Faith Shame Episode 3: When Shame Tries to Disqualify Us

What happens when guilt over a behaviour becomes shame about who we are?

In this episode of the Faith Shame series, we explore one of the most hidden struggles facing many believers today - the shame surrounding sexual sin, particularly lust and pornography.

Using the powerful account of the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11, this teaching examines the difference between guilt and shame, and why so many sincere Christians continue carrying a sense of disqualification long after they have sought God's forgiveness.

Together, we'll reflect on why some struggles thrive in silence, how Faith Shame convinces us that we're beyond change, and why Jesus never allows our sin to become the final word on our identity.

This is an honest, compassionate and thought-provoking conversation about grace, truth and the courage to bring hidden struggles into the light.

In this episode:

• Why guilt and shame are not the same thing
• How Faith Shame turns behaviour into identity
• Why hidden struggles often become strongholds
• What the woman in John 8 teaches us about grace and restoration
• Why silence strengthens shame and honesty begins healing
• Using the SEE reflection model to help us bring hidden struggles before God

Study Scripture: John 8:1–11 [NLT]

Reflection Question:
Have I allowed a past or present struggle to define who I believe I am, rather than who God says I am?

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome back to the Word and Prayer Room podcast. In our last episode, we looked at Mephibosheth and discovered how faith shame can convince us that our struggles have somehow disqualified us from belonging. And I was thinking about that and just reflecting on the word belonging and how important it is for us as not just human beings but as children of God to be connected to like-minded people and to be part of that greater vision. It's part of our identity in Christ. And that's one of the reasons why the enemy tries to break that identity and try to tell us that we don't belong. But we saw in that last episode that grace doesn't wait for us to have it all together. Thank God. That God's amazing grace is able to meet us exactly at the point of where we are. Today's study is called When Shame Tries to Disqualify Us. And I believe this is a study that is going to be quite deep and uncomfortable for some people. I want to talk about the shame that surrounds sexual sin. Yeah, I said it, sexual sin. Specifically, the ongoing private struggle with lust and pornography that so many believers are dealing with in silence. And let me just burst a myth that some people believe that it is only men that are drawn towards pornography, but it is also women as well. So I just wanted to make that distinction. Now I've thought about this topic for quite a while before deciding to do an episode on this because I know how taboo and uncomfortable it can feel for many people. In many of our church spaces, we can often find it easier to talk about anger, we can talk about doubt, we can even talk about grief. But this particular struggle often gets buried under layers of silence because the shame attached to it feels very different. Now, this issue doesn't just show us that we've done something wrong. This issue of sexual sin actually tries to convince us that we are the something that is wrong. There's a distinction between doing something that is wrong and being convinced that you as an individual or me as an individual is that thing that is wrong. You know, I'm thinking of the believer who serves faithfully every week. They lead worship, they teach Sunda school, they pray for others, and then they go home carrying this private battle that they've never had the courage to tell anyone about. And I don't think it's because they want to stay where they are or because they don't want to be set free from this struggle. I believe it's because they're convinced that if anyone truly knew, they would become unlovable, it would be unforgivable, they would be beyond redemption and disqualified forever. Maybe that's you. Maybe it's someone you love. Maybe it's a struggle from years ago that still influences how you see yourself today, even though the behavior has stopped long ago. You see, faith shame doesn't always need a current sin in order to survive. Sometimes it just needs a memory. Now, to help us go deep and think about this honestly, even where it's really uncomfortable, we're going to look at a woman in the Bible found in St. John chapter 8, who had her private sin dragged into the most public moment of her life. Just before we read St. John chapter 8, and I'm going to be reading verses 3 to 11 from the New Living Translation, I just want to give some context so that we can really get the scene of what was happening in this story. So by this point in Jesus' ministry, he had become impossible to ignore. So people knew that Jesus existed, they began to know about his fame and the miracles and the many things that he was able to do. Crowds were, however, divided over who he really was. Some believed he was the Messiah, others dismissed him. And the religious leaders were growing increasingly threatened by his influence, especially his habit of showing mercy to the very people they had written off, such as tax collectors and sinners. Now, just days before this encounter with the woman that we're going to focus on, Jesus had been teaching in the temple courts during the Feast of Tabernacles, and tensions were already running so high that some people there wanted him arrested. That evening he went to the Mount of Olives, and early the next morning, he returned to the temple where a crowd had already gathered to hear him teach. And it's right in the middle of that teaching moment that the religious leaders interrupt. And it they didn't interrupt because they cared about the woman that they brought to him, but they interrupted because they'd been looking for a way to trap Jesus. You see, in the story, if he said let the woman go, Jesus would look like he was dismissing the law of Moses. And if he said stone her, he would be contradicting himself because he'd been teaching about grace and mercy. So this woman was caught in the middle of a much bigger battle that had nothing to do with her or her sin. So with this context in mind, let's read this passage together and pay close attention to two things. Pay attention to what her accusers wanted her to believe about herself and what Jesus actually said to her. Okay, those are the two things that I want you to bear in mind as we read the scripture together. So I'm going to be reading St. John chapter 8, verses 3 to 11, and I'm reading from the New Living Translation. And it says, As he, as in Jesus, was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. Teacher, they said to Jesus, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. They kept demanding an answer. So he stood up again and said, All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone. Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust. When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one. Now check this out, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to her, Where are your accusers? Didn't even one of them condemn you? No, Lord, she said. And Jesus says, Neither do I. Go and sin no more. Notice where this woman is standing, not in a quiet room with a trusted friend or in prayer time alone with God. She's standing in the middle of a crowd, exposed, with her worst moment held up as visual evidence against her. I want us to sit with that for a moment, because this is exactly what shame does, especially with sexual struggle. It isolates first and then it exposes. Even when there's no crowd physically present, shame creates its own courtroom in our minds. We become both the accused and the accuser. We rehearse our failures. We build a case against ourselves that we would never build against anyone else. And here's what's easy to miss in this story. Notice that the men who dragged her forward weren't actually interested in her holiness. Scripture is honest about that. They were using her to trap Jesus. Her body, her shame, her sin became a tool for someone else's agenda. And I wonder how often that still happens today, but just in covert, subtle ways. How often does someone's private struggle become the gossip, a warning story, a cautionary tale whispered in small groups, rather than something handled with the seriousness and tenderness it deserves? This is part of why faith shame around sexual sin runs so deep. Because it's not only about the act, it's also about what people fear will happen if it's ever seen. I don't know about you, but I've personally seen people get excluded, joked about, talked about, or treated with suspicion once their struggle becomes known. So individuals learn to hide, right? Not because hiding heals anything, but because hiding feels safer than being exposed. But hold on a moment. Where were her accusers by the end of the story? Gone. Every single one of them. The text says they left one by one, beginning with the oldest. Oh, I think that detail matters. You see, the longer we live, the more we come to know our own capacity to fail. And when Jesus said, let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone, he wasn't excusing what she'd done. He was dismantling the idea that anyone in that circle had the moral standing to condemn her. So I've been asking myself this question as I was doing this study. What happens when the church becomes the crowd? I want to bring this closer to home because I think many of us listening will recognize what I'm about to describe. I've grown up around and been part of black African and Caribbean church communities for most of my life. And I have to be honest about something I've witnessed more than once. An unmarried woman falls pregnant and suddenly she's treated differently. She's publicly moved to the back bench, relieved of all her ministerial duties, and spoken about in tones of deep disapproval and judgment. She's made to feel like her presence is now something to be managed rather than welcomed. The warmth that used to greet her at the door becomes something colder, more distant. And in some cases, it's even more direct, open hostility, public comments, exclusion from ministry, a kind of humiliation, dressed up as holiness. What has stayed with me though is what I came to learn years later. Some of those very same people who led that campaign of condemnation, the people who made her feel like she no longer belonged, these very people had their own hidden histories. I'm not talking about one child out of wedlock, but in some cases many children out of wedlock, born back home in Africa or the Caribbean, left behind with grandmothers or aunties, while they came to the UK and built a new life, a new reputation, a new image of respectability. The paw simply never followed them across the ocean. Nobody in the pews knew. And because nobody knew, they were free to stand in judgment over a young woman whose situation happened to be visible. This is precisely the picture in St. John chapter 8: a crowd, stones in their hands, absolutely certain of their right to condemn. That is, until Jesus says one sentence, and they're left to reckon with their own record. And notice again what the text tells us. They left beginning with the oldest, the ones who had lived longest, who had the most years to accumulate their own hidden failures, were the first to recognize they had no standing to throw anything. I say all of this not to shame anyone further, and certainly not to suggest that hidden sin should be dragged out and displayed the way that young woman's was. That's exactly the pattern I'm asking us to stop repeating. I say it because I think it's important that we're honest about how easily the church can become the crowd in this story rather than the presence of Jesus in it. Visible sin gets punished, what I've come to call the big ticket items, while hidden sin gets secretly carried away across borders and buried under a new life. And the tragedy is that the people most equipped to extend grace, because they know better than anyone what it felt like to need it, were often the ones least willing to offer it. If you've ever been on the receiving end of that kind of treatment, pushed to the margins of a community that claimed to represent Christ while it withheld from you the very grace it claims to preach. I want you to hear this clearly. This was never how Jesus responded to the woman in front of him. He didn't move her to the back. He didn't let the crowd define her future. He looked past what everybody else could see and spoke directly to who she still was. Now I want to be careful here because there's a temptation to hear this story and think that Jesus is simply saying sin doesn't matter. Well he isn't. Look at his final words to this woman. Go and sin no more. He names it plainly. He doesn't pretend it wasn't real or that it doesn't matter. Grace was never about pretending. Grace never ignores sin, but neither does it allow sin to become the final word on who we are. I think this is where many people get stuck, particularly in areas such as lust and pornography. They know it's wrong and may have repented countless times. Some may still be struggling, while others found freedom years ago. Yet faith shame has quietly taken root. What began as guilt over a behavior gradually becomes shame about identity. Instead of believing I did something wrong, they began believing there is something wrong with me. And that's the difference. One is a behavior that can be confessed, repented of, and changed. The other is a false verdict about who we are, and that's often where the real stronghold begins. This shift matters more than we realize. Guilt says, I need to change. Shame says, I'm beyond change. Once we believe that, we can often stop fighting. I mean, why resist something we've become convinced defines us? Why bring it into the light if we're certain it will only confirm our worst fears? Faith shame doesn't simply follow sin. It often becomes the very thing that keeps the stronghold alive. What I found so reassuring is that Jesus never allowed this woman's sin to define her. At the same time, he never pretended it didn't matter. He held truth and grace together without allowing either one to cancel the other. That's the tension many of us struggle to hold for ourselves. We either minimize the sin because we're afraid of shame, or we drown in shame because we take the sin seriously. But Jesus shows us a better way. Take sin seriously, but let grace have the final word. Let me say that again. Take sin seriously, but let grace have the final word. So in closing, I want to say that I don't believe every struggle needs to be shared with everyone. But I do believe every struggle needs to be shared with someone. A trusted, spiritually mature person who can hold both truth and grace. Faith Shame tells us that if people really knew, they would walk away. Sometimes the greatest surprise is discovering that someone can know the whole truth about us and still choose to stay. If this is a struggle you carry and you're experiencing, I want you to hear something clearly. Your pattern of sin has never been a surprise to God, and it has never changed his attitude or his love towards you. He's always known, and he's never once needed you to clean yourself up before he was willing to draw near to you. This doesn't mean that the struggle doesn't matter. It matters enough that Jesus addressed it directly and called for change. But it was never meant to be the thing that defines whether you belong with him at his table. Faith shame tells us that if people truly knew our secret battles, we would be cast out. But grace reminds us that Jesus already knows every hidden thing about us, and he is still the one saying, Neither do I condemn you. So as we prepare to pray, let's bring ourselves honestly before the Lord. Remember, in this study we are praying according to seeing. E is about asking the Holy Spirit to examine us and not just asking him, but allowing him to examine us. And E is to give up that area that is impacting our lives and exchanging it for what God would have us to receive from Him. So as we prepare to pray, ask the Holy Spirit to help you to see where shame has kept a private struggle hidden, not just from others, but perhaps even from having an honest conversation with God. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you examine what you've come to believe about yourself because of this struggle? Have you moved from I did something wrong to I am something wrong? Has shame convinced you that hiding is safer than being honest? Ask the Holy Spirit to help you exchange shame for truth. Say, Lord, what have I believed about myself that you've never said? What would it look like to bring this into the light with you first? Just take a moment to reflect. So let's pray. Father, thank you that nothing is hidden from you, and that you have never once needed our secrets exposed to be willing to draw near to us. Lord, we bring before you the private battles that we've carried in silence, the ones we've confessed a hundred times, the ones we're ashamed even to name. Where we've believed that this struggle has disqualified us from belonging, remind us of the woman who stood exposed before a crowd and heard you say, neither do I condemn you. Father, help us to take sin seriously without letting shame convince us that it has the final word. Give us the courage to bring what is hidden into the light. First with you, Father, and then where it's safe with someone you trust us to walk alongside. Father, thank you that your grace was never dependent on our ability to stay clean. It has always been based in your love and your covenant through Christ Jesus. Father, thank you that you hear us when we pray. In Jesus' name. Amen. So I trust that you've been blessed and positively stirred up to really go even deeper in your walk with God. And in terms of an application, I'm just thinking about learning to sit in that space of reflection. So if you can, take some time to really think about something that you may have been hiding, a struggle that you've been trying to deal with over a period of time. And then if it's safe, just write it down so it's visible between you and the Lord, and then sit with that and ask the Lord to speak truth into it. Remember, he knew all about it, he already knows about it, and so therefore, it's having that conversation with him and asking him to show you how this can be a stronghold that can be destroyed, broken in the name of Jesus. Listen, I believe that God is able. There is nothing impossible for him to do. So until next time, remember that nothing that you have hidden disqualifies you from his table. Remember, we talked about his table in the last study. So I'm going to leave you with Romans chapter 8 and verses 1 to 2, reading from the New Living Translation, which I think really sums up today's study. And it says, So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to Him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. Amen. Amen. Well, God bless you and see you in the next episode.