"REJECTION: The Universal Malady

I am not writing about rejection from a position of objective aloofness. I have had to wrestle personally with processing rejection from other Christians, and have also had to face the pain of realizing that many others have felt rejected by me. When God began to teach me about rejection, He did it through both means -- through allowing me to feel rejected, and through allowing me to cause others to feel rejected through my imperfect attempts to relate to them.

When I consider those from who I have felt rejection, I can't think of a single one who purposefully intended to hurt me. And when I think of those who have felt rejected by me, I can't think of a single person what I meant to hurt. I was not malicious toward them, they were not malicious toward me. We weren't trying to hurt each other, in fact our intentions were to love one another. But rejection just seemed to happen anyways.

Sometimes we are rejected by others. And sometimes we feel rejected when in fact we were being accepted. Either way, the feelings of rejection are the result of our broken humanity, our falleness, our ineptitude at relating to one another in the perfection of Christ. Furthermore, it's possible to relate to someone absolutely perfectly - as Jesus related to the Pharisees - and have them feel rejected by you.

I began to awaken to the reality that a growing number of people in my sphere of influence have felt rejected by me. When I began to count them, I became alarmed at how large the list was! I can't think of a single instance when I meant to reject any of them; in some cases I knew I would be interpreted as rejecting them; in other cases I was taken by surprise at their responses. In fact, I've known the frustrating syndrome of sincerely thinking that I was expressing particular acceptance and affirmation toward someone, only to discover later that they received my words as rejection.

I have also tasted a little bit of what the apostle Paul wrote about when He told the believers at Corinth, "And I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved." (2 Cor. 12:15) Paul loved the Corinthians so much that he was willing to hazard their affection in order to minister loving correction and rebuke. He extended genuine love to them, but they interpreted his love as rejection...

In our better moments, with the best of intentions, we can still cause others to feel rejected by us. As long as we're on this earth, rejection will always be one of the foremost issues involved in the dynamics of out interpersonal relationships.

We've all know rejection in the past... It's inevitable; we are guaranteed to feel rejection again. Thus, how we deal with rejection becomes an ever-present issue which we must face honestly...

Rejection affects us more profoundly than we care to admit. We can convince ourselves that we have not been wounded by someone's rejection, but then we begin to realize we have constructed self-projecting mechanisms to insulate ourselves from reoccurrence of that kind of injury. The protective walls we build around our souls are the evidence that the rejection has wounded us more than we thought. Consequently, our relationships with others suffer. We have distanced ourselves from others because of our past pains, and now struggle to find full satisfaction in the relationships God has given us. Rejection has left its scar.

It's tempting to respond to rejection with an inner vow, "That's the last time I'll let anyone else hurt me like that." We think we are protecting ourselves from further rejection, but instead we're trapping ourselves in a pattern of behavior that only binds us to the bitterness of the past. When we serve that need to stay protected, we relate to others in a way that only serves to escalate the volume of rejection we continue to encounter from them.

Once we've been really wounded by rejection, relationships become a great risk. We calculate, "Are the potential benefits of this relationship worth risking the potential hurts of this relationship?" so we decide how much of our soul we will open to this person. New relationships can be seen as a gamble.

"The heart knows its own bitterness" Prov. 14:10 No one but you knows the depths of your heartache. You have known the bitterness of rejection, the depths of which no other human being fully understands. You have carried the wounds of private pain, suffering in a way know to God alone....

[but] No one understands rejection better than Jesus.

~excerpts from DEALING WITH THE PRAISE AND REJECTION OF MAN from pp. 3-7 by Bob Sorge

I've just started the book, so there will be more to come, if you're interested...

FORGIVENESS: The Gate to your Heart

THE GATE TO YOUR HEART
by Victoria Boyson
www.boyson.org

Your Father in heaven wants you to be freed from the wounds and disappointments of your past. He wants you to be free to move on and fulfill your destiny in Him.

If we can look at our hearts like a walled city, we can see that the gate to that city is forgiveness. Forgiveness is a powerful tool we can use to protect our hearts against the enemy's attack. That is why Satan is always eager to get us caught up into offenses that cause us to become bitter.

Forgiveness is the very pinnacle of our faith in Jesus Christ. And it is only through forgiveness that we can be truly free, free to move forward, unchained from our past. Forgiveness is a gift to us, but it is a gift we must be equally willing to give to others.

Christ Forgave Us
His love for us is unconditional (see Lamentations 3:22 23), but his forgiveness is conditional (see Matthew 6:14 15). There are no exceptions to this rule. We can say that the offense that we feel in our heart is too great for us to forgive and let go of, but if we do not forgive we will be tortured by that misdeed for the rest of our lives. The person that wounded us continues to cause us pain each time we remember it, until we release that person to God and forgive. This is what Christ did for us and this is what He expects of us.

"For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins" (Matthew 6:14 15).

He Expects the Same from Us
As Christ hung on the cross, He knew He was being brutally murdered by hatred. The hatred His murderers felt toward Him was indeed a great offense. They not only killed Him, but while He was hanging on the cross, beaten and humiliated, they continued to mock and insult Him (see Matthew 27:39). He was innocent and they were guilty. He was dying for them, and they mocked Him. Yet, enduring their torture, Jesus reached down into the reservoir of His strength and labored in His weakened condition to speak in their defense. He said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34).

Their offense was great, but His forgiveness was greater. [He wants to pour that same forgiveness through us]. He knew that the people who were hurting Him were not His enemies. He saw them as innocent victims who had been manipulated and used by His enemy, Satan. We need to see that behind every offense is our adversary, the devil. And “he is seeking whom he may devour" (1 Peter 5:8). His target is not the person who offended you, but his target is actually you. His plan is to get you to hold onto the offense and open the doors of unforgiveness. When he does this, he can bring in a multitude of torturers to torture us with our past. Our past is allowed to take hold of our present, and the sinful behavior that we have been forgiven of and delivered from suddenly returns and tries to take root in our hearts.

The Bible, in Matthew 18, tells the story of "a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants." He realized that one of his servants owed him ten thousand talents, so he had the man brought to him. He ordered that the man and his entire household should be sold to make payment for the debt. "The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go" (Matthew 18:26 27).

As soon as the servant left his master, he found a man who owed him money and demanded payment of the debt. When the man could not pay and asked for mercy, the servant had him thrown into prison until the debt could be paid in full. Seeing the entire situation played out before them, the other servants in the household went to the king and told him what their fellow servant had done. "Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant?' In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed" (Matthew 18:32 34).

Free from Offense
When we choose not to forgive our brother, we open the door for our past to come back on us and torture us. There is a very painful side to unforgiveness that Satan does not like us to discuss. He wants to make you feel as though you will lose something by forgiving, but really you have everything to gain and very little to lose. You gain peace and joy, you lose the constant torture of remembering the offense. You gain the love and acceptance of your heavenly Father. You lose the chains of the fear of the incident recurring again. And you lose the agonizing entitlement of living in the cozy little jail cell of your past.

Suddenly you are free to move on. You only need to look back now to see how far you have come from the "old you" who kept every offense locked away in the treasure chest of your mind. The "old you" would pull out (at Satan's request) the woundings from your past, only to let them wound you again and again as you toss them around in your mind.

Dear ones, do not forget: You are a child of the King! Your heavenly Father rules the world and you are His heir. Your life belongs to Him, including the painful events of your past. He cares about you very much! He has provided a way out of the pain: you have only to open the locks and remove the chains . . . you have only to forgive.

Your Father in heaven wants you to be free from the offense; free to move on and fulfill your destiny in Him. As you move closer to fulfilling the call God has on your life, Satan will try to bring about circumstances that lead to unforgiveness. Disappoint him and forgive. Satan does not want you to fulfill your destiny, and he knows if he can get you into unforgiveness, you won't.

The very person who has offended you might be the one that God wants to use to release you into your destiny. Offense is the test of graduation. Forgiveness gives you an A+! Unforgiveness leaves you with a failing grade and you will repeat the course again and again until you have passed.

A Thorough Cleaning
"Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you" (Colossians 3:13).

I went through a season in my life when God chose to do a thorough cleaning of my heart. I use the word thorough because in Webster's Dictionary it means "complete and absolute." My heavenly Father laid the ax to the roots of unforgiveness in my heart and did not let up until the job was done. The word thorough is also appropriate because the root word of thorough is rough, which in Webster's means "lacking comforts and conveniences." During this season in my life, God would not permit me to give any comfort or convenience to the sin of unforgiveness, no matter what the offense was or who had been used to offend me.

Often those closest to us will be the ones Satan uses to hurt us the most. It is easy to forgive the checkout lady at the grocery store who does not show us the proper respect. However, when those we love betray our trust, it is a much deeper wound and we need to be aggressive in our ongoing love for them. Our love for them will keep us from retaliation (see 1 Corinthians 13:5).


An Aggressive Defense
The enemy will seek to use our mouths to accuse the ones we love. We can stand in aggressive judgment toward them, with our finger wagging in their face and Satan's words of condemnation flying out of our mouths.

~ or ~

We can be used by God to aggressively defend those who have wronged us. Satan cannot condemn them if we, as the people they have offended, will stand in their defense.

When Aaron and Miriam spoke against their brother Moses, (see Numbers 12) for having a Cushite wife, the anger of the Lord burned against them. Miriam was struck with leprosy, but Moses interceded for her. "So Moses cried out to the Lord, "O God, please heal her!" (Numbers 12:13). Moses was not the one who sinned, but he is the one who cried out for God's forgiveness for his sister. He had the authority to intercede for her because he chose to forgive. If we love, we will not let Satan use us to condemn and accuse. We can be used by God to cover their sins. Next time it might be our turn to be forgiven, and they may be used by God to defend us.

In our home, when our children have a disagreement and one is clearly in the wrong, we often let the child who has been wronged choose "punishment" or "forgiveness" for the offending sibling. We remind them that next time it may be them in the hot seat, and they should choose for their brother or sister what punishment they would want chosen for themselves. Almost without exception, they choose forgiveness.

It is not always easy to forgive, but it is necessary; it is what Jesus is asking from us. He expects us to do as He Himself did. And yet, while they were killing Him, He was interceding for their pardon.

Pray this with me:

Dear Father,
Please uncover areas of unforgiveness in my heart and help me to release them to You. I choose to forgive those who have been used to wound me, because I want more of You.

Say out loud the names of those who have offended you. See them as victims of Satan's manipulation to hurt you, and release them by saying that you forgive them. Pray for them and bless them... and do so over and over if that's what it takes.


This message was taken from The Birth of Your Destiny, by Victoria Boyson.