Self-love & authenticity won't heal you

Real healing means you have to leave the tombs

What your Instagram doesn't know is that the way to freedom from shame and pain is not self-love, authenticity, cold plunges, or more outdoor time. Certainly, treating our bodies and selves with love, sharing honestly with others, doing hard things, and experiencing nature may be on the path to healing. Therapy, intentional reading, group work, and journaling all may scaffold healing work. Medicine may serve you as well.

But healing, real healing--the kind that transforms you out of a cycle of shame into freedom and joy--the kind of healing that actually changes you into a new person--only comes through the mercy and grace of God over time.

Here’s why this is on my mind and heart:

I joined 6,000 young adults in Rupp Arena in Lexington, KY, for the UNITE movement this past Wednesday. Kentucky was the twelfth stop on UNITE's tour of SEC stadiums. Many students responded to the message and the call to come forward for salvation and baptism. One of the first messages of the evening was an invitation to raise your cell phone flashlight if you felt anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, or participated in self-harm over the past week. Overwhelmingly, phone lights flooded the stadium. I work with college students, and I know this is true: young adults carry a lot of anxiety and trauma with them like a backpack they can't put down.

from the Rupp Arena UNITE worship night

Two thousand students said “yes” to Jesus that night. Saying “yes” to Jesus is the first step into the ocean of God’s love. But it’s not the only step. You are beginning a journey of freedom, but you have to keep walking. When it comes to self-harm, anxiety, addiction, isolation, and fear, you also have to leave the tombs. Here’s what I mean:

Last Friday, I preached at Asbury University from Mark 5 on "How to leave the tombs". You can listen here or watch my message here. Mark 5 is the story of the man who lived in the tombs, unchained, but isolated, tormented by demons and bruising himself with stones. He was so stuck in shame and pain that even though he was physically unrestrained, he could not leave. When Jesus went to the man and released him from the demons, Jesus told the man to go home to his friends. In this story, to experience his full healing, the man had to leave the tombs, go home to his friends, and share the story of the mercy of the Lord.

Whether we are young adults, in midlife, or retired, we know what it is to "live in the tombs". Many of us carry “demons” of unwanted thoughts, depression, or self-isolation. We know what it is to be stuck in our pain, fear, shame or sin. We pick up coping strategies and habits that keep us at the tombs instead of setting us free. We spend our time with people who are also living at the tombs and don't know any better than we do how to live with freedom.

Transformative healing comes through three ways: head, heart, and a new home. But it is not just once and done—like salvation and baptism. This is a whole new way of living. Like someone might go to AA several times a week to learn the new way of life without addiction, we need to practice the new way of living in Jesus--not in the tombs--every day, maybe every hour. Head, heart, and home.

HEAD: Tell yourself the truth about where you are stuck in your sin or pain. There is no place in your life outside God's love. There is nothing too unclean, too unmentionable, too uncomfortable, too full of sin, or too menial for Jesus. No shame, pain, anxiety, or reality is outside the stretch of God’s grace. Know the truth of God and tell yourself regularly. Preach the gospel to yourself. Every day. Out loud if necessary. Preaching to yourself is imperative. You have to tell yourself the truth.

HEART: Turn to Jesus in your heart. Be needy for Jesus. “Jesus, I need you. I need you to rescue me from my anxiety or pain.” One of the most brave, courageous things you can do is be honest with your need for Jesus in your life. To be brave, means to say, "Will you help me, Jesus? I am in desperate need of your healing today…this hour." It also means that you have to get serious with yourself. It means to be willing to own that you cannot rescue yourself. You may have patterns, ways of coping, and habits that keep you living at the tombs that you may not want to give up. It’s hard to leave the tombs if that is where you have lived for a long time.

HOME: “Go home to your friends”—You have to leave the tombs. You no longer can make your life in the tombs; you have to go home. Real change means new ways, habits, and different living. This is confession: showing up with your friends, to tell the truth about your life, your need for God, and your new place with Jesus. Then, you must live with intentional friendship away from the tombs. You will need friends in your life that don't live in the tombs. This may be the hardest part. When you experience healing in Jesus, you will need a few (4 is a good number) of people who don’t live at the tombs anymore. Think of a pastor or mentor, a friend who knows Jesus for longer than you do, someone at church who lives with wholeness and joy in God that you can ask to meet with. This is where authenticity comes into play. Not because it heals you. But because it scaffolds your healing.

Here’s what your Instagram does not know:

The antidote to shame is not self-love.

The antidote to shame is not authenticity.

The antidote to shame is grace. And it’s a lifetime of living in the ocean of God’s grace. Not just one evening decision or confessing certain words, but a whole new way to live.

One of my friends, worship artist/songwriter Aaron Strumple, has a song that has a line in it that says: “There is no place that is too dirty, too broken, too naked, too stupid, too drunken to be thrown outside Your love.”

It must begin with our need for God and confession to take a step in the ocean of God’s grace and love. But that’s just the beginning.

The free life in God is the deeper life. Keep walking.