OVERCOMING THE SPIRIT OF REJECTION - Part I

OVERCOMING THE SPIRIT OF REJECTION - Part I

For quite some time, many of you have experienced patterns of pain in your lives.  It seems that, although you have tried your best to be open to and accepting of others, your unconditional love is not always reciprocated.  Fact is, you feel more often than not that you are ignored, excluded, or simply tolerated by people that you might expect to GET YOU, that is, to understand what you are all about.  But somehow they fail to SEE YOUR HEART, i.e. who you REALLY are or where you are actually coming from.  

Some of those people (perhaps even close family and friends) might have even LABELED you, using unforgettable words that are soul piercing and perplexing.  They SEE you one way – through their own perspectives or life experiences – and since they are SURE that you must really be the person they have pegged you to be, they not only place you in a permanent pigeon-hole, they communicate their narrow and restricted image of you to others as well.  All of this hurts you – much more than you are willing to admit or talk about to others.  So what can you do?

Before delving into the details of proactive and positive strategies for handling REJECTION, I want to share some wonderful news with you.  YOU ARE NOT A REJECT!  YOU HAVE BEEN “ACCEPTED IN THE BELOVED!” (Ephesians 1:5-6)  That is, the FATHER has already ACCEPTED YOU as a prime candidate for grace and glory.  Your simple requirement is to ACCEPT HIS SON and to cut a constant covenant with Him.  Your growing intimacy with HIM will produce both the fruit and gifts of the Spirit in your life.  My friend, GOD has very positive plans for you, i.e. “plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11-NIV)

In order to be effective with this devotional, I must be totally transparent.  So I will elaborate on something I have mentioned before.  Since birth, I have struggled with a profound speech impediment.  Today, when others hear me teaching and preaching, they typically have difficulty believing this since God has been so good, gracious and transformational in my life. But my childhood struggle to speak clearly was (and is) a monumental force in my personal development.  How can I explain my feelings about this to you?  SPEECH is such an integral part of daily life.  It is the means and mechanism for communicating our desires and dreams, our pains and our pleasures.  NOT to have the capacity to communicate on a level where one is absolutely SURE that others understand produces an internal struggle of monumental proportions.  

So even though I was raised in a Christian home, within a positive cocoon-of-love and surrounded by marvelous parents and tremendous siblings, somehow I FELT LESS THAN OTHERS.  Whenever I needed to say something twice or even thrice to be understood, I FELT SUPREMELY REJECTED.  My young mind was incapable of processing the possibility that this might be a temporary problem.  And believe it or not, even now when I am speaking, I am still UNSURE if people clearly comprehend the words that I say!  It is important to note that others were not rejecting me or classifying me as someone who lacked the ability to speak.  In truth, I was rejecting and negatively classifying MYSELF!

There is another important phenomenon to highlight here.  Feelings of inadequacy never occur in a vacuum.  In other words, we human beings have the tendency to filter ALL of our life experiences through what we perceive as the WEAKEST LINK within ourselves.  For example, if as a child I was selected last in a pick-up game of basketball, I interpreted it as REJECTION OF ME, when in reality I was a mediocre basketball player.  Later, I discovered that I could excel in football and track and field, but those early ‘rejection episodes’ on the basketball court (amplified by my sense of insecurity about my speech) were difficult childhood experiences.

Kingdom Principle Number One: SATAN LEVERAGES OUR FEELINGS OF INADEQUACY TO CONTROL OUR ATTITUDES AND ACTIONS, AND TO PRODUCE LONG-TERM NEGATIVE RESULTS.

There is both good news and bad news to mine from this first Kingdom principle.  The BAD NEWS is that ALL of us have SOMETHING that causes us to struggle with ourselves, whether it is an ongoing physical challenge, the tragic death of a loved one, a traumatic childhood experience, a sense of inferiority or superiority, academic difficulties, or whatever one’s individual case may be.  Indeed, that is the nature of the human condition.  

The GOOD NEWS is this: While Satan’s agenda is to intensify our emotional struggle in order to produce long-term negative fall-out, GOD’S AGENDA is to TRANSFORM AND USE OUR SHORTCOMINGS in ways that enable us to systematically grow stronger and wiser, so we can assist others with similar life experiences and thereby become key players in developing the Kingdom of God.  Know this: To offset our perceived MINUSES, God sovereignly grants us unique PLUSES, both for our present sense of balance and for our future achievement.  Have you discovered yours yet?

Sisters and brothers, be continually blessed, and please (above all else) MAKE SURE YOU ARE READY TO MEET OUR SOON COMING KING.  Maranatha!  Stay tuned…more to come tomorrow.