The psalms have a way of saying things we often feel but rarely express. Psalm 6 begins with the words, “Do not rebuke me in your wrath”. The psalmist feels that he has been rejected by God. Most of us have felt the same at some time in our lives; that deep sense of failure. Do you feel like you are a terrible Christian, not serving enough, not giving enough? Well, join the club, it’s called the church. Most Christians share that feeling. It’s important, however, that we don’t wallow in our failure. We need to move forwards. One of the mistakes people make in attempting to move forwards is to simply overlay feelings of shame with a slab of theological self-motivation. We tell ourselves about God’s grace and forgiveness and so forth. There is a place for this, but this alone won’t have any effect. We must take our shame to God. We must talk to God openly and honestly about our sense of failure and our feeling of alienation from him. Unless we do this all the theological platitudes in the world will not remove our shame. If we don’t take our shame to God, we will continue to carry it. God does not reject us because of our shame because Jesus Christ has paid for our guilt in full. But until we take our shame to God and express our sense of failure and rejection, we will not be able to receive the release of his forgiveness in Christ. Do you have things you need to talk to God about?
Talk to God about your feelings of shame and failure.
Read Psalm 6
