Day 14 - Love First: Dealing with Rejection

Love First: Dealing with Rejection

Therefore Jesus told them, “My time is not yet here; for you any time will do. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil. You go to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.” After he had said this, he stayed in Galilee.

However, after his brothers had left for the festival, he went also, not publicly, but in secret.
John 7:6-10

Ask any young adult how it feels to get dumped by someone in a relationship. They’ll tell you it’s no picnic. Rejection can build your character and make you a stronger person, but everyone reacts to it in different ways. For some people, rejection is paralyzing. It stunts their psychological and emotional growth. It’s all in the way you process it.

We have all faced some form of rejection—exclusion, dismissal, disappointment, alienation, deficiency, disapproval—and lived through it. However, how we deal with it makes a great deal of difference. In the section of Scripture for today, and from a week ago, we saw that Jesus’ own brothers didn’t believe in him. They rejected that he was the Messiah! Go figure. But Jesus didn't let their rejection of who he was stop him from doing what God had given him to do.

There have been some notable mistakes in history that were due to someone’s rejections. In 1876, Western Union decided to reject Alexander Graham Bell’s patent on his new invention called the telephone. (Just a couple of years later, they tried to buy it for $25 million…and were rejected.) Julius Caesar rejected his wife’s pleas to stay home from the Senate on March 15 because she’d had dreams he would be killed. And in 1961, Decca Records (in London) rejected the opportunity to sign a new musical group named The Beatles.

When we are rejected, excluded, dismissed, etc., we have a choice to make right away. We can accept that rejection (we don’t have to like it!) and move on, or we can let it stop our forward progress. Acceptance requires action. It requires a very definite decision and subsequent changes in behavior. Maybe we need to ask ourselves if the rejection is actually a blessing in disguise. Maybe we need to get the opinion of someone we trust.

Whether we have been rejected or we have rejected someone else, consider what a life dedicated to Love First would do. Would Love First close the door on any further relationship? Would Love First open itself up to looking for options? The Son of God was rejected. He was even despised. He knew that his purpose and calling, rooted in God’s vision, meant that he could handle it.

Your Mission
As you pray today, use the phrase “Father, I thank you for your love and acceptance of me and all my imperfections.”