The Comfort of Rejection
“Don’t be so afraid of being rejected that you reject the
spouse I have for you!” was what I saw and heard from GOD, when I woke up from
a dream on February 17, 2017. All of us in some capacity have dealt with
rejection. I didn’t even realize I was struggling with and losing to rejection
as much as I was before those words were spoken to me. Although insecurity was
one of the symptoms of rejection I had no idea what I was in for. It’s as
though that statement became frightening instead of revelation.
Has GOD ever revealed something to you and it made you want
to run and hide? But it’s like what King David said in Psalm 139:7: ‘I can
never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence!’ If you
read the following verses you will see there really is nowhere to go to hide
from GOD. I had to face the very thing GOD was trying to reveal to me. It
wasn’t just about my future spouse it was about all the things that were tied
to me.
Something rejection
doesn’t tell you is: the fear of being rejected will have you rejecting people
to avoid being rejected. Rejection and the fear of it, allows us to put up a
brick wall and declare that we are “guarding our hearts!” Are we guarding our
hearts in the manner in which GOD was telling us to (Proverbs 4:23) or
according to our definition of it? Of course we don’t want to be lonely in
life, yet somehow we’ve been tricked into thinking that if we don’t allow
people to get too close to us then we won’t get hurt.
Whether it came from childhood or adulthood, whenever you
encountered rejection, know that you aren’t the only one who deals with it. My
decision to face that seed of rejection led me to acknowledge a few things.
As a parent: how has rejection affected me? It made me want
to “protect my children from rejection,” so much so that I’ve caught myself
discouraging their optimism for fear that they would be rejected. Without
realizing it I was instilling fear in them, thank GOD, the Holy Spirit brought
this to my attention to help me catch myself doing it.
As a friend: how has rejection affected me? I would
occasionally build up a wall in my friendships and push people away and one day
the Holy Spirit began to show me this habit. In both 2017 and 2018, I would sit
in silence and try to figure out why some days I was the friendliest person on
Earth and why other days I had a bad attitude; I knew nothing was wrong with me
mentally but something was going on. And I prayed over and over for God to help
me to stop pushing people away. For one how could I show the love of Christ if
my personality fluctuated? All along rejection was there feeding me lies. ‘This
person won’t like me anymore if I share my beliefs in God,’ so I would push
them away if they didn’t believe like I did. Or, ‘that person is more likable
than you’ and it would go on and on. At times rejection tries to creep in with
the last one to try and make me feel like who I am isn’t good enough to be
liked. But how many people know that even if their mother and father were to
abandon them, GOD would never forsake (abandon, desert, leave, quit, depart from, leave
behind, leave high and dry, turn one's back on, cast
aside, give up,
As a single
woman: how has rejection affected me? I would find myself believing GOD for my
husband yet, I was saying I wasn’t ready. How was I saying I wasn’t ready? I was
declaring that I wanted to get married only after I obtained certain physical
traits. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to work on yourself, but I had deemed
myself unworthy because I didn’t “have it altogether.” Another way we deem
ourselves not ready is by mistakenly thinking that we have to be perfect for
marriage. Preparation and perfection are two very different things. Strive for Excellency
yes, but don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ll be perfect for marriage. If that
were the case I don’t think the husband would be given the task to wash his
wife with the word of God.
I know this
post was longer than normal however I really want us to get it! Let’s not
forget that even Jesus was rejected, “If
the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first” (John 15:18). So if we can go to
anyone concerning our feelings of rejection than surely we can go to Christ for
clarity, love and truth.
Additional
scripture: Isaiah 53:3, John 1:11, Romans 15:13, Psalm 94:14, 1 Peter 2:4*, 1
Peter 5:7, 1 Samuel 8:7
Stay Blessed!