We should not be ashamed of ourselves, because we are the work of God, with qualities and defects; above all, we are loved by him.
The word we will look at is Psalm 130.1 -8
“Out of the depths I cry to you, o Lord. Lord, listen to my voice;your ears are attentive to the voice of my supplications. If you, Lord, observe our iniquities, o Lord, who shall stand? But with you is forgiveness, that thou mayest be feared. I wait for the Lord; my soul waits, and I hope in your Word. My soul longs for you, more than the sentinels in the morning, more than those who guard the morning. Wait on the Lord, Israel because in the Lord there is mercy, and in him there is plentiful redemption. And he “for will redeem the Israel from all his iniquities.”
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How many times, in moments of our life, we have to wait for a word from whom we love, it may be a word of forgiveness, love and encouragement. With these words, we feel good, loved and welcomed, they move our hearts.
“I look forward to the Lord; my soul waits, and I hope in your Word. “
So, when we say that our soul waits in the Lord, it is because a word from Him helps up to stand, it re-energizes us. The psalmist says he expects more even than the sentinels awaiting the dawn, this is a word of God that changes our whole life.
“Out of the depths I cry to you, o Lord.”
When we keep the Lord, looking forward, we hope in the light, in the strength that comes from God, a force that liberates and redeems us. The Psalm says that from the depths we cry out to the Lord, for it is an abyss, where we are and where only God can get us.
When we allow the sin come into our life, increasingly we sink in that well. Sin means to miss the mark, fail, because nobody celebrates his own failure. The temptation is to use this weight of shame to sink more and more, for he who walks into a life of sin has a heavy heart of guilt and shame.
So we can get out of this well, there’s only one way: even though we’re in the hole, claiming the God.Maybe that’s what we need to do today, we return to God with all our heart, and the abyss, clamoring for his infinite mercy.
So that we can understand, we must see that guilt and shame are different feelings. Guilt is an uncomfortable feeling, that exists within us when we do some bad; even subconsciously, deep down we feel guilty. Already the shame is what we feel when we realize we’re not corresponding to our true essence.
God created us and tells us to fulfill a role in the building of his Kingdom. When we allow shame to dwell in us, we feel ashamed of our family, our way of being, whether internal or external, we feel ashamed of ourselves and so we feel ashamed of the work of God, his creation.
The Lord calls us to not to embarrass, not to focus on our limitations, not to compare one to another, because we have our gifts as well as our brother and sister have theirs. We must cherish and be proud of the gifts we have, because if you notice the gift of our brother and we forget our own, we feed another bad feeling: jealousy.
The Lord allows us to feel guilt, so we can check out our troubled and we can repair the damage done. Guilt has this utility, it is suffering, because we are important and loved, so we must recognize our value.
Finally, I can assure you one thing: If, today, you think nobody is counting on you, I tell you that God is counting on you, exactly who you are, because we have to bloom where He planted us, for the Lord does not doubt us.
Marcio Mendes
New song Community mission
Portuguese Transcription and adaptation: Lucas Mendes