Navigating Shame With the PsalmsSample

"Where is your brother?”

I came home after being out of the house for a while. I could only find two of my three kids. When I asked my daughter about the location of her brother, she said, “He’s hiding because he knows he’ll be in trouble.”

I found my son in his bed under the covers. When I finally coaxed the story out of him and ultimately coaxed him out from under the covers, I discovered an ashamed little boy who had been careless while playing and accidentally broke something he knew was important to me.

When he did something wrong, my son’s instincts to feel shame and hide kicked in—instincts that connect him back to the beginning of the Bible. When Adam and Eve sinned by doing the one thing God told them not to do, they felt shame and hid from God. Sin and shame cause us to hide from God and push us away from each other.

David experienced this shame. He had pulled away from Uriah—one of the Mighty Men who guarded his life—after abusing his power to have sex with his wife, Bathsheba. He was deceptive with Nathan, even though the prophet eventually learned the truth of what David had done.

Shame deceives us into thinking that if someone else knew the truth about us, they would reject us. We feel unworthy of love and belonging because of what we’ve done. In these moments, we see how much of our identity is attached to our performance.

David’s psalms offer us great reminders about shame. David wrote Psalm 139 describing God’s complete knowledge of our thoughts, the hairs on our heads, and each of our days.

Our shame causes us to think that the more someone gets to know us, the more likely they are to reject us and push us away. Yet, we see a very different line of thinking in the story of David in 2 Samuel 11-12 and the songs he wrote in Psalms 32, 51, and 139.

Here, we see God who knows all, including our best and worst. God responds to our repentance with mercy, forgiveness, and grace. We find a favor with Him that is neither earned nor deserved. As we learn how God sees us, we have the opportunity to trust God's voice more than we trust the mental soundtrack which our shame produces. We can begin to accept that what God says about us is the truest thing about us.

Our enemy wants to use our past failures to condemn us and cancel our future. God takes our shame and forgives us, opening the door to a life we couldn’t have imagined for ourselves.

It truly is a gift that we have 150 of these songs in the middle of the Bible to remind us of the truth amid our shame. In the Psalms, we discover the hope we have because of God’s deep, enduring love for us.

If you enjoyed this reading plan, I’d love to help you take your next step with overcoming shame and developing your identity in Christ. Click here to get complimentary access to the three tools I use when I end up in a shame spiral and am looking for a way out! These tools will create a new soundtrack in your heart and soul which helps you trust what God says about you.