Well, good morning. It is good to be with you this morning. I'm Angela Bice. If we haven't met, I have the privilege of being the campus pastor at the Grants Trail campus in South County. So let me start with them. Hello, Grants Trail. I love you. Be back with you next week. Also, to those online who are watching, at Fenton, at Mid Rivers, and there are some very special people watching from Fox Park across town. I love you guys. It's good to be with you all here today, too. So last week, Dave opened up the series that we're calling "Closer," because what we want to do is look at what James 4:8 says. It says, "Come close to God, and he'll come close to you." It sounds so simple, doesn't it? Just so easy. Just come close. And so Dave started last week by talking about a few things that keep us actually from drawing close to God. The three he talked about were sometimes we feel like God is distant from us, like maybe it's not even possible. Maybe he's disappointed with us, or even worse, he's disgusted with us, and so we just stay away. So today, he barely mentioned, so today I want us to focus on something else that can keep us from moving close, and that is shame. Now, shame comes for all of us because we've all missed the mark. Shame has no respect of persons. It doesn't matter your age or your gender or how educated you are or how successful you are. It doesn't even matter what high school you went to. If you're not from St. Louis, you don't get that, and that's fine. I'm from Mississippi. We didn't do that high school thing. But anyway, it doesn't matter because we've all missed the mark and we've all experienced shame. So some of us this weekend spent time with Dr. Curt Thompson. He's a psychiatrist and a writer and speaker, and he wrote a great book called "The Soul of Shame," which I highly recommend. And in it, he explains the role of shame. He says shame actually takes root in your heart, and then it attacks your identity, your relationships, your willingness to be known, sometimes even your ability to receive love. The goal of shame is disconnection, the opposite of coming closer. So today, the good news is a Savior came, and a Savior came to go to the cross for our sin and our shame. And 1 John says this, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." So this is the good news we want to talk about today and how we do that, how we come closer by overcoming shame. But first, let's pray together. Jesus, we thank you so much for what you did for us. We thank you that we can come before you as honest and open, and you receive us, and you've got all that we need. And so today, Holy Spirit, we ask you to speak to each of our hearts. You know each heart that's listening. You know where each of us are on our journey. And so I pray that you meet each one of us right where we are, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. All right, so I want to start by asking you a question. How good are you at following the rules? Now, you know who you are, right? Okay, I want you to talk to each other real quick. We like to do that around here. How good are you at following the rules? All right. You guys got a lot to say about following the rules there. I hope it was as lively at the sites. Well, so I'm really good at following rules that make sense to me. You know, speed limit. Does that mean 35 miles an hour? I don't know. We have officers in the room. I was kidding. I know the speed limit. All right. So recently, my grandson, he's almost two, and he came to my daughter, his mom, before dinner and said, "I want chips." She said, "No, babe, we're getting ready for dinner. That's going to ruin your dinner. You cannot have chips." And she's a smart mama, and so she keeps the chips and all the snacks in a plastic container on top of the fridge. And so she tells him no. She walks out of the room. But I want you to see what she saw when she walked back into the kitchen. Yeah. Now, y'all, I can't wait to see what he's doing at 15. That's the grandmother perspective, right? It's like, "Oh, yeah, this is going to be fun." Anyway, so here's what you and I know that Jack doesn't know. The chips are not going to magically fall down into his arms, right? What's going to happen? That whole thing is going to fall down on him, and he might get hurt. And so I think this is what we do when we decide not to follow the rules. We're like, "You know what's going to happen? It's just going to be a little more convenient. I'm going to get there a little faster. It's just going to go like this." But the chips don't magically fall into our laps. Sometimes we get hurt. Sometimes we hurt others, and all of a sudden, the rules made sense, right? But on the front end, it doesn't always make sense. And so whether we get hurt or not, when we do wrong, we kind of feel that thing that tells us we didn't do right. Now, I want to stop there and talk about the difference between guilt and shame. So guilt, when you're feeling guilty about something, that is, "I did something wrong." But shame says, "Something's wrong with me." Guilt says, "I lied. I cheated. I didn't do right. I hurt someone. I was selfish." And when we ignore that, actually sometimes what we call, Christ followers call that conviction. That's the Holy Spirit. That's when something's tapping on your heart saying, "Oh, you're going off your values. You're not doing what you know is best." And when we ignore that, that can lead to shame. And shame says, "I'm bad. I'm unlovable. I'm unworthy. Something's fundamentally wrong with me deep inside." Guilt or being convicted leads us to repentance, to honesty, to freedom. Shame, on the other hand, leads to bondage, to hiding, to isolation. And so what we want to do is we want to pay attention to guilt but not live with shame where it says, "This is who I am." So many of us, we're on different places on our journey. I know some of you walked into the waters of baptism just a few months ago. And the question for all of us is, is there more? Can you actually get closer? And for every one of us, the answer is yes. Yes, there is more. There's more freedom to be had. There's more intimacy. There's more wisdom and knowledge from the Holy Spirit. And when we move into that area of shame, what rescues us then? If I've not moved with guilt but moved off into shame, well, there's this beautiful thing called grace. And grace comes, and grace speaks to us and says, "That is not who you are. That does not define you. Yes, you did wrong. We all miss the mark, but that does not define you." And so what I wanted us to do today is look at some stories, a couple from the Bible, of people who did wrong, and let's see how they handled that. Let's see how they moved from that guilt maybe to shame. And the first one is David, and you're probably familiar with David if you're familiar with the Bible. We've talked about him before. But at this point in his life, he is the king, and here's what it says in 2 Samuel: "In the spring of the year, when kings normally go out to war, David sent Joab and the Israelite army to fight the Ammonites." Now, the scripture goes on to tell us that they defeated the Ammonites, but it also says this: "However, David stayed behind in Jerusalem." This is when kings go off to war, but David stays behind. Sometimes, the most important thing to do is to be where you're supposed to be or not be where you're not supposed to be. Now, that's gotten harder today. I don't know how many of you remember, I certainly remember, when I could call my mom and she didn't know where I was calling her from. Susie could say I was at her house, and I could say I was at Susie's house, and we could trick. There was no Find My anything. It's like, "Is your location turned on?" "Yeah, Mom, it's turned on." But it's important to be where we're supposed to be and stay away from where we're not. So here's David, stayed behind in Jerusalem, and it tells us that he walks out on his roof, they had flat roofs back then, and he sees a beautiful woman bathing. Now, this beautiful woman was Bathsheba bathing on her roof. She happened to be the wife of Uriah, who was one of David's loyal soldiers who was off at war, where he was supposed to be, and here's Bathsheba. Now, it's important to understand, it sounds a little crazy to us that you would take a bath on the roof. We don't normally do that. But in ancient Israel, what we have to understand is the roof was flat and was actually used as part of their homes. Throughout the scripture, what we see is they socialized there, they ate there, often they slept there, and here we see that she's bathing there. And it tells us a little more about what she's doing. It says she's going through a purification rite. This is a purification ritual that women did once a month that's laid out in Leviticus 15. So it makes sense what she's doing. She's not intentionally doing anything wrong. So David summons her. He sends for her and has her come to the palace, and he sleeps with her. Now, it's important to stop right there and say something else about Bathsheba. Nowhere in this text does it say that Bathsheba was complicit. Nowhere does it say that she gets corrected for this. All the responsibility goes on David, because most likely what's happening is an abuse of power. You have a king with all the power, and you have a woman who, in that day and time, had no power. So this might be the most important thing you hear today, so I want you to hear it. You are not responsible for what was done to you. You don't carry shame when you had no power. And so here's Bathsheba, no power, abuse of power used, and she discovers that she's expecting a baby. So she sends word to David, the king, and he goes into self-protection mode immediately. He goes, "Okay, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to find a reason to bring her husband home so that he can be with his wife, and then no one will know what I did. They'll all assume that this baby is his." So he summons Uriah home. However, Uriah decides, "That doesn't make sense for me to go be with my wife when all of the other soldiers are on the battlefield. I can't do that." So that plan failed. So David goes into the second plan. He goes, "Okay, I've got to stay hidden." He hides his sin. So he decides to send word to the commander of the battlefield, and he says, "Here's what I want you to do. I want you to put Uriah in the fiercest part of the battle, and then I want you to have everyone to back off and leave him there so that he will surely die." And Uriah is killed. So David waits for the mourning period to be over while they mourn his death, and then he marries Bathsheba, and that's that. Right? Mistake hidden. No one knows. He's even done the noble thing by caring for her, and she becomes his wife. And he carries on until a prophet shows up. Now, the prophets were the men or women who heard from God and gave God's word to the people. So the prophet Nathan shows up, and he says, "David, I want to tell you a story." Now, we're not putting this on the screen because I'm going to tell you this in a little bit of what I call the new Angela translation. So we're going to put this... You won't find it on your Bible app. So he says, "David, let me tell you a story. God asked me to tell you this story. There's a rich man and a poor man. Now, the rich man had everything. He had lots of sheep. He had lots of cattle, well taken care of. The poor man, all he had was a little lamb, and its fleece were white as snow." "And everywhere the poor man went, the lamb was sure to go." No, that's not part of the story. Anyway, he did have a little lamb that was like a pet to him and his family. And so he's got this one little lamb that he treasures, and then one day, the rich man has a guest come, and instead of killing one of his cattle, he takes the poor man's lamb and slaughters it for his guest. Now, again, this is my translation. When David hears this, he is furious. He goes, "What a jerk. Who does that? What kind of guy takes from someone who has less than he does? This guy should probably die. In fact, he needs to repay four times. Who does that?" And Nathan answered, "No, David, you're the jerk." "You did this." What God had shown Nathan is that David had Uriah murdered and took his wife. And he said, "David, you are the guilty one." So David, after hiding what he had done, he repents when he's found out. And God's too good to leave us where we are, too good to say, "That's taken care of," even if we made it right with someone else. He's like, "No, no, no. You need to come and confess it to me. You need to come and be clean before me, regardless of what happens here." And so I wonder, so if David's instinct when he did wrong was to hide, was to cover it, was to act like it never happened. So what do you do? What's your first inclination when you know you have done wrong? Well, let's look at some examples, maybe some ideas of what we do. Yep. Nothing to see here, nothing to see here. There we go. Or we freeze. "Maybe they won't see me." Or we overdo it. "I love you, I love you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry." This one's my favorite. Oh. "They can't see me." "You can't see me." So what do we do? How do we respond to that? So here's what we each know. What we know, I know what should disqualify me from grace. You probably know what should disqualify you from grace. The Bible tells us again that we have all fallen short. Grace comes knocking at all of our doors. But man, are we good at denial, right? We're so good at going, "You know, that wasn't that bad." Or we compare, "At least I'm not as bad as that guy. At least I didn't take someone's only little lamb." We compare, or sometimes we rewrite the story. We just can't bear it, so we rewrite the story and to the point that we believe the rewritten story ourselves. We just deny and we ignore. Years ago, when my daughter was little, and she kept doing wrong things, as children do, and one day we're sitting there in a tender moment, and I said, "Sweetie, why do you do things you know you shouldn't do?" And she put her hand on my arm, and as sweet as she could be, she goes, "Because I don't think you'll ever know." And that kind of defines it, doesn't it? I don't think you'll ever know. But the thing is, the thing David discovered, the thing we discovered, is you can't hide from God. We look like the dog with half of a curtain over his face, or a toddler who hides behind the sheer curtain when you're playing hide and seek. You can't hide from God. He's too good for that. And David, if you go and read, when he repented and when he was found out, he wrote a beautiful psalm. It's Psalm 51, and you should go read it. And he says in that psalm, he goes, "It's against you, Lord, that I have sinned." Nothing is hidden from God. And guess what was available to David, who committed murder, who committed adultery. Guess what was available to him? Grace. God called him out to heal him. God called him out so he wouldn't walk through life with shame, with a hidden sin. And so, the problem is not that we don't know what's right and wrong. Kurt Thompson, again, he explained that the first signs that we see of a child showing guilt or remorse or feeling they did something wrong is between 15 and 18 months of age, before they can even talk. The Word tells us this, "Even Gentiles who do not have God's law written show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God's law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them that they're doing right." So this is what we see in David's life. So David, when he hears the story about the rich man, poor man, justice kicks in. He had a lot of values then. When that guy was doing wrong, he's like, "Who does he think he is?" But when it came to himself, he had a little more grace for that. "That guy should die, but mine wasn't that bad." I have a lot of integrity when it comes to how you're going to treat me, but sometimes it's not quite as important when it comes to how I'm going to treat you. Paul said this in Romans, "I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway." You don't even have to be a Jesus follower to know consequences of sin, what it costs you relationally, what it costs you emotionally. Our counselors will tell us now mentally and physically what that costs us. You don't have to even be a Christ follower. So last week, Dave mentioned briefly Adam and Eve and what their life was like in the garden. From the beginning of time, God was telling us how to do it the right way and what to avoid. And he made it clear to them. And in Genesis 2, it has a beautiful description of what God had given them, what paradise, what the Garden of Eden looked like for them. It says there were streams that watered the land. There were plants and grains to nourish them. There were trees full of beautiful fruit. There was even a beautiful river that flowed through it, and gold evidently everywhere. And right at the end of that chapter, when it's describing what paradise was like, what the garden was like, it says this, "No shame." No shame was part of what was beautiful when things were done God's way. We weren't meant to live with shame. We're not equipped to carry shame. Adam and Eve knew the boundaries. They knew what God said, "Don't touch that tree." And they knew what it would cost them. And they forfeited it anyway. And they sinned. And now shame is part of the story. And now forevermore, shame is part of the story, and it was never meant to be. And so Adam and Eve, now they have sinned, and they hear God coming, and they do exactly what David does many years later. They do exactly what the dog did. They do what we do. They hide. They hear God coming, and they hide. And God says, "Where are you?" And Adam answers, and he said, "I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked." "Who told you you were naked?" the Lord asked. Now, God obviously knew where they were. This isn't just a physical where are you. This is relational because God's used to them walking face-to-face. He's used to no shame between them. And so when Adam says, "I was afraid because I was naked," that's not just because I didn't have clothes on. That's not just a physical nakedness. He's saying, "I realized how vulnerable and seen I am. I realized that you see it all, and now I have something to hide. Now there's a piece of me that's not going to be available to you because I don't want you to see that. Now I'm afraid." See, before sin, we're fully known and safe. After sin, we're fully known and afraid. And so God says, "Where are you?" Now, you may be holding back a piece of yourself. That might be the very thing that's causing you to not come closer to God. What might he see? There's something now that I have to hide. There's something now that I'm ashamed of. I missed the mark. I chose to disobey. Now I have to hide. And God says the same thing to you, "Where are you? Where are you? Where is all of you?" And maybe you, your answer would be, "You know what, God? I hear you calling me. I feel something drawing me to you, but I'm afraid because now I have something to hide. Because I feel fully vulnerable, and that's scary. I'm afraid." And what happens is now shame has communicated things to us, and we come to God, and we say, "I'm afraid because of what shame has taught me." And God says to you what he says to them, "Who told you that? Who told you your sin was too big for my grace? Who told you that there was no hope for your life? Who told you that I'm not a loving, compassionate, gracious God? Who told you you're too far gone, that you messed up now too many times? Who told you there's no hope? Who told you to hide from me? Who told you that?" And I'm afraid that too many times our honest answer is this, "I'll tell you exactly who told me that. People told me that. There are Christ followers who told me that." There might've been a church that told you that, and not necessarily in their words. Who told you that? Who told you to hide? Who told you there was no hope? I had the pleasure of talking with a young man who was getting baptized this summer, and that was his story. He said, "I saw people who followed Jesus. I saw how they treated each other. I saw how they responded. I tried vulnerability. I tried being honest. It didn't go well. And so I decided I was done with Jesus, too." And he said, "Until somebody gave me this example," and Thomas is going to help us here to show you his example. He said, "Until someone gave me an example of this, they said to me, 'I love listening to Beethoven. You should try it. I listen to it when I fall asleep. I listen to it when I'm anxious. I listen to it when I need to just relax.'" And he goes, "Let's hear some Beethoven. You try it. See how it goes for you." Okay. It's not that relaxing. I'm going to keep trying. Do I like Beethoven? Yeah, no, I don't think I-- Beethoven's not a good composer. And then someone else comes along, and they say, "No. Listen to this representation of Beethoven." Okay, now I'm feeling relaxed. Now I'm thinking maybe Beethoven was a good composer. You see, we think Beethoven's not a good composer when he's not represented well, when it's not played the way he wrote for it to be played. But when it's represented well, and it's played the way the composer meant for it to be played, we like Beethoven. Thank you, Thomas. That was beautiful. That's the same way with Jesus. It's possible that he's been misrepresented to you, that that is not at all who he is. And so what we do when he's misrepresented is we take what people showed us, we take the communication that we got from people, and we place that on God. If it-- If I was vulnerable and it didn't work, then surely it's not gonna work with God. If they communicated to me that my sin was too much, that I'm too far gone, that must be how God feels, because they represent him, right? But we, again, we all miss the mark. I'm so sorry if we've misrepresented Jesus. Because, see, here's what we have to get our heads around. Jesus went to the cross for our sin. That's the first thing that, that we grasp. He went to the cross for my sin. But did you know that he also went to the cross for your shame? Many of us accept his forgiveness and we say, "I know I'm forgiven," but we keep the shame. We carry the shame, even though we know we're forgiven. And Jesus says, "No, no, no. Bring it all to me. I am a God you can trust." I told this story probably about a year ago about a young woman that I was meeting with. We-- I'd mentored her for several, several years. And finally, I think she saw that she could trust me, and she became a little more vulnerable and a little more vulnerable, and she said, "Now I need to tell you something that I've never told anyone." And I said, "Okay." And she told me the story about when she... You know, she was raised in a Christian home. She knew right from wrong. You know, she was living, uh, with Jesus as her savior until a series of hard things happened, and she decided to walk away. She said, "I didn't stop believing in God, but, but I walked away from him. I was not happy." And so she walked away, started living like her friends, you know, and doing things that she knew wasn't right, ignoring the guilt, ignoring the conviction, and she said, "And I ended up pregnant out of wedlock." And she panicked, like David did and like a lot of us do. She was ashamed and didn't want her family to know how she'd been living. She didn't know how she would provide if she went through with this pregnancy. And so she was convinced her only choice was abortion. She said, "So I, I went to the clinic feeling the conviction, feeling, knowing this was not what I should do." And she said, "But I went through with it anyway." And then she said, "But what happened when I was all alone in the recovery room, I can only explain it as two things happened at, at the exact same time. First, I was suddenly aware of the horrific thing I had done." Now shame is moving in because I ignored, I ignored conviction. She said, "But at the exact same time, I've never experienced the presence of God so strong in my life. I was aware that he was there, and I braced for his wrath. But all I can say is instead, I got grace. And I felt like he held me up right there in that room, and together we grieved my sin." Grace. And so that story, her story, has really motivated me to invite women who have that experience, what-- however that looks, to healing, to moving close, to stop hiding. My friend Chrissy, who's here, who is a counselor, uh, did a group with me last year. We, we were like, "Let's just see how this would go." And I threw it out there, "If that is your story, we would love for you to join us private. You just email me. There's, there's no official sign-up. We meet offsite." And so we gathered a group of women of all ages, who that was their experience. Most of them had never told anyone that secret. And we spent eight weeks healing. We spent eight weeks being honest and vulnerable. We spent eight weeks coming out of hiding. And it was the most beautiful transformation I've ever seen as women realized that the shame went to the cross. And we're gonna do that again, and it's gonna start in a couple weeks. And if that is you, I am inviting you. You can write pastors@thecrossing.church and just say, "I need to talk to Angela. Can you put me in touch with Angela?" And that'll be just between us, and, and Chrissy and I would love to have you join us on a healing journey as we come out of hiding. Because you don't have to brace for wrath. One more story about a young man who my husband and I knew, and he reached a place in his life where he made a very big mistake that was probably gonna cost him a lot. It was gonna cost him financially. It was probably gonna impact his marriage and his family. It was possible, possibly gonna include jail time and he was panicked. And so as his story went on, there came a moment where God really showed up and rescued him, and a lot of that fell off his plate. He lived some consequences, but a lot of that went off his plate. And as he sat with us telling us the story about how God had come through miraculously and God had shown up for him, he just didn't look super happy about it, as happy as we were. And finally we were like, "What's going on?" He goes, "Here's what you gotta understand. I'm guilty. But I'm guilty. I deserve all those things. I deserve what should've been coming my way. How does God show up when I was wrong?" Grace. Grace. And listen, God doesn't wink at sin. He doesn't ignore sin. He hates it. And do you know why he hates it? He hates it for the same reason that a parent hates it when they watch their child take steps toward drug abuse, or when you see a friend start turning away from their vows to their marriage, or when we see someone headed down a road that's not gonna go well for them. He hates it because of what it does to you. He hates it because he doesn't want shame to move in. He hates it because he loves you. And he says, "Where are you?" So how do we do it? You know what? You may, you may need to see a counselor or a spiritual director or a pastor, and I acknowledge that this can be hard. The women we sat with, that was not easy, and some of them had put it off for decades. It's hard sometimes to heal. It's hard to go back and look at, at why I react this way now, why shame is, is lying to me. But listen to this. We do this by... How do we do it? We do it by keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith, because of the joy awaiting him. Do you know what the joy awaiting him is? You know what it was? You. It's you. The joy awaiting him is that you get to come out of hiding. The joy awaiting him is that he gets full relationship with you, all of you, vulnerable, not hiding. The joy awaiting him. He endured the cross disregarding what? The shame. The shame. The shame. The shame went with him to the cross. Not just the guilt of your sin, the shame went to the cross, and he invites you, "Come, come out of hiding. I want all of you. I wanna set you free. I want you to move in closer." So we've intentionally left some time. And here's what I want to invite you to do. If you're watching online, please don't disappear. Natalie's going to talk to you in just a second. For the rest of us at the sites here in this room, we've left some time, and you have some options. We're going to leave the room quiet. We're not going to have a big, loud finish. But we have pen and paper around the room, up here and at the sites that have it too, and you can either listen to the words of this song, just let it wash over you. I encourage you to pray for brave prayer, "God, show me how to draw closer. How do I fix my eyes on you? How do I move closer?" But also, if there is that thing that you need to leave on the cross, the shame that needs to go. If there's something you need to let go, and you know what? It may be someone that you need to let off the hook, who did you wrong, who should feel shame. You may need to let that go. But whatever it is, I want to invite you to move around the room, to write what that is on the paper, and literally, symbolically, lay it at the foot of the cross and leave it right here. And then pray about what next step you need to take. We'd love to pray with you. We'd love to meet with you. What is your next step? So Jesus, I pray right now that you will move in this room and in all the rooms, even the living rooms of where people are watching. Show us how to move closer. God, may we hear your voice say, "Where are you? Who told you that? That's not true." May we hear the truth of your Holy Spirit, that you love us, you did everything necessary for us to come close to you. And may we lay all of our shame at the foot of your cross. May we be the joy that was set before you. Amen. In the tempest's roar, still your peace endures, forever. Certain as the dawn, perfect love has won, my heart. Casting all my cares on the one who holds, tomorrow. Resting in your love, grace now overflows, in me. Fall into the everlasting arms. Walk upon the waves you have might call. Jesus, I will trust in all you've done. I'm letting go, letting God take over. Casting all my cares to the one who holds, tomorrow. Resting in your love, grace now overflows, in me. Fall into the everlasting arms. Walk upon the waves you have might call. Jesus, I will trust in all you've done. Letting go, letting God. Fall into the everlasting arms. Walk upon the waves you have might call. Jesus, I will trust in all you've done. I'm letting go, letting God take over. Be still and know, oh my soul, all is well. All is well. Be still and know, oh my soul, all is well. All is well. Oh, all is well. Oh, if I let go. 'Cause there is a peace that calms every storm. And his name is Jesus. Jesus, you calm the storm