Not Ashamed

"I know that through your prayers and God's provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed." (Philippians 1: 19-20) Paul is in prison, and he points out that his deliverance is tied to his earnest expectation and hope that he "will in no way be ashamed." Shame can have such a crippling force in our Christianity. Imagine if your spiritual leader were in prison. Your friends would all be like, "Well, what'd he do?" And to be honest here, before he was this great apostle, Paul led a life of persecuting and killing Christians. So really, he had plenty of reason to be ashamed. But he knew that shame is the real prison from which we need freedom; he believed that he shouldn't be ashamed of anything. How often do we carry around regret, thinking we should have done this thing, or we shouldn't have done that? But your sins were separated from you, set aside, and nailed to the cross. So today, let's let go of any shame and let our prayer be like Paul's—that because of Christ, I will in no way be ashamed.