God is your loving Father.

When God says you are now adopted into His family, he means it! You have all the benefits of having GOD as your FATHER! God is your supernatural, amazing daddy! He won’t abuse you, abandon you, take out his selfish or weak emotions on you, let you down by forgetting about you, take advantage of you, or any of the things that earthly parents might do because they are only human and they are weak like you.

You see, when we are children we think of our parents as all-powerful and all-knowing and unfailing. But when we become teenagers we begin to see them in a more realistic and critical light. They don’t always keep their word, and sometimes they are not as compassionate as they should be. Or maybe they are really awful and abusive and you have blamed yourself for that.

When you become self-aware, that you exist apart from your parents and other people, it gets harder to reconcile conditional, inconsistent love or abuse with your own self-worth. This knowledge can lead to anxiety because we all need to be loved by someone we trust to maintain a healthy sense of self. At the point, people can develop many coping mechanisms to protect their sense of self from harm. But God wants us to discover our identity in relationship with HIM, which requires trust.

Fear of rejection by God

Normally, children naturally believe in God and when they become old enough to become aware of their own sin, it is not hard for them to ask Jesus to forgive them. But many people, for various reasons, even if they believe in God, struggle to form close relationships in which they feel truly accepted. The loneliness caused by thinking no one (peers or parents) really loves them and it’s their own fault because something must be wrong with them can be so painful that the only option is to stop caring . This can cause them to withdraw into themselves and cut themselves off from all relationships, even God, making them more vulnerable to temptation. Then when they do sin, they don’t think they can turn to God, because He is all they have and what if He also rejects them?

They submerge their self-imposed guilt and shame, but it is still controlling them. So they are trapped. They may turn to other religions, philosophy, medication, or addictions for relief. But what they need is to know that God does love them even if people don’t. Unfortunately many judgmental Christians will be quick to shame them rather than help you find freedom from the trap of sin. Then the world will point out this judgmentalism as hypocrisy because all of us have sinned. And they do it because they, too, are not trusting God. But God is willing to forgive all of us.

Fear of rejection makes us run from God

While people do fall into addiction for other reasons, the most common reason is to escape emotional pain caused by feelings of being unloved, rejection, and lack of close relationships in which they feel able to be themselves. The pain caused by believing that no one loves you and that it’s your fault is excruciating. This is why it is so important to understand that God truly does love you, because it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to find a human who will love you in this way.

In fact, I think God wants us to find that type of love only in connection to Him. What did Jesus say? We are supposed to love him more than our own parents and family. He doesn’t mean we stop loving them. This has to do with idolatry. We are meant to be very close to God. That’s why the Bible talks so much about sexual immorality and idolatry. Things things are a cheap and ineffective substitute for what we need from God. We need to bond with Him. This can only happen if we TRUST HIM.

Run to your Daddy!

Back to the first paragraph. If you are still full of shame and guilt, or it haunts you every time you do anything wrong even if it’s an accident or you aren’t even sure if it’s wrong, that means you do not understand God’s love for you. He still loves you! He wants you to run to Him when you feel ashamed, not away from Him. But our old nature is used to hiding when we feel shame. It takes a lot of TRUST to take that shame to God because we are afraid he won’t love us anymore. That’s the little kid in you that never was sure if your parents actually loved you.

God loves you so much that he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross so that he could destroy that power that shame has over you. The power of the fear of death and the heart pain of shame is what caused Adam and Eve to hide in the garden. They were cast out for their own safety. But Jesus made things right.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound!

As believers in Christ, we are no longer living under the law. We are under grace which means that we are forgiven by God’s mercy and love and goodness, not our ability to follow rules, which we can’t do. God provided a way to be restored and his name is Jesus.

But many people have been told half-truths or outright lies about Jesus and God and Christianity and forgiveness. They live in fear of being hurt, and that fear and hurt caused by other people and our own shame can turn into total rejection of God’s offer of mercy and love.

You may think your sins are too great or that God is mean. Either way you are wrong. Everyone is a sinner in God’s eyes. But God is WILLING AND ABLE to save you! He loves you and you can trust Him. Turn to him today with all of your brokenness and believe that he will change you. You don’t have to fix yourself. God will do that from the inside, in your spirit, when you connect to him by faith.

I know I have repeated myself, but I know how hard it is for some people to get this idea into their heads because I was one of them. Shame and fear kept me from trusting God. But I had a breakthrough during a crisis in my life and I chose to believe that God really does care and he proved himself worthy of my trust. You can do the same. But it takes faith, even a tiny bit is all you need.

God is waiting for you right now to come to Him.

Just turn to him and say, I need you God and I believe that you are willing and able to forgive me. Lay your sins at his feet. Admit that you can’t carry them anymore. Then open the door of your heart and let him in. He won’t let you down.

Note to Christian readers

I know some Christians reading this will be concerned that I didn’t mention repentance or giving up sin. Those things are necessary, but they can’t truly happen unless we trust God because we will hold things back from him, things we use to make us feel safe. Only when we trust God can we be free from those security sins, also known as idols. So this post is about trusting that God is willing and able to save you from all of your sins. He will change you and refine you and clean you up after you trust Him. I have lots of other posts about Christianity. But I find that there is a real lack of faith in the church right now. So we need to get back to basics. And the most basic truth of the gospel is that Jesus died to pay for our sins, all of them. We can’t clean ourselves up for God and we aren’t meant to, He will do that when we trust Him.

This post was inspired by a podcast with Juli Slattery about people trapped by sexual guilt and sin that started playing automatically in my podcast queue. It’s not a topic that I know much about. I do not have a problem with porn and I had no idea that it was so prevalent amongst women and children. Check out this very helpful website called Authentic Intimacy if you do have any type of sexual problem, including trauma or marital problems. I was super impressed by the grace AND truth expressed by Slattery. She has written several books on the subject of sexuality according to the Bible. However, not all guilt and shame comes from porn or sexual immorality. So I can relate to the need to fully believe that God is willing and able to love, save, forgive, and help me with all of my problems when I trust him. I hope you found this post helpful.