REJECTION set me free, because it’s really liberation to and for destiny.
Whatchyousay!?
That’s right. I said it, I meant it, and I’m here to represent it! So, i’ma say it again. Rejection is really liberation. It reveals where the source of our nurture ISN’T, helping us to get on with the business of finding where our nurture IS, and freeing us from empty, wasted attempts to get what we need in all the wrong places and from all the wrong people. Rejection really is a course correction that we can and should be grateful for.
Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let me explain. I’m convinced that, for those who love God (Romans 8:28), all suffering is redemptive. Although a specific life episode may indeed be bad, when viewed contextually, it works together with everything else in our lives to produce something good. This is so because God is frugal (John 6:12,13). If God refuses to waste a word, watching over every divine utterance until it comes to pass (Jeremiah 1:12); and if Jesus refuses to waste even one fragment of left over bread after shutting down history’s biggest ever impromptu soup kitchen; then it stands to reason that every painful episode of our lives is put to good use as well.
When I finally came to terms with my parents consistent and unintentional rejection, it both provoked and freed me to seek acceptance in other places. It stirred my active search for a person or place of consistent, unconditio
nal acceptance. It took some years for me to realize that I would not and could not find ultimate acceptance in the embrace of flawed people, structures or ideas; but that realization led me to recognize that full acceptance is available for all of us only in the Beloved, the one who created us for personal relationship and pursues us with passion (Ephesians 1:6).
Leading churches from a largely ignored pulpit for some 20 years has shown me that many people deny the reality of their prejection (parental rejection) and rut down the wrong path to completion because of fear. Fear of losing all connection to a parent who painfully rejects them. Fear of being excoriated by a society that reifies the idea of parent and parenting, but denigrates them both in practice. Fear of trusting an inner voice they’ve been trained to ignore and even rebuke.
I believe completion, maturity, is our goal, our divinely assigned destiny; and only one, unique, narrow path leads to it for each of us (Matthew 7:14). Inquiring at, and finally walking through the Strait Gate of acknowledging & accepting parental rejection is the courageous first step toward that spiritual completion & maturity. A first step that many find almost impossible to make. But for those who got it like that, freedom and destiny awaits. To take that first step, click here.
