Welcome to Speak the Truth, a podcast devoted to giving biblical truth for educating, equipping, and encouraging the individual and local church and counseling and discipleship.

Hello. Hello. Hello. We are still on the road, and I am joined with a special guest who's been with us at this point, I think, three or four times. You've been with us a few times.

Yes. But

I am joined today with Kristen Sofalinder. Kristen, how are you doing?

Doing well. Glad to be here.

Yes. I'm glad you are here. A lot of the feedback that I get from our episodes together is your elegance and just like soothing to listen to and how you just take so yeah, we've had some I'm like, yeah, that was captured very well because that's what it felt like doing a

podcast I've with heard that many times and that my voice is soothing, which I don't as a counselor, I think there's something good about that. And then I wonder, am I just lulling you to pacifying hard emotions.

Yes. That is very good. Kristen, we are glad that you're here nonetheless. And we're gonna be continuing our conversations around trauma. Focusing on in this particular episode is wisdom adorns the shamed.

And it's really looking at just trauma's disgrace, looking at what the impact and effect of it. And so we're looking forward to this episode. But Kristen, before we get going, if you could just share with us what you've been up to. Because I think last time we had you on, you're a Portlandian. Is that what do we call Portland folks?

I think it is Portlandian. I've got to embrace it.

Okay. And you have a biblical counseling ministry and you've had that for six years?

Biblical counseling ministry. I've been here for almost fifteen years.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Alright. But the actual counseling ministry you've had for six years, or has it been longer? Did I misunderstand you earlier?

Oh, I've been I worked alongside of somebody. So I guess, yeah, I've been on my own for about six years.

Okay.

Yep.

Nice. Nice. Good. So any anything interesting? Any writing assignments or anything that we could be looking forward to?

Yeah. Let's see. I'm trying to do a little more blogging though that that's been slow. Yeah. But I've got a couple more up.

And then I have an article in the journal biblical counseling coming up in February, or I want to talk about the practical implications of union in Christ for loneliness and ministry. And bring that down. So I'm excited to write that up. I spoke at it at the CCF conference about that. So I want to make that a little more tangible and have some other ideas that I'd like to propose to them too.

Yeah. Nice. I can't wait to hear that. And for all of you guys that have been through level one certification, you're very familiar with the JBC articles. So, yeah, we look forward to that.

Kristen, why did you choose this particular topic and the subsequent text and Proverbs for this topic?

I love, I think I when I'm reading scripture, I love the language of beautifying. Yeah. I stumbled across a passage in Ezekiel that talks about the Lord, clothing people in fine linen, adorning them with beautiful necklaces and earrings and gold and crowns and making them renowned to the nations among around them. And it's actually a judgment passage. So I feel like I have to be a little careful with it because they scorn that and then they receive judgment.

But just what a striking image of what the Lord does, of how he beautifies us. And when you're working with people who are in the throes of shame, that's what you want them to know. The Lord has beautified you from the inside out. Has made you radiant with his glory. But if you've ever walked with somebody who is feeling on deeply unworthy, or dirty in the very core of them, you can't just say, Jesus put gold chains around your neck, or even the promises, the beautiful promises of Christ adorns you with his beautiful robes of righteousness.

And they look at you and they say, I wish I felt that was true. And then what a hard thing to share such a glorious truth, and have it just slide right off of somebody. Yeah. So I think that's what prompted this study was, how do I access that? Right?

These beautiful promises in Scripture, in Proverbs that wisdom is a graceful garland on your head and a crown, and it will make you renown among in the eyes of other people. It will, it's like an embroidered linens on you. How do I help somebody begin to hold on to that as an answer to what trauma and sins against them have taught them?

Yeah, that's really good. When you teach them this, you have a movement of this and the first one sort of trauma is like the dirtiness of it. What you're talking about, that's the shame. It's just feeling dirty. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Yeah, I love the language in Scripture about being unclean. I think it's just such a good description of what it feels like. It's somebody else's sin comes and you feel like you need to be cleansed of it. Women who have undergone significant trauma, significant abuse or assault will describe that feeling of I'm dirty on the inside. I've been sullied within my soul.

Trauma has shame has lots of different lots of different ways we experience it dirty is one and unworthy is its cousin right there where dirty is about purification and unworthiness would be about value. So I'm sullied and then unworthy that I'm worthless. Right? So I'm dirty and nobody will ever wanna talk to me. My value is completely lost as an experience of shame.

So then moving from that, then we have the dirtiness, the unworthy, and then the overall piece of it is the reality of feeling exposed.

Yeah, I think the shamed that you're always feeling, you're always scared of when is someone going to find it out? So you have these suspicions or these really deeply held beliefs even that you are not what you ought to be. That there is something deeply wrong with you. It's not just that you did something you aren't wrong, you are something wrong. And that one day someone's gonna see it.

And then the other experiences of shame are, I'm going to be outcast, I'm gonna be abandoned and left.

Yeah, it's really good. And then so moving from that God's response to those things. So obviously following the how the person feels in that feeling dirty from unworthy, ultimately feeling exposed. But then God's response to that, he enters into that. I want to talk a little bit more about that.

What an extraordinary God that we have that he doesn't stand on the outside of that. He doesn't even offer an answer from the outside. It's not like, all right, hey, over there, this is these are the 10 steps that you need to do to fix to fix that cleanliness problem you have. Yeah. But that we have a savior who entered shame in every way, that all of our experiences shames as we shame as we read the Gospels, we watch him come near.

Right? So to the dirty, I think about the bleeding woman, he he comes near. Right? And in the Old Testament, when you're unclean, you have to go around shouting to everybody unclean, unclean, right? And you can't touch anyone and you can't be anyone in the first time in history, where the unclean becomes clean, from the touch of the clean.

He reverses that he comes in. Yeah. When she touches him, instead of him becoming sullied by her, she becomes cleaned by him. So we have all these narratives about him coming, coming to the shamed and entering the shamed places with people associating with the shameful people. But then we have descriptions of him taking on the shame himself.

Yeah, despised being rejected. Isaiah 53 that he was the language is leaving me but that he's awful to look at, essentially, and he's hanging on the cross and he's spat upon, which in Levitical law spitting is the thing that to be spat upon is to make you dirty. So here he is, he's naked, he's spat upon, he's despised, and he's being put to death. So we have a Savior who came to our shame, and then took it into himself in order to conquer it in order to reverse it.

Yeah, it's just your word pictures and coupling that with Isaiah 53, and that he wasn't esteemed. And so what's interesting about drawing that correlation, and really, it's the implication of the gospel, to someone who has experienced trauma, they've been sinned against greatly, and they've experienced that dirtiness, that feeling of unworthy, ultimately feeling exposed. Jesus, like, literally incarnated that, like he took that on.

Yeah.

So the spitting upon, feeling ashamed and the fact that it was the Father's will to crush him, like all of these things that a traumatized person feels and experiences internally to the degrees that they do. Obviously, varies depending on the individual, but the fact that Jesus came and he took on those things like literally took on those things and redeemed it.

Right. Became them alongside. It's like he's stepping into our story and then inviting us to hold his hand. Come with me, we're gonna take this somewhere different. And through his story, we're watching him begin to overturn what shame does, right?

When Christ is shamed, it actually begins to function for redemption. So he's changing shame from this thing that you ought to cast you out and you ought to have to tell everybody unclean stay away from me dirty to making it no come and know me. Let this be the place where you might be adorned by me. And we're looking at all the different this is what he offers us as he enters this with us. But then we're looking at all the places that we want to go that are not him.

Because we in our shame, we try and find other solutions for it. So I think that's part of laying out too. What are we tempted toward? Yeah. That fall short of his glory and fall short of the beautiful linens that he's offering us in himself.

Yeah, that's really good. And part of that movement too, as you were talking about Jesus coming on in the remarks that I made, but the reality of it is coming into wisdom, Jesus comes to us, he makes you clean from your dirtiness, He lifts you up from your unworthiness, that he makes you strong in your frailty. The the frailty of feeling exposed and everything else that goes along with that. And so Christ comes and he scorns that shame, and then you draw that from Hebrews chapter 12. Alright?

Because that's literally like how the text reads. I just I wanna read that text because I think it's just it just speaks so wonderfully to what you're drawing out and how this becomes quite literally a proverb, a new covenant proverb to our shame and to the traumatized. And I'll just start from verse one chapter 12. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus. I love that in the Greek too, that imperative of looking.

The founder and perfecter of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross and here it is despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him, under the reality of not growing weary, consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted. And what I find just really interesting and now obviously that's as a sinner, but I also think it's also a broad brush stroke as well in the the grander scheme of the reality of just the impact of sin in the world being sinned against being a sinner, sinning against others, but it's just it's the totality of all of that.

Right.

And it's like, that's what he scorned. And all of that was nailed to the cross.

Right. Yeah. Took away the power of that, turned it upside down, cast it aside. I get so excited when I think about that reversal, right where he comes, he enters it, and it becomes the stage for redemption. When I'm walking with someone in the midst of shame, just that hope that this could become the stage of redemption for you too.

Yeah, as the power of his death and resurrection on your behalf that you would be able to feel and stand in the glory of what he won for you, and that it would beautify you. And I think that's what drew me to the Proverbs. How do we know that beautifying action? How do we begin to walk in that?

So good.

It's exciting.

Yeah. So good.

Yeah. It's good stuff.

It's so good. Kristen, that was really good. So moving on to the next point from Hebrews chapter 12, we were talking about that. So how does wisdom adorn?

Practically, how do we do this? You landed in Proverbs three for that. And let me read, I'll just read three to six. Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you. Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart so you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight. Just a classic verse that I think everybody memorized in Sunday school. But what strikes me about it, I love that verse three going back from the the one we've all memorized, but let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you bind them around your neck.

That

it has this reciprocal relationship in it. It has the faithfulness of God and his steadfast love. That's his Hasid love. Yep. All the covenant promises that have been that he has made and the ways it's like stepping into the redemptive narrative that he will be faithful to draw us to him.

And then it has this action that comes. Bind them around your neck and write them on the tablet of your heart. This picture of one that has the necklace imagery, bind them around your neck. But writing them on the tablet of your heart. Live in them.

Let them shape the way you function in your world. The word of God tell you what is true over and against these other voices that are trying to tell you, right? And then it goes on trust in the Lord with all your heart. That's how you do that you trust in him and you lean not on your owners understanding. I think as we think about that in the context of shame, I get excited about this idea that shame has such a strong voice.

And it's so compelling to listen to it and to trust it. And to think because I feel dirty inside, I must be this. But what scripture is telling us is as you reach for what God says is true, As you lean into his steadfast love, as you lean into Hebrews, right? Yeah. And fix your eyes upon Jesus and become like him in that, that that's where the radiant beauty becomes.

Yeah. That that's an act of beautifying and to trust that even just that act of trusting that is true. Even if you don't feel it is beginning to change that what shame has done. Shame has lowered you, has outcast you, it has disgraced you. But as you lift your head to meet the glory of the Lord, he will shine on you and you will become radiant.

So thinking about the particulars of that in different experiences of shame.

Yeah, that's really good because unfortunately, shame is a very powerful emotion. Arguably that voice is a lot more often than not is a lot stronger than truth. Like, the voice of truth seems to get muted pretty quickly by that feeling. And so I think that's the that's part of that process. And so I really appreciate how you put that the beautifying of that process.

Yeah,

I'm following it. I worked with a woman once, who was in a was being shamed by her community, and was walking in righteousness and had to go to court appearances and things like this and stand up against all these people who had been in her her side at one point and had turned against her. And she had this little embroidered sweater. And she we talked about this, the embroidered linens of the Lord, and she clung to Psalm one, do not walk in the way of the wicked. Right?

And she said, I'm gonna walk in the way of the Lord, and I'm gonna cling to what is true. And she would wear her little embroidered sweater to every court appearance. And she would hold on to it. And it was the most beautiful thing I may have ever witnessed in counseling to watch the Lord dignify her. Right when everybody around her.

With a sweater.

With a little sweater. She would hold on to it. And it was the way that she held on to the promises of the Lord. And just to see him lift her head as she walked with him and not in the eyes of other people and not in the shameful voice that's. And I think that's where scripture's leading us.

Fix your eyes on Christ. Yeah. Walk with him. Hold on to what is true and know the ways he lifts your head.

Yeah. That's really good. That's really good. And so in the conclusion of that, wisdom will adorn you with Christ himself. Just want concluding thoughts on that.

As if to say what you just said wasn't concluding enough. We can Yeah. We can stop. Oh, yeah. Go ahead.

Just any concluding points on that because it's just so powerful.

Yeah. That he will make you like him. Walking in his ways and fixing your eyes on him, you will become radiant with his glory. Meaningful to me, just to think about exuding the glory of the Lord Himself, as the spirit shines through you, as the image of Christ is, as you are remade into it.

Just

Yeah. That you said that the radiance and the beautifying, I think the term that comes to mind, which is also an emotion, joy. Absolutely. For the joy that was set before him. Uh-huh.

So it's it's it's like reverse spiritual engineering. It's like Christ came, he endured it, he did those things. He ran the race of shame, exposure in his humanity. All these things took that for you, carried it for you, so that you can have the joy which he speaks very highly of in John 17 in his high priestly prayer. Yeah.

That he wants them to experience joy.

Uh-huh.

That same joy that was set before him. So that shame is absolutely traded for joy. And that is the sanctifying image bearing, beautifying glorifying reality of that radiance. Joy is the beaming of that radiance.

Yes. Amen. And we get it by holding on to him as he dives into shame.

Yeah. I just I Yeah. It just it seems like a lot of times when we have these conversations, specifically with counselees, I'll finish with this, I don't know if there's anything else that you have. But a lot of times to your point in terms of that process of beautification, is a lot of times it stalls out in the loud voice of the shame and trying to compel them biblically, spiritually, instrumentally, using your time in the counseling room to say, look, like fix your eyes, everything that you just said, like being able to have that conversation with a counsellee. I know it's hard to believe right now, but but the joy that Christ purchased the same joy was that was his that kept him by the spirit and able to endure everything in his humanity, the same humanity that he has made like that is yours.

Yeah. But we you've got to get to that point to where the the voice of shame, that emotion dies out and you pick up the joy that is yours and being able to cultivate that.

I think part of picking up that joy as counselors, we have a really sweet privilege to call it out as it's growing. Yeah. And I think that's part of this process. We lay out this foundation of, okay, this is what we're gonna do. Yeah.

And this is what he promises. Yeah. But you're gonna get to see pieces of how they are beginning to be conformed to the image of Christ and how they are and to be able to delight in that with them and to get excited that your joy with them would start to help be that process that that hopefully is realized in that joy. Yeah. Alongside of Christ.

Yeah, that's really good. That's really good. As always, Kristen, thank you so much for being with us. It's always a pleasure. I feel like I just was on a good walk with you and talking about these things and I'm feeling refreshed.

I'm feeling good. I'm walking away with that is the hope for those in that beautification process of the shame that they've experienced for all those that have experienced all that trauma. It's the joy that's already there. So thank you for that. We appreciate it.

Thank you guys for listening, and we'll see you guys next time.

Bye.