10/12/2026
The Shame God Never Asked Me to Carry:
As a woman who was delivered out of addiction, abuse, violence, and prostitution, I have learned a few things over the past 26 years of pursuing the Kingdom of God and seeking to know Him more intimately. Some of the revelations of God's truth have come through a slow unraveling of years of wrong thinking, wrong believing, and wrong behaving. Condemnation was my constant companion for far too many years, even when I was going hard after God and cooperating with Him in my own sanctification process.
One of the most valuable things I am even now coming into a fuller understanding of, which is enabling me to live freer than I ever have in my entire 50 years of living, is this...
We are responsible to walk in a manner worthy of our calling, to act with integrity, and to present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice, but we are not responsible for protecting ourselves against every possible misunderstanding of our character. What other people perceive about our motivations and actions is not our burden to carry.
Living with a clear conscience is threatened when we allow shame and human judgments to influence our own willingness to express ourselves as ourselves in a world that rewards conformity and the wearing of masks. This is especially true within the church, where far too many have historically lived self-righteously, placing confidence in their own righteousness apart from God, which the Word tells us is like filthy rags in His sight.
This kind of religious thinking breeds judgment and hypocrisy because when people begin measuring righteousness by their own standards, they inevitably begin measuring others by those same standards. They become preoccupied with identifying the faults of others while remaining blind to the pride and self-righteousness operating in their own hearts.
Unfortunately, many sincere believers have suffered under the weight of these human judgments, struggling to enjoy the freedom that comes from being made righteous through faith in Jesus Christ.
For those of us who are prophetic and have discernment, we can often recognize how other people view us and the judgments they make about our character, motives, and actions. Many of us have also experienced enough criticism and misunderstanding over the years to know that these judgments are very real.
The problem comes when we begin putting weight on how other people are seeing things and internalizing their judgments until they become part of our own internal dialogue. Before long, we find ourselves questioning things we once felt perfectly free to do, allowing the opinions of others to influence how we see ourselves and how freely we express who God created us to be.
Rather than living boldly, freely, and without apology, we begin to run and hide, carrying shame and condemnation over things the Holy Spirit has never convicted us of.
If many of your relational experiences have been with people who are still living under a cloud of condemnation, people who are ashamed of themselves and feel unworthy of love, chances are that over time, their viewpoints of you have been used by the enemy to corrode your confidence and hinder your understanding of how God sees you. When we internalize the judgments of people who are themselves struggling to see their own worth through the eyes of God, we can begin to see ourselves through those same distorted lenses.
There is a tremendous difference between being conformed to the image of Christ and conforming ourselves to the expectations of other people. God is transforming us into the image of His Son. He is not requiring us to become carbon copies of one another. Sanctification is not the destruction of our individuality.
I am a prophetic, deeply feeling, highly passionate woman who loves beauty and delights in the wonder of living in the Kingdom of God. I experience life with an awareness that there is often much more happening than what can be perceived with our natural senses. Not everything is as it seems, and some of the most extraordinary things God does in our lives cannot be adequately explained to those who have not experienced them for themselves.
I love expressing my femininity. I love beautiful things, creativity, adventure, and the freedom to enjoy the life God has given me. I have strong desires, deep emotions, and a personality that was never meant to be suppressed simply because someone else might misunderstand it. None of these things are inherently sinful, and I am no longer willing to treat them as though they are simply because someone might assign an ungodly motive to them.
For years, I have been careful about how I present myself and how my actions might be perceived by others, which those closest to me would probably find shocking, as I have always been outwardly bold and expressive. But somehow, even in this, there have been internal struggles and lingering tendencies to internalize how other people respond to and view me.
There have also been seasons when I was walking in a greater measure of freedom, only to experience fresh wounds through people I had allowed close to my heart that stirred up old feelings of shame and condemnation. At times, I found myself retreating into old patterns of thinking and questioning myself in areas where I had previously experienced tremendous freedom. There is wisdom in conducting ourselves with discretion and considering how our choices affect those around us, but there is a point where that consideration becomes an unhealthy preoccupation with managing other people's opinions within our own thoughts and emotions.
We can become so concerned about appearing holy that we begin suppressing perfectly innocent expressions of the very people God created us to be.
I don't believe the Holy Spirit has spent all these years working in me so that I would become less alive, less passionate, or less capable of experiencing the beauty and wonder of His creation. His work has been to purify my heart, renew my mind, and bring my desires into agreement with His. There is an important distinction between surrendering sinful desires and suppressing the good desires God Himself has placed within us.
"I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me."
-1 Corinthians 4:3–4 (NIV)
I appreciate that Paul could say his conscience was clear while acknowledging that this didn't necessarily mean he was innocent. He understood that he was accountable to God, and he wasn't going to allow the judgments of other people to take the place of God's judgment. We can be willing to examine ourselves and receive correction without feeling obligated to answer every accusation or convince everyone that our intentions are pure.
We also need to be careful that we aren't allowing the shame, condemnation, and distorted thinking of broken people around us to become part of our own internal programming, influencing how we see ourselves.
I want to fully embrace the life of Christ flowing through me in the exact expression of the unique person He is recreating me to be. I want to flow freely in His Spirit, embracing my gifting and individual calling unapologetically, without allowing the opinions or judgments of others to hinder what God is doing in and through my life. Leading others to do the same, following only Jesus.
Have you ever mistaken the fear of being misunderstood or judged by others for modesty, humility, or godly discretion?
Are you allowing people who have never learned to embrace their own God-given identity to determine how freely you express yours?
Are you more concerned with appearing righteous in the eyes of others than with being fully surrendered to the One who has made you righteous?
