When I was 3 or 4 years old, my parents ran a summer camp for inner-city kids up in the hills of the Allegheny Mountains. Most of the camp buildings were A-frames, which meant that the roof shingles were eye-level for a small child. One afternoon, my friend Howie (the cook’s boy) got a pack of matches. We decided it would be fun to melt some of the shingles on the backside of the dining hall. Could we catch it on fire?

We never found out, because the camp director, aka my dad, happened to walk around the corner and saw what we were doing. While the shingles didn’t catch on fire, my butt felt like it was on fire after my dad was done spanking me. I learned from his rather large hand not to play with matches again.

The reason I’m sharing this story with you is to make a distinction between guilt and shame. Guilt is when you realize you have done a bad thing. You knew better than to try to light the roof on fire, but you did it anyway. Shame is when you believe you are a bad person. “I can’t help lighting the roof on fire. I am a bad kid, and that is what bad kids do!” The silver lining to guilt is that you are not compelled to keep doing the wrong thing. You made a mistake, but you don’t intend to do it again.

Shame has more to do with your identity. You believe you don’t have much of a choice — this is just the way you were made and the way you operate. Shame is difficult to get around because it reinforces itself each time you act in a way you know to be wrong. There’s no hope for you, you believe, because you have always been this way and you will always be this way.

Belief drives behavior. What you believe about yourself largely determines how you will act in the future. If someone internalizes feelings of shame, the shame becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Shame grows in secrecy, silence and judgment. If you have a pervading sense of shame and are engaging in behavior that is wrong, shame makes you want to hide it (think about Adam and Eve trying to cover up their nakedness, or King David murdering Uriah to cover up his adultery). Shame thrives in the darkness.

Shame can come from many places but often it starts with negative messages you receive at a young age. If you are always told you are no good and there is no hope for you, chances are you’ll believe it. In my case, I found junior high to be a virulent greenhouse for an unhealthy sense of shame. Too fat, too thin, loser, stupid, nerd, dumb jock, geeky band kid, stoner, weirdo — there were always negative messages flying around for every group of kids that were either brushed off or internalized. Those years are hard enough even if you have supportive loving parents (which I was blessed with). It is another story if the source of shame comes from the people who are supposed to be protecting you from it.

There is some good news for those struggling with shame, though. When shame is gently brought out of the darkness and into the light, its power can be broken. Now, I am not advocating standing up in front of a microphone and publicly humiliating yourself about all of the terrible, sinful, wrong behavior you have been engaging in. Neither am I telling you to spill your guts to someone who you don’t trust. But when you have a group of confidential friends to get things off your chest, it can free you from the power of shame.

If you name the source of shame to someone else, God can disarm the shame over your life. James 5:16 tells us: “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other that you may be healed.” The healing that is promised is not just physical healing, but emotional and spiritual healing as well.

Charles Wesley, one of the brothers who founded the Methodist movement, has a line in the hymn “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” that has stuck with me through the years. In the fourth verse he writes about Jesus: “He breaks the power of cancelled sin, He sets the prisoner free.” You might wonder, if the sin is cancelled, why does it still have power over us? The answer is shame. You may ask Jesus to forgive you of your sin, and He does. He pays the huge debt you owe. He cancels the sin through His sacrifice on the cross for you. But shame has such a hold on your identity that long after God forgives you, you still feel the sting of it. It still haunts you. While God may forgive you, you can never forgive yourself.

This is where something powerful can happen through the Holy Spirit: God can give you a peace and an assurance that you do belong to Him. When we are feeling not only that we have done something bad, but that we are bad, God whispers to us through His Holy Spirit about who we really are. We are not hopeless sinners bound for hell. We are God’s very own children, children He cares so much for that He was willing to send Jesus as a sacrifice for our sin.

Assurance is when we claim our identity as children of God, and the power of cancelled sin or shame is broken. Going back to my story, we don’t have to light the roof on fire because we’re no good. When we do the wrong thing, we know that our Father is still our Father. Not only can we know the peace of His forgiveness, but we can know the peace of forgiving ourselves as well.

Derek Russell is pastor of the Hillsboro Global Methodist Church. He loves Jesus, family, dogs and football.