Overcoming Shame: Why Molech Still Has a Grip on You

Overcoming shame is one of the most important conversations the Body of Christ refuses to have. Shame is an enemy of the children of God, and most believers are living under a low-hanging ceiling that has nothing to do with God's heart and everything to do with a counterfeit weight they were never meant to carry.

I want to start somewhere most people don't expect. I want to start with a guy named Molech.

In Leviticus 20:1-5, God speaks pretty plainly about a god worshipped by the Phoenicians, the Canaanites, and the Ammonites. The cult of Molech received human sacrifice. They built a metal statue with hollow arms, lit kindling inside it, and laid their firstborn children on the heated arms, and the children burned alive. God hated it, with good reason.

Follow Molech through the Bible and you'll see him show up again. Solomon built a high place for him on the hill east of Jerusalem (1 Kings 11:7). Josiah tore that system down a generation later in 2 Kings 23:10. But the part most believers miss is what the name itself means. Molech is derived from melek (king) and bosheth (shame). In other words, Molech is literally the king of shame.

The sacrifice of firstborn children to Molech was a counterfeit first-fruits offering. God sending His firstborn Jesus as the atonement for the world, the enemy taking your firstborn to be consumed on the grill. So when we're talking about shame, we're not talking about an emotion. We're talking about the operating principle of one of the most ancient enemies of God's people.

I'm not going to dodge the question. The Bible does talk about shame in a few different categories. There is a shame God brings on His enemies in judgment. Babylon, Bel, Merodach in Jeremiah 50:2. That shame is judicial. It belongs on them.

There is also a shame the apostles in Acts 5:41 rejoiced to suffer, counted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus. That shame is external, and it never touches their identity.

And there is the shame Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 6:1-6, entrope (G1791), when he says "I say this to your shame." That's a father informing the body of Christ that they are bringing shame upon their own heads. He spells it out one chapter later: "I do not write these things to shame you, but as my beloved children I warn you" (1 Cor 4:14). That is fatherhood, not manipulation.

But none of that is the shame most of you are walking under.

The shame you are dealing with is illegitimate shame attached to things already under the blood of Jesus. Past sin. Old memories. Things you did at 16. Things done to you in a cult. Things you can't even fully remember. And religion has done you no favors. We've been taught a reduced gospel that turns Christianity into one long loop of repenting, feeling bad, repenting again, feeling worse, repenting once more. That isn't the gospel. That's behavioral modification dressed up in a Sunday suit.

Shame is being used in the Body of Christ to control people. To force people into masks. To lock people out of confession, because the moment something seeps through, they get crushed. It's the same mechanism the cults use in programming. Religious programming, MKUltra programming, SRA. Bondage to shame keeps the doors closed and the parts silent. It anchors a counterfeit label (loser, addict, dirty, used) on a person who has already become the righteousness of God in Christ.

Here's the part most believers don't see. As long as bondage to shame anchors you to broken identity, you cannot agree at a subconscious level with the new identity God is trying to give you. You can ask for prayer all day. You can receive ministry until you're blue in the face. But Isaiah 61:7 says, "Instead of your shame you shall have double honor." Heaven cannot pour the double honor in while the shame is still sitting in the fridge taking up space. God needs to get the shame out so He can get the calling in.

That's why we have to do business with shame directly. At the end of this teaching I pray a renunciation of shame out of Prayers That Shake Heaven and Earth, the Freedom from Fallen Heavenly Powers prayer. We renounce shame. We serve it a bill of divorce. We invite the heavenly hosts to recover every part of us that has been loyal to shame and escort those parts to the feet of the Lion of the tribe of Judah to be healed and delivered. We close every portal. We sever every counterfeit inheritance. We bind every gatekeeper. We return every counterfeit label that shame ever tried to anchor to our identity.

If shame has been an enemy in your life, and for most of God's children, it has been, I want you to pray this with me. Watch the full teaching above and stay through the prayer at the end. Romans 10:11 says, "Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame." That promise belongs to you.