I was driving down a familiar road one fall day when I almost drove off the road, the beauty was so intense. It looked as if God had sent in a team of the world's finest artists overnight-and I was privy to the opening day of his spectacle. As I slowly drove along this festive row, leaves danced in the air and brushed against my windshield. It seemed as if I had landed in Oz. I was strongly tempted to get out and clap at God's imagination.

I was one of the loneliest people on the planet. You can be incredibly well known and very alone. And thats who I was. I was a well-known person who was very alone.

I've never walked to an altar in my life. I gave my life to Christ in my bedroom as a child.

But the witness of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus is that God's most difficult promise has been kept.

The world is not looking for Stepford-type Christians. People are tired of pretense. We struggle with failures; we long for intimacy. So why are we feigning perfection before God and one another.

If guilt tells us that we've done something wrong, then shame tells us that we are something wrong. So many people feel isolated, not good enough, defined by the labels they wear rather than the identity they have in Christ. The love of Christ tells us that we're accepted; that we belong.

When I was hospitalized in 1992 with severe clinical depression I thought I was the only one. I didn't know of one other Christian struggling with any form of mental illness. What I didn't know then was that there are thousands and thousands of men and women who love God yet are struggling alone, in silence, full of shame. This has to end. It's time to shine the brightest light into the darkest corners of the church