I remember even being at school, I was the little ethnic kid. You know, my parents came from Egypt into Australia after the overflow of king Farouk. And there was a lot of shame because I didn’t look like the other kids, I didn’t speak like the other kids. I had a very strong accent. I didn’t speak English really until I was five. And so I felt, I knew there was something different. And shame kind of makes you feel like that there’s something wrong with me, there’s something not right with me, and our culture does not help. You are standing in the supermarket aisle ready to put your groceries through the checkout, and you’ve got magazines shaming you left, right and center, whichever way you look like, even just the covers of them telling you that you do not look pretty enough, you’re not thin enough, you’re not smart enough, you’re not celebrity enough. It’s sort of like everything is telling you, you are just not enough. And then with the advent of social media, it’s taken it to a whole new level. Like there’s no doubt about it.
The shaming that happens on the internet is absolutely unbelievable to me, the way people just shame other people in public, and rather than covering people, and being gracious and being loving, and sometimes you can just get literally sucked into the culture without even realizing it that just the way we interact with each other, instead of covering and bringing love and bringing grace and bringing mercy, we are heaping shame on one another. And shame is so destructive, you know, you could be on the other side of that screen, and even as I’ve said that word shame, you’re cowering and the hair stood up in the back of your neck because that’s all you have ever known. That’s all you’ve ever known, people have told you that you are not enough, you are not good enough, or you are too much, couldn’t you just tone it down a bit, you’re just too much, you’re just too this or too that, or not enough of this or not enough of that.
And a lot of us we carry shame into our life. And shame causes you to pull back, it causes you to cower, it causes you to feel inadequate. You never bring your full self to the table because you’re really worried about what people are going to think. And maybe they’re going to think that I’m too much because my parents or someone at school said you know, you’re just too strong, you’re just too bossy, you’re just too this, and people are smiling here in the crowd because obviously someone has said that to many of us. And you’ll find that the enemy will often come and try to shame you in the very area that God wants to use you, to catapult you and propel you into God given destiny and your God given purpose.
So we are on assignment to get rid of shame. And the world would continually say, shame on you. And I’m here to declare and decree over the next three weeks, shame off you, in Jesus name, we are going to set people free from shame. We’re going to get back to the beginning because I like to go to the beginning when we look at this. And sometimes you’ve got to go back to the start, to find out how you got here, to find out how you even came under this cloud. Genesis chapter one, verses 27 to 28, the scripture says, so God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God he created them male and female. He created them, God blessed them, and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground”. I love it that in one version, it says, “And you can have dominion over every creeping thing”.
I just want you to know that we have that dominion right here. But why I wanted to talk about that scripture is we see right from there in the Word of God, that you and I are created in the image of God, whoever you are, I want you to know that your great great grandfather was not an ape that went to the hairdresser and had a cut, shave and blow dry. You were made on purpose, for a purpose. You were created in the image of God, you are filled with God given destiny, you are filled with God given purpose.
