"Sometimes rejection is just God taking you a new direction, so don't take rejection personally, it's what needs to happen to guide us places we wouldn't choose to go on our own." -Paul Scanlon
I have been reflecting on this recently as I have gone through quite a bit of rejection over the past year and even more so during the last few months. I lost my financial support for school, my engagement dissolved, and my relationship with my parents is strained to say the least. Some of this is partially because of actions in my past which came to light. Some of the other rejections, including ones not listed here, are unwarranted. But I do know that God uses all of this for His glory.
We have a choice on how we respond to rejection. We can hold onto it, adopt a victim mentality, and talk about how everyone persecutes us. Or we can hold onto it and believe that we actually deserve it. Instead we should receive the healing that Christ offers and recognize that He is all we need. Don't take the rejection personally. God often uses that rejection to make us look in a different direction. He is using the rejection in my own life to drive me to Him. To look at Him as more than just Savior and God but as Father, Lover, Nurturer, and Mother. God is all we need. He can satisfy our every desire. The comforting touch of a lover, the acceptance and embrace of a mother, and the strength of a father. Over the past couple weeks I have at times just laid in my bed and let Him caress and comfort me. Even as I write this I feel the approval of the great Lover wash over me.
I will speak more about this in a later post. But the key thing that I want to focus on here is that rejection is not to be feared. God will use it to bring us into new things, increase our dependance on Him, and reveal the impurities in our own lives. Embrace the refining fire. There are many who fled the fire and crashed and burned as a result. Do you want to be in this race for the long haul? Then you must submit to the refining fire in the present moment. Let God burn everything that is not of Him. Let everything of you be purged and burned in the fire. Embrace the glorious fire that makes everything glorious. Cry out for more. It will burn away every chain, every bondage, every stronghold, everything that does not reflect His glory. Cry out for more of His fire.
Prophetic people are some of the most rejected people on this earth. They are some of the most lonely. Part of the reason is that God has wired them with a powerful drive for intimacy. This is so that we spend our days before the face of God. So that we desire the secret place above all else. But this drive is often misguided. We don't understand what this deep longing is for. We think that it is for the opposite sex. We think that it is for earthly approval and acceptance. That is why so many prophets fall to sexual immorality and the praise of man. They crave intimacy and acceptance of all kinds. That is why God is refining His prophets. So that earthly intimacy will not hold us where it shouldn't. So that we recognize what that void is. So run, run, and run in order that you obtain more and more of that intimacy with God.
Don't embrace rejection itself but embrace its byproducts. Receive every good thing that God is pouring out in your life. As you die to yourself our Savior will pour more of His life into you. For to Him belongs all the glory, Amen.
-Matthew
No comments:
Post a Comment