Your Shame Has Been Erased

This past week I watched a movie based on a true story. It was called “Beyond the Blackboard” and was about a first year teacher who finds herself in a setting she had never imagined. She is hired as a teacher for homeless children.

While she is getting over the shock of the type of job she has just accepted, she meets the substitute teacher who she is to replace. The sub is providing her some tips on how to deal with the children and then points to the blackboard where she has a few names written. She has written “Shame Names” and underneath is the names of students. She comments about how the children don’t like to see their names up there.

Once this new teacher recovers from the shock of what she has just walked into, the very first thing she does is erase the board. The shame names are gone forever, never to return.

I couldn’t help but think about how this relates to what Jesus does for us when we ask Him into our hearts and lives. It’s like we had the word “Shame” chalked across our life but as soon as we surrender it to Him, He erases the word completely…never to return again.

However sometimes we write our own name back up on the board. Even when God has forgiven us, we can struggle to forgive ourselves. We can think about our past mistakes, the things in life we have done wrong and even though Jesus has erased the shame of our past, we put our own name back up on the board.

My past is not a good one. I have done a lot of really bad things and although they may have been shameful things, I know that my name is no longer on the blackboard. My name has been erased and Jesus will never put it back up there again.

Has Jesus erased your name? Your shame is gone…don’t allow yourself to get trapped again by writing your name on the blackboard.

“I can’t wait until that day where the very One I’ve lived for always will wipe away the sorrow that I’ve faced, To touch the scars that rescued me from a life of shame and misery, this is why, this is why I sing.”
Jeremy Camp’s “There Will Be a Day”