experienced by a parental figure. I’ve experienced all of these and still have to hold my negative, shaming thoughts in check now and then. Rejection can be brutal. It’s when you find yourself not being accepted because of something that’s wrong with you or something wrong you’ve done. Then the shame comes in to drive the nails into the coffin.
Shame and rejection were close friends of mine growing up. While I was accepted by many of my peers, I didn’t know if it was because I was the preacher’s kiddo or if it was because I was actually likeable. Then we get into the years of going out. Rejection was alive and well in my life from the age of 13 on. Between boys, friends, and parents, my internal dialogue was pretty depressing.
A boyfriend cheated on me when I was 15 (I wasn’t easy enough I guess), I was date-raped at 17 by a friend of my older brother (my brother did not defend me), one parent had called me a mistake (out of anger), other parental figures didn’t seem too keen on offering grace and forgiveness when I made bad choices, and after becoming damaged goods at 17, then of course I would never be good enough for God or a future husband. See how easily shame and rejection team up together? They were so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else.
I would like to say that I have gotten over the shame and rejection experienced in my youth that followed me into adulthood, but I still have to stare it down even today. I have to remind myself of who I belong to and what He says about me. I still remember the emotional turmoil. I felt alone and abandoned. I felt the guilt, pain, condemnation, powerlessness, distrust, and worthlessness. While I wasn’t about to commit suicide, I did have thoughts about it and even wrote about it. While words and actions speak very loudly at times, it’s the inner dialogue that continues it on and can make it bigger than anything we can manage on our own.
We have to make a change in what we say whether it’s to ourselves (or others) out loud or in our thoughts. We need to be louder than the devil. We need to be parroting what God says about us until we believe every word – and then continue speaking His truth instead of believing the debilitating lies of the devil.
The devil calls us by our sins, but God calls us by name. The devil tells us that we’re worthless, guilty, condemned, powerless, and uses our mistakes (things we do, or things done to us) to bury us in shame and feelings of rejection. God tells us that He loves us (Jeremiah 31:3, John 3:16, I John 4:10), that He’s redeemed us and will keep us safe (Isaiah 43:1-2, Psalm 103:3-4), that He does not condemn us (Psalm 34:22, 37:33, Romans 8:1, John 8:10-11), that we have power through Him (II Timothy 1:7-8, Acts 1:8, Mark 16:15-18, Romans 8:37), and that He has overcome everything that we might face in this world (John 16:33, I Corinthians 15:54-57, I John 5:4-5).
It’s time we change the internal dialogue. We need to resist the devil with words spoken in faith – and he will run, trying to escape us (James 4:7). Find out what God says and thinks about you. Who else can define you other than the One who created you (Psalm 139:1-18)?
Your internal dialogue, the words whispered by the devil, and even things spoken out of hurt or anger to you by others mean nothing in light of how God sees you. You are His beloved child. He made the ultimate sacrifice just for the possibility that He could share eternity with you. Drop the shame and rejection and leave it where it belongs: in the grave for all eternity. That’s not where we belong and will never be so long as our faith is in Jesus’ finished work on the cross (II Corinthians 4:13-15, Romans 8:9-11, I Corinthians 6:14).
Wonderful word Alisha!!!!