For the record, let me just say that I’m a stinky kind of gym girl. No, I’m not exaggerating one iota either. I feel super humiliated just saying it, but I just feel like you need to know that when I work out, I end up smelling like a bag full of dirty laundry that’s been trapped in a hot car for a week. Disgusting, I know.
It’s so bad that I avoid other people at the gym. Sometimes I run into to friends there and I create a safe zone around myself (for their benefit of course) when I see them approaching me, with a loud exclamation of ‘I stink!’, as I walk backwards in a panicky sort of awkward dance so they don’t risk death by entering at their own risk.
I tried to explain my shame over being stinky to my hubby one day, hoping he could give me some pointers to which he said, “Everyone stinks! Sometimes I have to shower twice a day!”. Oh, what a novel thought! I had no idea! Here I was thinking I carried some form of stinkiness that no one else in the world suffered with, but no, we all stink! Praise God, I am not alone.
I started to feel the weight of shame slowly lift and I kind of felt human again, as opposed to something that belonged in the canine species. I didn’t need to hide at the gym (maybe just use a little more deodorant perhaps) and hope I didn’t run into people I knew.
Shame is like that, you know. It makes us feel sub-human. Stinky. Unworthy. So we hide. We push people away so they don’t have to see us in all our nakedness. And sometimes we push God away and shout ‘I stink- don’t come close!” but He is undaunted by our funk and relentless in His pursuit of us.
Just like we love our children through their dirty diaper stage as babies and their refusal to bathe as children, God loves us through our stinky adolescent stages when we perhaps make choices to wallow in sin resulting in the stench of shame. But still He bids us come in the midst of it all so He can clean us up and love on us. What a beautiful love from a perfect father.
I’m reminded of a real life dirty diaper situation that involved one of my nephews. God love him, but he’s always been a little messy Marvin type child. I love my nephews and I pretty much view them as my own children. One day my sister asked me to watch one of them for her, and of course I jumped at the chance. And he pooped. Not just a little y’all, the child FILLED up that diaper until it was overflowing with more poop than I had ever seen in my entire life. And I was inexperienced at this point. By the time I finished, poop was everywhere, like a bomb has detonated in that room. I think I used an entire pack of wipes and still couldn’t get him totally cleaned. I handed him back to my sister with smears all the way up his back because I finally gave up. Stinky situation of epic proportions!
Thank God he knows how to get the stench off of us and release us from the power of shame. We don’t have to live in shame when we are children of God. God chose to adopt us and give us His name. We are royalty. What kind of noble person would choose to live in shame when they can live as a king or queen??
It’s time for a perspective shift friends. We need to stop letting the enemy convince us that we are inferior in some way. When we allow him to do that we cannot fulfill our destiny. And that’s not cool y’all. This is who we are:
“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—”
Ephesians 1:4-5
We are his children, This is His will and what He wants. Sonship/daughtership is our birthright so let’s take hold of it and say good bye to shame once and for all. Let’s get on with our destiny! Who’s with me??
Our time is precious and we don’t need to waste it hiding because we stink. It’s time we grab hold of everything God created us to be and never look back.
Please share this blog so some other stinky person can find freedom as well!!!
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