A child does not have an adult's capacity to look at what is happening and lay the blame where it should fall. She may not be able to differentiate between what is happening to her and who she is. She may even think her father's abuse of her is her fault, that she is somehow bringing it on herself. If so, her self-image will be totally affected.
I used to be like that. I had been rejected and abused so long that I thought something was wrong with me.
Thank God, He delivered me from all that. Now when I make a mistake, I may agonize over it for a while, as we all do, but I don't go around blaming myself and asking what's wrong with me. I realize that I made a mistake, but I don't become ashamed of myself for not being perfect.
If other people do things to me, I don't automatically assume that it is my fault because I am so unworthy. I don't become ashamed because I think I'm no good, or think I deserve to be mistreated.
The Trunk
If a person is rooted in shame, sooner or later as he moves up the trunk of that bad tree he will, perhaps unconsciously, begin to think, “Because I'm so flawed, the real me is not acceptable, so I'd better put on a pretend me.”
How many of us go through life striving to be something we are not, trying to impress everybody, and getting so mixed up and confused we don't know what we are really like anymore?
Often in our fear of being seen for what we really are, we try to be one way for one person or group and a totally different way for another. Because of our fear of rejection or ridicule we spend our entire lives trying to be what we think everybody else wants us to be. In the process we lose track of who we really are and end up completely miserable.
If we feel who we really are is not acceptable, we may begin to hide our true feelings. Some people become so adept at repressing their true feelings they become emotionally frozen, unable to express any kind of feeling or emotion at all because it is too painful to do so.
Many men will not show any vulnerability, tenderness, or sensitivity because they are afraid if they do, they might appear to be weak or wimpish. So instead of baring their true feelings, they put on a “macho” front, which only masks the problem, causing pain for themselves and others, especially their wives.
I think it is time we all came out from behind our masks and became real. It is time to stop role playing. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to teach us who we really are. Then we need to be honest and to open ourselves to others, instead of always being afraid of what people will think of us if we reveal our true nature and character.
Our “Love Tank”
[I pray] that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, [may be] rooted and grounded in love. Ephesians 3:17 kjv
Each one of us is born with a “love tank,”2 and if our tank is empty, we are in trouble.
We need to start receiving love from the moment we are born and continue receiving it — and giving it out — until the day we die.
Sometimes Satan manages to arrange things so that instead of receiving love, we receive abuse. If that abuse continues, we become love starved and warped, so that we are unable to maintain healthy relationships. Many people develop addictive behaviors of different types. If they can't get good feelings from within themselves, they look for them on the outside.
One of the things we must understand is that people have to have a certain number of good feelings. We are all created to have good feelings about ourselves. We cannot go around hurting, being wounded, and feeling bad all the time. We are just not designed and equipped to live that way. To find those good feelings, many people turn to sex, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, food, money, power, gambling, work, television, sports, and many other addictive things. They are simply trying to get those good feelings they are missing from within themselves and their relationships.
Even many Christians are not getting good feelings from their relationships. They just go through the motions, not truly enjoying life because of what has happened to them to deprive them of what they really need and desire — love.
The good news is that whatever may have happened to us in the past, whatever we may have been deprived of, we can get it from the Lord. He is our Shepherd, so we shall not want. (Ps. 23:1.) He has promised not to withhold any good thing from us. (Ps. 84:11.)
If we did not get enough love when we were growing up, or if we are not getting enough love now, we don't have to go through the rest of our life with an empty “love tank.” Even if there is not one other human being on this earth who loves us, we are still loved by God. We can become rooted and grounded in His love and not rooted and grounded in those things at the root of the bad fruit tree.
Bad Fruit
We have seen that a bitter root produces a bitter fruit and that some of the fruits of the bad tree are rejection, abuse, guilt, negativism, and shame.
Other fruits of that bad tree are depression, low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, anger, hatred, self-pity, and hostility.
We have examined some of these fruits like abuse, shame, self-pity, and depression, in detail. Now let's look more closely at what the Bible has to say about the bad fruits of anger and hostility as they relate to the root of shame.
Fret Not Yourself
Fret not yourself because of evildoers, neither be envious against those who work unrighteousness (that which is not upright or in right standing with God).
For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.
Trust (lean on, rely on, and be confident) in the Lord and do good; so shall you dwell in the land and feed surely on His faithfulness, and truly you shall be fed.
Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desires and secret petitions of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord [roll and repose each care of your load on Him]; trust (lean on, rely on, and be confident) also in Him and He will bring it to pass.
And He will make your uprightness and right standing with God go forth as the light, and your justice and right as [the shining sun of] the noonday. Psalm 37:1-6
When my husband and I were married more than thirty years ago, my mother-in-law wrote verse five of this passage in the front of the Bible she gave me, not knowing anything about me.
That Scripture was what I needed to live by because I had suffered so much in my past. I fretted so much because of what had been done to me and how it had affected my life, I should have been called “Sister Fret!” I needed desperately to quit fretting and start letting. I needed to commit my way to the Lord and allow Him to bring to pass my complete healing and restoration.
If you are hurting and wounded, if you have lost control of your emotions, if you are reaping the bad fruit of the bad roots in your past, then do as I did: quit fretting and start letting.
Read and meditate on these verses daily. Allow them to minister God's grace, love, and mercy to your troubled soul. Commit your way unto the Lord. Roll and repose your cares upon Him. Put your faith and confidence in Him. Trust and rely on Him to take away your hurt and pain and restore you to full and vibrant emotional health.
Cease From Anger
Be still and rest in the Lord; wait for Him and patiently lean yourself upon Him; fret not yourself because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked devices to pass.
Cease from anger and forsake wrath; fret not yourself — it tends only to evildoing. Psalm 37:7,8
Sometimes it is hard not to fret when we have been hurt or even abused by someone who seems to have ended up better off than we are.
I am thinking, for example, of women whose husbands abandoned them to run away with some other woman and who seem to be living happily and successfully despite all the wrong they have done and the pain and misery they have caused.
But this passage says that it is not over yet.
In verse eight the psalmist goes on to exhort us for the third time not to fret ourselves. Since it is repeated so many times, this must be an important point, one we are to heed and learn.
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Why are we are told to cease from our anger, to forsake our wrath, and to fret not ourselves? Because it only leads to evil.
Instead of giving in to our troubled emotions and seeking revenge upon those who have wronged us or offended us, we are to be still and rest in the Lord, waiting patiently for Him to act. If vengeance is called for, He will bring it forth. We don't have to avenge ourselves against our enemies, because God will do it for us.
We are not to get angry or try to get even. Instead, we are to remain meek, knowing that in the end we will win.
The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth
For evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait and hope and look for the Lord [in the end] shall inherit the earth.
For yet a little while, and the evildoers will be no more; though you look with care where they used to be, they will not be found.
But the meek [in the end] shall inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. Psalm 37:9-11
According to verse 9, not only will evildoers be cut off, but those who wait and hope and look for the Lord will inherit the earth. Verse 10 repeats the statement that evildoers will reap the consequences of their wrongdoing. Then in verse 11 we are again told that the meek will inherit the earth.
This is the Old Testament passage Jesus was referring to when He said on the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed (happy, blithesome, joyous, spiritually prosperous — with life-joy and satisfaction in God's favor and salvation, regardless of their outward conditions) are the meek (the mild, patient, long-suffering) for they shall inherit the earth! (Matt. 5:5).
Are you and I laborers or inheritors? Are we to try to make things right for ourselves, or are we to wait on the Lord and let Him work out things for the best?
Are we to be angry or meek?
Meekness as the Middle Ground
The Greek word translated “meek” in Matthew 5:5 is praus, meaning mild or humble.3 The noun form of this Greek word is prautes, meaning mildness, humility, or meekness.4
In his dictionary of Old and New Testament terms, W.E. Vine says that “… meekness is the opposite to self-assertiveness and self-interest; it is equanimity of spirit that is neither elated nor cast down, simply because it is not occupied with self at all.”5
I once heard that according to Aristotle, prautes (or meekness) is the middle ground or middle course between emotional extremes. In this case, it describes the balance that is to be maintained in regard to anger.
As we have seen, some people are rooted in bitterness because of things that have happened to them in the past. They allow their bitterness, anger, and hostility to manifest itself in abnormal ways.
I was like that. I had all kinds of pent-up emotions within me, but I didn't know how to release them properly. I didn't know how to give them up to the Lord.
I didn't even know who to be mad at. All I knew was that I was angry, and I was hurt. I was tired of being pushed around and mistreated, and I was determined I wasn't going to take anything off of anybody.
I was angry, but not at the right person. I was mad at human beings, including myself, rather than being mad at the real source of my problem, which was the devil and his demons. (Eph. 6:12.)
But because I was so filled with bottled-up anger and hostility, I was always very near what I call the “explode point.” All it took was for someone to cross me or offend me, or for something to go wrong in any way, and I was ready to “blow up.”
That is one extreme of anger. The other is never to get angry at anything or anybody for any reason.
Some people are so mousy and timid they just assume no matter what happens to them, no matter how badly they are mistreated, it is their fault and offer no resistance at all.
Because of their poor self-image and their low self-esteem, they actually think they deserve to be abused and taken advantage of. As a result, they go through life being apologetic when they should be angry in a balanced way. They are just doormats for everybody — and sponges for everything the devil and his demons want to pour out upon them.
That is not what the Bible means by meekness.
True Meekness
Now the man Moses was very meek (gentle, kind, and humble) or above all the men on the face of the earth. Numbers 12:3
I believe true meekness is getting angry at the right time in the right measure for the right reason.
The Bible says that when God called Moses to lead the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, Moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth. In other words, he was able to maintain a careful balance between emotional extremes.
For example, Moses was patient and longsuffering with the Israelites, often interceding for them to turn away the wrath of God against them for their sins and rebellion.
As their God-ordained leader and guide, Moses put up with decades of griping and complaining and insolence from these people who never seemed to tire of testing his patience and endurance.
Yet when he came down from meeting with the Lord on the mountaintop and saw the Israelites bowing down and worshiping the golden calf they had made, he became so angry he threw down the tablets with the Ten Commandments written on them!
There is a time to repress anger, and there is a time to express anger. It is wisdom to know the difference. Moses possessed that wisdom, and so should we.
A meek person is not someone who never shows any anger; it is someone who never allows his anger to get out of control.
Meekness does not mean being without emotion; it means being in charge of emotion and channeling it in the right direction for the right purpose.
Adopted by God
May blessing (praise, laudation, and eulogy) be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah) Who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual (given by the Holy Spirit) blessing in the heavenly realm!
Even as [in His love] He chose us [actually picked us out for Himself as His own] in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy (consecrated and set apart for Him) and blameless in His sight, even above reproach, before Him in love.
For He foreordained us (destined us, planned in love for us) to be adopted (revealed) as His own children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the purpose of His will [because it pleased Him and was His kind intent]. Ephesians 1:3-5
Some people have emotional problems because they are adopted. Since, for some reason, their biological parents chose to give them up, they feel they were not wanted or loved.
Instead of looking at themselves in that light, they should consider that their adoptive parents did want them and did love them, because they chose them on purpose to become part of their family.
According to this passage, God did exactly that for you and me. He chose us, actually picked us out, to be His very own beloved children. Not only that, but He did it before the foundation of the world. Before we even existed, He chose us and consecrated us, setting us apart to be blameless in His sight, above reproach before Him in love.
God ordained us, destined us, planned in love for us to be adopted and revealed as His own children through His Son Jesus Christ!
With that knowledge, we should have our “love tanks” filled to overflowing!
The problem is that many people are love starved. Instead of finding their sense of value and worth in God, their loving heavenly Father, they try to get the love they crave from sources that are never going to meet their need.
In Psalm 27:10 David wrote: Although my father and my mother have forsaken me, yet the Lord will take me up [adopt me as His child].
Isn't that wonderful news?
It is so comforting to know that even if we were abandoned for some reason by our earthly parents, God has chosen us and adopted us as His children — not because of our great love for Him, but because of His great love for us.
Now that we belong to Him, He has promised never to leave us nor forsake us, as others may have done, but to always love and care and provide for us as His very own, bel
oved children.
The Good Tree
Either make the tree sound (healthy and good), and its fruit sound (healthy and good), or make the tree rotten (diseased and bad), and its fruit rotten (diseased and bad); for the tree is known and recognized and judged by its fruit. Matthew 12:33
Just as we looked at the bad tree and some of its fruits, now let's look at the good tree and some of its fruits.
We find these fruits listed in Galatians 5:22,23:
But the fruit of the [Holy] Spirit [the work which His presence within accomplishes] is love, joy (gladness), peace, patience (an even temper, forbearance), kindness, goodness (benevolence), faithfulness,
Gentleness (meekness, humility), self-control (self-restraint, continence). Against such there is no law [that can bring a charge].
All these good fruits are produced in the life of the individual who is rooted and grounded, not in shame, but in the love of Christ.
Even if you are rooted in shame and all the other fruits of the bad tree, you can draw the bloodline of Jesus Christ through all that and become rooted and grounded in His love. From that point on, you can begin to grow and develop and become normal, whole, healthy and sound, bearing all kinds of good fruit in your life.
Loving Yourself
… You shall love your neighbor as [you do] yourself. Matthew 19:19
I believe one of the greatest problems people have today concerns the way they feel about themselves. The truth is that many people in our society today have a very bad estimation of themselves.