I’m working on a new book, the purpose of which is to point out that there is something missing in our discipleship training in America. We are failing to deal adequately with the “interior condition” of the disciple. Since we hardly explore this, we are not helping believers make a dynamic change at the place where it matters the most.
Life is painful, and it has a damaging effect on the soul. Even after becoming a Christian, the interior condition of a believer is the greatest hindrance to Christian growth. Healing and delivering the soul from the pain, anger and fear is mostly, if not completely, neglected by our discipleship processes.
This pain, anger, and fear in the soul come with silent messages of shame. We begin to hate some things about ourselves, or we hate how God has made us, and we build an identity around this shame. We call this our Shame-based identity, for as we perceive ourselves in shame, so it becomes our identity.
Because this identity is itself adding more pain to the soul, we develop our own strategy for coping and managing our lives. The coping behaviors we develop for surviving become known in the New Testament as the flesh: all the ways apart from God that we seek to get our needs met; to protect ourselves and to provide for ourselves.
The flesh is not about healing, but about hiding. Since we don’t know how to heal the shame, we develop a “False Self” as a front to hide the shame. We create and send out to church and work our “super-self,” who can perform “our best life now!” routine. This way, hopefully, no one could imagine that we have such shame hidden in our hearts.
We hide our Shame-Based Identity, but we live a phoniness in our False Self, and this sabotages any attempt to grow spiritually. At least, until “Jesus comes with grace and truth” (John 1:14). After our initial salvation experience, Truth is like feedback from God. Through reading Scripture, through sermons, through meaningful conversations with friends, and especially through broken, painful relationships, Truth comes to reveal our own story of brokenness. Then grace is there to heal our story, bit by bit. Truth comes to reveal to us the pain in our heart, the wounds in our soul, the abuse in our heart, and the lies in our head. Then Grace heals us, wound by wound, prayer by prayer.
This is how we deal with the interior condition of our heart. Memory by memory, prayer by prayer, we bring the pain, anger, and fear into the presence of God. We let Grace lead us into dialogue with Him, Who gives us truth, feedback, and further epiphanies. He diminishes our shame, as we receive His healing words during this transformational prayer work.
This is the way of changing at the level of identity.
It’s story work. Bringing the painful memories of our shame into His presence for healing. The Shame-based identity falls away, as our true identity in Christ emerges.
Spiritual growth, if it is to be lasting and significant, must be made at the level of Identity.
– Carter
(P.s. I would love some feedback. Is this too complicated, or does it make sense?)