Scripture References Romans 8:39  Proverbs 22:6 Genesis 50:20 Philippians 4:13 Romans 6:23 Galatians 1:15 Acts 22 Judges 11: 30

TRIGGER WARNING:  Some listeners may find the content of this episode disturbing because of trauma or bad experiences in their lives.  Some stories may trigger emotionally disturbing memories.

Today's a deep dive into shame: What causes shame, the effects of shame, and where the feelings of shame come from. Let me first say, this episode I want to share a part of my life with you. That #1, I am not ashamed of;  #2, God has delivered me from!  And if I don't share it, I feel like I'm doing a disservice to the Lord because the miracle of my life, including this part of it is just that, “the miracle”. The fact that I am where I am today. Having experienced some of the things that I've experienced by my own doing and decisions that I made, of course, based on things that happened to me and how that made me feel, but as an adult, the decisions that I made, those things could have taken the worst turn in my life and I could be in a pit in Mexico somewhere.  And would not even be here today to tell you what the Lord has done.  So it's important to me to explain to you what the Lord's done in my life and how He's delivered me and another thing is that it is also evidence that there is nothing that you can ever do,  ever ever ever,  to go so far that God's arms of grace cannot reach you. I always tell people when you're dangling over the pit of hell, and you have somebody that comes and rescues you from that and pulls you up and puts you on solid ground, it is really really difficult not to talk about Him. It's kind of like when we first fall in love right?  All of my friends when I met Jim, knew immediately, and probably got sick of hearing about him because he was the love of my life and I wanted to tell everybody that I was so excited about him. Well, that's the same way I feel about the way Jesus rescued me and that's why it's really hard for me not to talk about Him.  A lot of that is included in this story and why I'm so passionate about what He's done for me and what I'm doing you can do in your life as well. When I was about 18 years old, (I graduated from high school a little bit early as I had barely turned 17 when I graduated from high school, so I had already graduated), I was waiting tables and I was dating a guy.  At that point was looking for somebody to fix my life.  The identity that I knew was mine, which was a victim of childhood sexual abuse and somebody who's worthless and broken, I just wanted all of those feelings to go away. And so this guy I was dating at the time, asked me to marry him, and I was so excited and was just so happy that someone wanted me. At that time, we were going to move to Colorado where his dad was, and help him in his business. Well, when we got there, we were living in the house with him.  One day, I had just gone off to go tan at the tanning salon and was coming out and getting ready, I was approached by another girl that was in the tanning salon.  She asked me just point blank, she said, “Hey, have you ever thought about dancing?”  And of course, I had to explain to her that you know as a Baptist preacher's daughter, we don't believe in dancing and I didn't ever dance because I didn't want to go to hell.  She starts telling me that's not exactly what she meant and that she was talking about exotic dancing.