Sin is addicting. I know that firsthand. I’ve been trapped in the cycle of shame, seeking temporary pleasure. Sin offers temporary pleasure and immediate gratification. I know. It feels wonderful in the moment. But after the moment, shame attacks. You feel the regret. You feel worthless and powerless. I know I’ve been there.
Psalm 51 was often my prayer after falling into sin AGAIN.
“Have mercy on me,[a] O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right[b] spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.”
How I longed for and prayed for a clean heart. I wanted joy, but what I felt was shame and regret.
I praise God that I’ve been walking in freedom from that besetting sin for more than 13 years.
The Problem
The problem was that I lost my true identity. I saw myself based on my performance. When I was in high school, I excelled at running and was an A student, so my identity became a runner and a scholar. When I began working, I excelled at solving problems. My identity became a problem solver.
On the other side, I failed to meet women and find a lifelong partner. I felt rejected time and time again. My identity became the rejected single who women didn’t find attractive. I fell into the trap of lust. I was angry with God and sought temporary pleasure from the illusion of a woman being interested in me. That began the downward cycle of shame. My shame became my identity. “I’m not good enough for a woman to love me.”
Beginning to Break the Cycle
The only thing that breaks the cycle is not willpower. It is not discipline. It is love. In my early thirties, I joined accountability groups. I was in groups that specifically dealt with addiction; some were specific to my struggles with lust, some were more general like Celebrate Recovery.
My accountability partners loved me. They accepted me for who I am and reminded me that I am still loved by God. I would call when I fell, and they would pick me up, assuring me I was forgiven and loved.
Finding Love
My past didn’t keep me from getting married. At forty-six, God surprised me (It took long enough). I had given up on finding a wife. I still had the lingering feeling that I never would. Also, I didn’t want to raise teenagers in my sixties.
As a single person, I was living a fulfilling and meaningful life. During those years, I mentored a teenager through Big Brothers Big Sisters and spent time teaching little children in programs for kids of divorce and struggling marriages, as well as in Sunday School. Though I didn’t have kids of my own, I became a father figure to many of them and poured my heart into those relationships. I also had nieces and nephews whom I dearly loved.
God Moved
But then… God interrupted my life unexpectedly. I received an email from a beautiful woman in the Philippines, and my life changed forever.
I was not an active member on this Filipino dating site, but I did have a profile because a friend of mine, over a decade earlier, had said that Asian women make good wives. Encouraged by this, I put a profile on the site but left it alone.
When I received the email, I checked out her profile and realized she was a genuine believer and incredibly beautiful. I paid for a membership so we could communicate freely. On our first chat, I prayed with her. I wanted God to lead the relationship wherever He would take it. I had given up. My efforts never succeeded, so I gave it to God. When I prayed, she was impressed.
You can read more of the story in my blog “When Your Past Doesn’t Define You.”
I did not earn my wife-to-be’s favor. I let God. He gave her a love for me that I didn’t earn. Every other woman, I tried to earn her love and failed. God showed me His unmeritorious love through her, but He didn’t do it until I was ready.
All For Good
God works all things together for good (Romans 8:28). The shame cycle, the recovery groups, the long years of waiting — none of it was wasted. God was teaching me patience, humility, and the kind of love that serves rather than demands. I couldn’t have been the husband my wife needed if I hadn’t walked through all of it.
God redeems the past. Jesus not only died on the cross so that our sins could be forgiven. He died to redeem us. He redeemed our past and made us new. We are being conformed to his image. Romans 8:29
The beauty of this truth lies in its freedom. Our past, with all its triumphs and failures, serves as a teacher rather than a jailer. When we embrace faith in Christ’s redemption, we find that guilt and regret lose their hold on us.
Embracing My Identity
My identity is a beloved child of God. I am made in the image of God. I am his beloved son in whom he is well pleased. That is my identity. I don’t have to strive for acceptance; I am accepted. I don’t have to wallow in shame and regret. Jesus took my shame away when he bore my shame on the cross.
It is as if I’ve never sinned and as if I always obeyed. That is not easy to believe. I have to remind myself that God is pleased with me. He’s not disappointed. He hasn’t rejected me. God accepts me.
In our merit-based world, the truth that I am loved without earning it is almost impossibly hard to accept. But it is my true identity. And it is the only one that doesn’t come undone when the accolades stop and the roles fall away.
I’ll say it again for all of us: We are made in the image of God. We are his beloved sons and daughters. That is our true identity.
That is the identity we all need. Not the identity formed by our performance, our failures, or our father’s voice — but the one that was given to us before any of that happened. We are beloved children of God, princes and daughters of the King, created in his image, bought by his Son, being made new.
God is Not Done
I’ve not arrived. I’m not perfect, far from it. I failed recently, not from lust, but anger. God has been working on my anger since I was married. You can read about this weekend in my post “What I Learned About Anger When God Exposed My Heart.” The beauty is I saw God working. Even though I failed, shame didn’t have a grip on me.
We are all a work in progress. I take comfort in the fact that God has redeemed my past and is shaping my future. I’m walking in freedom from one particularly difficult sin, but God is still at work. Like Paul said, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:14