Roll It Away

Shake Off Shame and Step Into Your Promised Land

As a kid, I struggled with not having a father. I didn’t share that much growing up, because it brought shame. Other kids at events would ask me where my father was, and I would lie and tell them he was an over-the-road truck driver. That lie protected me for a long time. Shame does very well in silence, and it can stay around for years—telling you, “You aren’t enough.” “Your failures and mistakes are who you are.” “You will never be completely forgiven or fully loved.”

My isolation as a kid became a kind of torture chamber. I had a great mother, but an absentee dad living across town who didn’t want me did something deep to me.

However, along the way, God gave me great and godly men who helped teach me the truth. They reminded me, “People do not determine your worth—God does.” “Your negative past is not your identity.” “You are chosen, accepted, favored, and a child of the Most High God.”

I’m a Bible man, and one of the verses that has meant the most to me over the years is found in Joshua chapter 5. Israel had come through forty years in the hot and hostile wilderness and had finally crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land. This was a new generation. The old heads were gone because of disobedience and unbelief. And to make sure this generation would not carry shame, blame, and disgrace into their future, God said:

“This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you” (Joshua 5:9).

God did not want them living in the Promised Land with the old toxic shame of Egypt still clinging to them. He rolled away the reproach of Egypt, marking the end of slavery, shame, and wilderness wandering.

That is a word for us too.

If you are going to go far with God, you have to get up and shake off those feelings of guilt, blame, isolation, and self-torture so you can enjoy your Promised Land. Don’t believe the accuser’s lie that your past is evidence that you aren’t enough. Trust the Advocate who knows you’re a masterpiece.

Stop pretending. Stop living happy on the outside and haunted on the inside. Stop carrying yesterday’s reproach into today’s promise.

Roll it away.

Life is short. Live.
The rest of your life can still be the best of your life.

Grace,
Cedric