Navigating Shame With the PsalmsSample

Do your feelings ever feel overwhelming? Ever struggle to know what to do with intense emotions?

Perhaps you grew up in an environment that didn’t equip you to process challenging emotions. Maybe you grew up being taught that all emotions were sinful and not to be trusted.

However, Jesus offered a different model for our emotions. The Gospels record Jesus experiencing a wide range of emotions from anger and grief to happiness and disgust, while never giving into the temptation those challenging emotions create.

Repeatedly, Jesus drew on wisdom from the Psalms when He had challenging emotions to navigate. Over the next three days, we will turn to the same book that Jesus did, as we work through an especially difficult emotion to navigate.

Experiencing Shame:

Is there a worse feeling than knowing you’ve wounded someone you love?

I’ll never forget sitting in a therapist’s office across from my wife, as she shared through tears about an experience in our past where I’d wounded her emotionally. If the knowledge of the pain I’d caused her wasn’t bad enough, I found myself struggling to remember the experience she described. How could I not recall something which had her in tears several years later?!

The guilt I felt initially was replaced with a deep sense of shame, making me feel unworthy of her love and undeserving of the forgiveness she shared with me that day in therapy.

Whenever my days became quiet, a condemning inner voice reminded me of what I’d done and how I’d hurt her. That inner voice made me feel despair about the past and discouraged about the future.

Is there an area where you feel shame today? Can you imagine what your life would be like if you navigated shame differently?

Shame lies to us, driving us away from life with God. In 2 Samuel 11-12, David sins against God by having sex with another man’s wife and abusing his power in the process. When the woman notifies David of her pregnancy with his child, David has her husband killed to hide his sin, even as the man fights in a war on David’s behalf.

David doesn’t face what he’s done until the prophet Nathan confronts him with the truth through a very carefully worded parable.

Psalm 51 is a well-known writing of David, penned in the aftermath of that confrontation with Nathan. Psalm 32 is a lesser-known passage which scholars believe was written after Psalm 51. In Psalm 32, David describes the physical experience of shame, as well as how God’s power was ultimately victorious over it.

After you read the passages in today’s devotion, identify 3 to 5 words that summarize how shame feels in your body.

Tomorrow, we will dive deeper into David’s experience and the two songs he wrote as he navigated his shame. Just as he experienced God’s power and presence in his shame, I’m praying you’ll experience the same thing in yours! Shame doesn't get the last word when it comes to your worth and value.