God’s Healing Power Over Rejection

In this powerful episode, Lysa Terkeurst sits with Laurie Crouch and Christine Caine, sharing her insights on how God can heal us from rejection. Join us as we explore the transformative power of faith and God’s love in overcoming life’s challenges. Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more inspiring content!

There’s a lot of talk of rejection in the psychological world, but I really feel like why not go straight to the one who made us The one who knows the DNA of our very soul
Yeah.
Which is is the place really where our head and our heart connect and we we were made to give and receive love, and, um, we weren’t made for rejection, but god certainly can come in and help heal those wounds.
Uninvited.
I think rejection, uh, I don’t know that there’s a person watching that’s listening to us right now that hasn’t been rejected in some way, and this book deals with that.
Um, start where you will Well, I think rejection
is such a tough issue to tackle because we’re all dealing with it in some aspect of our life.
We’re either healing from a past rejection, which can be incredibly painful.
We’re dealing with some kind of painful present day rejection, like it’s right in front of us affecting us right now, or we’re fearing an expected rejection could be right around the corner, and we’re navigating relationships all the time to avoid rejection.
And I think many of us feel very ill equipped when it comes to rejection because it taps into one of those core, um, really security foundational things we do not want to be abandoned.
And rejections, I think it’s even more painful than losing a loved one to death. Yeah.
Because at least with when someone passes away, you’re both clinging onto the hope of of, you know, tomorrow in in being reunite reunited in eternity.
Right. But when someone rejects you, they purposefully have walked out of your life, and they may even be happy to do so.
And so it’s a very difficult issue, but it’s one I wanted to tackle because I think that god has set up our soul to be accepted by him.
And if we can really, really understand how god has already accepted us, how god loves us, then I think we can weather the rejections of life in a much more healthy way.
You know, I love how you’re saying that.
I remember when I first read this book, Lisa, um, you know, I was abandoned at birth by my biological mother and, um, and then was adopted out.
And so there was a deep root of rejection that came into my life.
And and I’ve seen it continue to come into my life, you know, and just when you think, and I think I know there are people watching this right now, and you think, well, I never feel rejected and oftentimes we don’t even realize that we’ve built so many walls to protect ourselves.
Um, and we built those walls first to sort of so that we wouldn’t get hurt, but then it’s become prison, and I I found you were so transparent, so vulnerable in this book.
Um, what are some ways that people can kinda let those walls come down where they don’t protect themselves that you talk about?
Well, first of
all, one thing we have to remember is that rejection oftentimes steals the best of who we are by reinforcing the worst that’s been said to us.
That’s true. Yeah. So I really spent some time helping us go back.
It’s not that I want us to focus on the past, but like you were saying, there are roots of rejection there.
That oftentimes what will happen, I don’t know if you’ve ever had this situation, but, uh, maybe you get into a rather small everyday conflict with your spouse.
But then all of a sudden, you go from it being just a small issue to it being an epic statement that we have serious marriage problem.
Yes. And and you You’ve never done that. I mean, this is probably never happened.
But and, like, you have wounded me to my core.
And he’s like, I just ask you why we didn’t have clean towels.
Right? Right?
And and so what what has happened in that instance is we’ve traveled back to the past where someone has said something to us that made us feel incapable inadequate, not good enough.
And we have pulled the unresolved hurt from that past issue into the present circumstance, and we’ve multiplied the hurt together.
So we have an out of proportion reaction to the issue at hand.
You see, rejection steals the best of who I am by reinforcing the worst that’s been said to me.
And so it’s not just an issue of our past.
It’s a in our present, but so many times, we don’t even know why we’re having present day issues, but I help people travel back and we have some corrective experiences so that we can it’s not that we rewrite history, but we can rewrite some of the script Right.
That were said to us so that our present day conversations can be done with truth and with help.
You know, and those those rejections can be some something someone said on a playground one time.
Totally.
That takes you back to a moment of You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’re not good enough.
You’re, you know, being being the last picked on the on the little ball team, you know. Right.
That rejection and that feeling. Um, how how How where do you go when you feel rejected?
What was your place of the
Well, there are several places. 1, um, my story’s a little different than yours, Chris.
I wasn’t abandoned at birth, but, um, I was abandoned too by my biological father.
He just packed up his suitcase one day, and I remember standing at the front window.
And, and when he walked out, He didn’t just carry his after shave and his business clothes and his books and his briefcase and in his suitcase.
He carried the shattered pieces of a little girl’s heart that didn’t understand.
And when my dad left, he never came home.
And so being utterly abandoned by my father, it it made me feel like I was a throwaway person.
And you say he’s never come back?
You’ve never seen him since?
No. Not really. He never ever tried to reestablish a relationship I tried several times to reestablish a relationship with him.
Um, but, you know, when when you’ve experienced so much hurt, and I think my dad must have had a lot of unresolved hurt in his heart, um, and and not feeling loved himself.
It’s really hard. I think sometimes for some people to give the love that they never got.
Yeah.
And so that was a big huge issue in my life, but another really hurtful experience, and I talk about this in the book is I dated a guy in college, and, um, I hope he’s watching tonight.
I need to. I’m, uh, I’ve been praying for that all week.
So anyhow, um, but I, um, I was dating him.
We dated all through college, and, uh, he graduated the year before me.
And then when I graduated, I moved to a town to be pretty close to where he was in graduate school.
And he was taking me out to dinner for my birthday, and I knew in my heart.
I just knew that he was gonna ask me to marry him.
And he was acting really, really nervous, and it was like, this is gonna be the most epic, beautiful night of my life.
And halfway through dinner, he looked at me, said, Lisa, I have something really important to tell you.
And I’m like, yes. And, uh, and he said, I’ve met someone else.
And it was a moment of utter shock to me because in that moment, you see, my female brain had already run ahead.
Like, I had already named our kids.
I already planned our family vacations by I already knew the kind of house we were gonna eventually raise our family in.
And so in that moment, it wasn’t just my boyfriend breaking my heart and shattering my dream of getting married.
It was the death of those children. It was the death of those dreams.
It was the death of the future that I thought. So there was an enormous amount of grief.
And I know I’m not alone in that. Yeah.
And so the abandonment of a father, the utter rejection of a boy that I thought loved me and was gonna marry me, um, you know, it can really do quite a number on our hearts.
And so I really felt like it was important to tackle the topic of rejection using the truth of scripture.
There’s a lot of toggle rejection in the psychological world, but I really feel like why not go straight to the one who made us, the one who knows the DNA of our very soul, which is is the place really where head and our heart connect, and we we were made to give and receive love.
And, um, we weren’t made for rejection. But god certainly can come in and help heal those wounds.
Oh, I’ve heard you share powerfully just some truths from that story.
And I think I think our audience would absolutely love you just to expound some of that.
And, um, the lessons we can learn from that.
Absolutely. Well, it the story of Abigail is found in first samuel chapter 25, and, um, the scriptures start out introducing us to Abigail’s husband.
And I love the Hebrew pronunciation of his name. It’s Naval. So just say it with me. Naval.
And it just makes you feel kind of the truth of his care Yeah.
Because the scriptures say that he was mean and surly in his dealings.
And it also there’s some clues in there as well that says that he was so hard hearted.
No one could even talk to him.
So I don’t think he was just mean and surly and hard hearted in his business dealings.
I think he brought that home as well. So Abigail has certain realities of her life.
She’s married to this man that’s very difficult. She, uh, so that’s a burden.
She also has blessings because her husband’s very wealthy, so we find that out in scripture as well.
But she also has busyness. It’s about to be festival season when we find her in first Samuel 25.
So she’s very busy. You know, the girl’s on Pinterest.
She’s got some lists, right, of all the things that she needs to do to prepare for the festival.
So David comes on the scene.
Now David is, uh, the the one that we read about in the Bible with, David and Goliath, and all of that.
Now at the point that we find David interacting with Naval and Abigail, he has been anointed to be the future king.
But he has not yet been appointed to take the throne.
So currently, when we find him in first name of 25, David has been running for his life from Saul, who’s the existing king sitting on the throne.
So David’s been hiding in caves, and It’s very interesting to me as I study David’s life, uh, understanding that he probably at this point was very, very confused and maybe even feeling slightly rejected by god.
Yeah. Because god had made such a big deal about anointing David to be the future king, but David’s life doesn’t look anything like what a king’s life should look like.
Also, David had suffered a pretty significant rejection.
We find in 1st Samuel chapter 16, when the prophet Samuel came to anoint the future king in the home of Jesse’s sons.
Jesse didn’t even bring David in from the field.
Right.
If you remember, he He passed by all the sons and said, is this law you have, Jesse?
And then he says, well, there is one more of the youngest, but he’s attending the sheep.
Can you imagine when David walks in? In that moment, and the realization falls fresh on him.
It was probably David’s worst day and best day, all in the same moment.
Because he looked at his father that didn’t even think enough of him to bring him in to meet with the prophet.
Samuel, that’s a big deal to have Sam who come to your your presence. You know?
And I wonder if David looked at his father and said, your love should have felt like security blanket to me, but it feels more like a question mark.
And I believe in that moment, David carried a wound of rejection that we see come out in the story of David and and Naval and Abigail.
So what happens is David is at that point in his life where some men have gathered around him.
We find out a little bit about those men in First Samuel chapter 22.
These men were discontented in debt and disgruntled in every way. There’s a fun group of people to leave. Right?
So they, um, they’d gavin around David, and there’s about 600 of them with him.
So they have been protecting the valve’s flock.
And we’re not really sure if it was an arranged paid job, but regardless he’s done the valid great favor protecting as well.
So now it’s about to be festive time. So David sends word to Naval. I’ve done you a great favor.
Give me festival food to feed my men, and bless us in that way.
And Naval’s response to the men that David sent. It’s very interesting. He said, Who is this David?
Who is the son of Jesse?
Well, the men David sent to Talking about came back, and the scriptures say they reported every word Naval said to David.
So you know that when David hears this, who is this David? Who is the son of Jesse?
At that moment, I believe he went back in his past, pulled the hurt from the event of the rejection of his father.
It compounded the rejection of Naval, not Naval said I’m not gonna give you food.
And suddenly David went from being hungry for food to starving for revenge.
And David says, we’re gonna kill the vow and every man in his household.
Well, one of the servants catches wind of what’s going on decides its high time to get a woman involved.
And so this servant goes and finds Abigail. The scriptures tell us Abigail is beautiful and she is intelligent.
And Abigail knows exactly what to do. She’s gonna prepare a festive, a festival set of food.
She’s gonna prepare the food that David wants so she can meet his physical needs, but Abigail’s gonna do something much more significant for David.
She’s gonna meet a spiritual need that he has in him with, I think, one of the greatest speeches given by anyone in the Bible, and it’s given by Abigail, this woman, to this man.
Now remember, David had a great destiny on his life, but he was about to derail his entire destiny because of a hurt, a rejection in his life.
And I just wonder how many of us can find ourselves in that same spot.
How many of us to navigate the rejections in our life?
Either we compromise because we’re so afraid of a rejection.
Or we derail our rejection because our reactions are totally out of proportion.
And we forget, I’ve been called to a life of holiness. I’ve been called to a life of purity.
When you’re called, you’re called to serve god with your whole heart.
Well, David’s about to derail his destiny because god has not said to kill him the vow and all in his household, it would be a regret that Dave would sit on David for a long time if he did this.
So many times, I think today’s choices become tomorrow’s regrets, especially when our emotions get so out of whack, and we don’t let god rein them in.
Well Abigail goes to meet David in these 600 men. Imagine the scene. David has a drawn sword.
All the men with him have a drawn sword.
Testosterone is flowing, and David said, may god deal with me ever so severely.
If I leave a live one who belonged to Naval and his household, and suddenly there’s Abigail.
Now, I’m sorry, but if I saw a man in that kind of rage with a drawn sword, I hardly think that I would do what she did.
She comes and bows down in front of him in a posture of extreme humility But Abigail, she was not only beautiful and intelligent.
She was also so incredibly wise because she knew it’s only in humility that she would find the opportunity to speak to a man like David.
Wow. Yeah. Humility was not a position of weakness for her. It was a position of incredible strength. Yeah.
And we would do well to remember that as well.
Then Abigail speaks into David’s life in the first thing she says, when she starts off after her introduction, she says, pay no attention to that wicked man, Naval.
He is just like his name. It means full and folly goes with him everywhere he goes.
I love that Abigail says David, your problem, is that you are paying attention to fools and foolish things.
And when we pay attention to fools and foolish things, we will bankrupt our perspective every time. Yeah.
Abigail reminds David, you’re gonna steer where you stare. And if you’re staring at trouble, you’re gonna steer toward trouble.
But you’ve gotta stare at the reality that you are a man called by god.
You’ve gotta stare at god’s calling on your life and his truth and his assignment So you don’t get pulled into these other things.
I really believe our job is to be obedient to god. God’s job is everything else.
And Abigail reminds David over and over and over.
Another thing she tells David, your enemies will be hurled away as from the pocket of a sling.
I think what she’s reminding David of is David, I’ve heard about you. Yeah.
I know what you did when you had a sling in your hand.
You charged toward someone Goliath that that no one else in Israel would dare go against, and you had the courage.
Why? Because god did that for you. God empowered you.
And if god has done it before, he will do it again. Yeah.
And sometimes when we’re in these really difficult life situations, like what David was in.
Hiding in caves, knowing god had anointed me, but my life doesn’t look anything like I thought god promised me it would.
Having this man rejecting me in front of my men and being shamed and and pulling in the pain of the past rejection of my father, All of us have found ourselves in these kind of really difficult situations.
And Abigail, I think, is reminding not only David, but us, We’ve gotta go back and trace god’s hand of faithfulness.
If we can’t see god’s faithfulness in our circumstances today, we’ve gotta trace god’s hand of faithfulness and start reaching a message to ourself.
God did it before, and he would do it again. Wow.
And I think the story ends up in such a powerful way.
The story winds up that, uh, David doesn’t kill Naval, He stays on course with his destiny.
He praises god for sending Abigail to him.
And Abigail has this funny little line, and she’s like, and David, right before she walks off And David, once god has done everything he promised, remember your servant.
Now, I don’t wanna make assumptions that she was flirting here, but it gets a little spicy up in there because, uh, god does eventually deal with Naval in a very harsh way.
And Naval is struck down, and he dies.
And then David sends word to Abigail asking her to become his wife. Come on. It is amazing.
And it says Abigail quickly got up on her donkey and said, here am I. Ready to serve you?
Oh, I bet she did. So but this story doesn’t even end there, you know, it’s kind of messy because David has some other wives and some concubines, and it gets kinda like a bad sister’s wives episode.
Uh, regardless. I I love the fact that her story doesn’t tie up in a neat nice bow, because my life never does either.
Right. And I think it’s such a beautiful picture.
Abigail, she could have played the victim card in her life. Sure.
She, I’m sure, felt the sting of rejection.
When a woman lives in a home where a man is physically present but emotionally absent, they’re create it creates a hollow feeling inside a a girl’s heart.
And I’m sure Abigail could have played the victim card. But she didn’t. She walked the path of victory.
It’s impossible to hold up the banners of victim and victory at the same time. We’ve gotta make that choice.
Yeah. And I love that Abigail took her own hurt in her own rejection, and instead of it working against her, she created this empathetic response to David.
And obedience to god that I believed kept David on the path to becoming the king from whose bloodline King Jesus would eventually come.