Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work.

There is a voice. And if you're honest, you probably know this voice pretty well. It's not loud. It doesn't scream at you. It's more like background

noise. It's that low hum that follows you around. And if you happen to hear it, you'll probably

hear something like this. You're not good enough. You don't measure up. If people really knew you, they wouldn't want you around.

You're too much. You are damaged goods. Maybe it started somewhere specific, like a parent, a failure,

a thing you did, or a thing that was done to you. Or maybe you can't even trace it back to anything.

It's just always been there, this quiet, persistent sense that somehow you don't quite make the cut. This is the voice

of shame. And here's what the voice of shame does over time. It doesn't just make you feel bad about

yourself. It shapes how you relate to God. Now, shame is not

guilt. Guilt says I did something wrong. Shame says I am something wrong. Guilt is about your

actions. Shame is about your identity. And here's the thing that makes shame so sneaky for

Christians specifically.

It doesn't usually look like unbelief.

You believe in Jesus.

You believe in grace.

You could explain the gospel to someone.

You might even share the gospel with others.

You know the right answers.

But somewhere beneath all of that at the level of your heart, at your core, the place where your deepest assumptions about yourself actually live, you don't experience the gospel as true for you.

Today, we're in Luke chapter 5 and there are two stories that we are going to read back to back in this passage.

And what I want you to notice before we even get into

those stories is the type of people in these stories. In the first story, we meet a leper. And in the

...