Have you ever questioned whether that inner voice was from God? Maybe like me, you’ve wondered how to tell the difference between shame (which is from the enemy of your soul) and God’s conviction on your heart when you’ve sinned.

If you ever feel ashamed, that feeling–if you’re in Christ Jesus–is not from God. It’s from us, or from the enemy of our souls. Shame is an accusing voice, a blaming and condemning voice, a derogatory voice that says “You’re a failure. You’re a loser. You’re worthless. You’re a horrible person to do that and still call yourself a Christian.” Do you hear how stinging and biting that voice can be? It’s aimed at who you are, not what you’ve done. Trust me, my friend, that inner voice is not the voice of God’s Holy Spirit.

God’s Spirit gently convicts us of sin, but not in an accusing or demeaning way. God’s voice doesn’t attack who we are, it sheds light on what we’ve done that is displeasing to Him. He convicts our hearts of our sinful thoughts and actions with an eye on restoring our unity with Him. God’s motivation is love and a restored relationship when He convicts our hearts of sin—not judgment, condemnation, or revenge (Romans 8:1). There’s a reason Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit, who indwells every believer and convicts us of sin, as our Comforter, and Counselor, not our condemner. Satan is the accuser and deceiver, so don’t ever get his voice mixed up with the tender voice of Jesus, who is your Advocate and Defender.

God rewrote our identity from sinner to saint once He saved us. And shame certainly accompanied that old description of us as a sinner. But saint is now God’s definition of us regardless of our day-to-day thoughts and actions. That new identity as saint is based on who we are now because of what He did for us, not because of anything we do or fail to do.

When you and I continue to sin, we can feel the loneliness of shame, but that is not because God is inflicting that shame upon you and me. When we are in relationship with God and in habitual sin too, God’s Holy Spirit convicts our hearts so that we will confess (admit and own up to) that sin and return to a right relationship with Him. But God’s conviction on our hearts is often gentle, as long as we have softened hearts to hear it. Continued sin, however, can harden our hearts and make us deaf to the Spirit’s gentle voice.

Our society will tell you any time you feel badly about something, that’s shame, and you should reject that feeling. But, we never want to shut out the Holy Spirit’s gentle conviction on our hearts. If anytime we feel badly we immediately attribute it to shame and shut it out, or if a mature believer confronts us in love about a matter and we refuse to hear it because we believe they are “shaming” us, we could be refusing the refining work God’s Holy Spirit wants to do in us.

David prayed in Psalm 139:23-24:

Search me, God, and know my heart;

Put me to the test and know my anxious thoughts;

And see if there is any hurtful way in me,

And lead me in the everlasting way.

Letting God examine our hearts and motives is good. Blaming ourselves for everything that goes wrong is destructive. Blame-sharing causes us to once again put aside Christ’s garment of righteousness that He placed upon us when He exchanged our guilt and shame for His righteousness, and slip back into the old worn-out cloak of shame.

Although you and I want to be sensitive to God’s gentle conviction on our hearts, we also need to extend grace to ourselves as God does. Sometimes the very act of punishing ourselves with guilt and shame results from a prideful spirit that thinks: I can’t believe I would do something like that. I’m so ashamed of myself. Lower your lofty expectations when it comes to your own heart and behavior. Except for the grace of God, you and I are capable of any kind of sin, no matter how harsh. Therefore, be humble and thankful for God’s grace, but don’t slip into a prideful state that refuses to believe you could actually sink to a certain low or disappoint God in some way. And don’t grovel by shaming yourself for it either. Shame is another way we focus on self. Recognizing God’s grace and forgiveness is how we focus on Him.

Listen to your Advocate, your Defender, your Counselor, Comforter, and Helper. The Spirit of God will gently convict your heart to pull you closer to your Lord. Satan will cruelly accuse you to try to get you to hide from your God, or run from Him and His people. Why would you and I EVER want to run from the Giver of Grace and the Purchaser of our Debt?

Stay in His embrace, my friend. He wants to draw you closer.

For more on overcoming the loneliness of anxiety, shame, or loss,  see my book, The New Loneliness.