Restore Your Confidence In The Midst of Rejection

Listen in as Lysa TerKeurst joins Praise to speak about conquering rejection by resting in the promises of God. Be encouraged as Lysa TerKeurst discusses that we are loved and accepted by God.

There’s a story that’s happening, but then there’s a story we’re telling ourselves.
And so many times the story that we start telling ourselves is a script of rejection.
And what we do is we start assigning thoughts to those people that they probably aren’t even having.
We start assigning conversations that those people have never had with us.
And all of a sudden we assign them a rejection that they never put on us and it can do so much damage.
This perceived rejection 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 It’s a 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 unexpected 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 because at least with when someone passes away, you’re both clinging on to the hope of, of, you know, tomorrow and, and being re reunited in eternity.
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 on one detach 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 uh 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 rejection.
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 a prison and I, I, I found he was so transparent, so vulnerable in this book.
Um, what are some ways that people can kind of 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. Yeah. So I, 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 often times 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 being an epic statement that we have serious marriage problems and, and you, I mean, probably never happened but, and like you have wounded me to my core and he’s like, I just asked 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 affecting us 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 scripts that were sent to us so that our present day conversations can be done with truth and with health, you know, and those, those rejections can be some something someone said on a playground one time 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’s several places.
One, um my story is 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 aftershave 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 throw away person and 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 in not feeling loved himself, it’s really hard, I think sometimes for some people to give the love that they never got.
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.
Me too. I’ve been praying for that all week.
So, anyhow, um but I uh 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, 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, he 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 like 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.
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, 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, 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.
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 and it just makes you feel kind of the truth of his character 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 it 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 busines. It’s about to be festival season when we find her in first Samuel 25.
So she’s very busy. You know, the girl has been on Pinterest.
She’s got some list, 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 um 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 game 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 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 first 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.
If you remember, he, he passed by all the sons and said, is this all you have Jesse?
And then he says, well, there is one more of the youngest, but he’s out tending 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 Samu come to your, your presence.
You know, and I wonder if David looked at his father and said, your love should have felt like a 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 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 gathered around David and there’s about 600 of them with him.
So they have been protecting Val’s flocks and we’re not really sure if it was an arranged paid job, but regardless, he’s done Naval a great favor, protecting his wealth.
So now it’s about to be festive time. So David sins 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 val’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 talk to naval 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 going to give you food.
And suddenly David went from being hungry for food to starving for revenge.
And David says, we’re gonna kill Naval and every man in his household.
Well, one of the servants catches wind of what’s going on decides it’s high time to get a woman involved.
And so this servant goes and finds Mama 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 is 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 are called to serve God with your whole heart.
Well, David’s about to derail his destiny because God has not said to kill naval 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 him in Well, Abigail goes to meet David and 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 alive one who belonged to in 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, 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 humility was not a position of weakness for her.
It was the position of incredible strength and we would do well to remember that as well.
Then Abigail speaks into David’s life.
And 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 fool and fly 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 got to stare at the reality that you are a man called by God.
You’ve got to 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.
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 reject 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 got to go back and trace God’s hand of faithfulness.
If we can’t see God’s faithfulness in our circumstances.
Today, we’ve got to trace God’s hand of faithfulness and start preaching a message to ourselves.
God did it before and he will do it again.
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. Am I? 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 the 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 kind of like a bad sister’s wives episode.
But 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.
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 create, it creates a hollow feeling inside 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 got to make that choice.
And I love that Abigail took her own hurt and 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.
Wow, you talk Lisa about perceived rejection.
Um Tell us a little bit about that because a lot of times people aren’t rejecting.
I, I know that I can react to Matt in ways and he’s like, what’s wrong with you?
You know, and you just perceive the rejection.
Well, sometimes we have so many scripts running through our head, it’s almost like a ticker tape, you know, of just statements and thoughts and, and then every now and then we’ll send a text message to someone and they don’t text us back or we will uh put something up on social media and no one likes it and no one is leaving a comment or we uh we see someone at an event and uh they kind of glance our way but they don’t ever make any effort to connect with us.
And we, there’s a story that’s happening, but then there’s a story we’re telling ourselves.
And so many times the story that we start telling ourselves is a script of rejection.
And what we do is we start assigning thoughts to those people that they probably aren’t even having.
We start assigning conversations that those people have never had with us.
And all of a sudden we assign them a rejection that they never put on us and it can do so much damage.
This perceived rejection I wrote about this in the chapter called there’s a lady at the gym who hates me and uh because seriously, I mean, I, I one time got on the elliptical beside this woman and everything on her was tight.
Um The only thing I felt was tight on me was my pony tail. Uh Chris.
And so I got on, I was already feeling a little intimidated. Uh and it was me.
It was, it wasn’t you, it could have been you, it could have been her.
We don’t want to talk about your body fat percentage so dramatically and I’m sure you would love to tell us about it.
But OK, so um but you look fabulous. So this girl looked fabulous too.
I wasn’t feeling like I looked fabulous.
I felt like a marshmallow, like, kind of like, you know, in the T shirt.
And so I felt fluffy and so I got on and we were both doing the elliptical and all of a sudden this competition thing popped into my head and I thought for the sake of every other fluffy feeling woman at the gym, I need to keep up with her.
And I bet if I keep up with her, I will look as thin as her the rest of the day.
I’m nothing if not illogical sometimes.
So I start doing the elliptical in tandem with her and I could feel that she didn’t like this.
And then my friend called and I know I’m not supposed to answer the phone at the gym, but I, I did because I just thought it would be really quick, but I was working so hard to keep up with this woman.
I was talking loud and all of a sudden the woman beside me, she just got off in a huff and walk, walked off.
Every time after that I saw her at the gym, I perceived like her shooting daggers out of her eyes.
And, and so I had this whole thing like, I wonder if the woman who hates me is gonna be at the gym today.
And then a few months later, I was walking in the gym bathroom and she was walking out and she smiled at me and it wasn’t like, I’m about to whip your tail on the gym floor.
It wasn’t that kind of smile. It was like, like, oh, hey, haven’t I seen you?
And I went in the bathroom and I thought, I don’t think she’s been thinking about me at all.
I don’t think she has any of this perceived, I don’t think she has any rejection.
I think it’s all been in my head and it really started to make me think, not just with the woman at the gym, but in my important relationships, I think I assign statements that they are thinking about me or saying to me that they’ve never thought or said and it can really mess up relationships.
But what happens again, it’s that root of rejection from the past that we pull into the present and we damage relationships.
It’s almost becoming like a self fulfilled prophecy in our life, you know?
Ok, so I know that a lot of people live and I, I know people, I could, I know people who do this and sometimes they get a little miserable to be around because it’s like, really no one is thinking that, you know, how do we stop that in our minds?
That, that how, what’s the best thing we can grab a hold of right now and take with us tomorrow and be trans.
Well, I think one thing is we’ve got to be more aware of the thoughts.
You know, the Bible is very clear that says we must take every thought captive and bring it to the obedience of Christ.
And, and I think we need to get a little more intentional about paying attention to our thoughts.
And if we’re not able to do it mentally, then we need to write them in a journal.
And once we look at the thoughts that that have been consuming our brain, hold those up to the truth and see which ones fit and which ones don’t fit because our thought life is very, very powerful, how we think is how we’re eventually gonna act.
And so if we’re always thinking, I’m rejected, I’m rejected.
You know, I don’t belong, I don’t feel like I fit in, then we’re gonna carry that with us as our attitude in that day.
So I think our thought life is really, really important and I think just taking time out to examine rejection.
Um, and, and really look at where could this be affecting me today?
I can’t tell you how many uh friendships have nearly ended because I’ll text someone and then I see the bubbles and they’ll see the bubbles and, and then the text doesn’t come through and I’m thinking, what’s the problem?
You started texting me back and now you didn’t and you just go.
But I think part of that problem is, uh we’re just thinking of ourselves way too much.
And I, I think one of the greatest things I did by learning to replace my thoughts with God’s thoughts is I finally started to get myself off my mind.
And I think with the root of rejection, you, you’re kind of thinking of yourself all the time, which is why you walk into a room and think someone’s thinking about you or on the elliptical next to you or they’re not.
But the truth is most people aren’t.
I’ve found one of the best ways to get over me is to start to do something for somebody else.
That yes. And you know, Chris, I mean, you, one of my most favorite quotes when we were on tour speaking together.
One of my most favorite things you ever said is Jesus Christ, saved my soul, but the word of God saved my mind.
And I really think that it’s so much of it has to do with replacing the lies that the enemy speaks to us with the truth of God that the Holy Spirit can use as a, as, as, as a reminder constantly of God’s love.
And I think that that’s really, really powerful.
But another thing that I, um, that I give people is prayers to pray and that desperate in between because it’s one thing for us to go, ok, replace your thoughts with God’s truth and that’s awesome.
And it, it’s wonderful. But at two AM when you are miserable and you’re so tempted to send a text just hoping this will be the time he’ll see the light and he’ll come back to me that’s called the desperate in between.
It’s not the moment of rejection, but you’re not healed yet either. So, what do you do in those moments?
So I typed out prayers that I really think if people will go through, they don’t even have to think up what to pray.
They just read it. They’re all scriptural prayers and you just start praying the word of God and you’re gonna pray yourself into the will of God and you’re not gonna text him at two AM and you’re not gonna go over and stay in his apartment because you’re so desperate for that one last time of that feeling of love.
And you’re not gonna allow that person who has been emotionally abusing you to treat you that way anymore.
And you’re gonna be able to stand up and say I am a holy and dearly loved child of the Almighty God.
And I’m gonna be responsible for the acceptance that he’s already given me. That’s the deal.
I love that because there’s three major statements that you make in here.
Um Because underlying if we’re going to accept God’s love, then we’ve got to believe that God’s good. That’s right.
And so tell us a little bit about those three statements. Ok?
So the three statements are this and, and, and let me tell you I wrestled with these three statements throughout my life.
And, um, and I really write vulnerably of how I wouldn’t say them unless I really, really knew them to be true.
And so this wasn’t just like an afternoon writing session where I wrote these out.
This was a real like decades of wrestling with this and finally coming to the understanding this is true and I can bank my, the foundation of my life on it.
The first is God is good. Our circumstances may not be good. People may not be good.
Others may not treat us good, but God himself is good.
And I dive into that in the scripture to say, you know, we live in a broken fallen world where crazy things are gonna happen.
But we can’t assign to God the actions of other people or the actions of maybe even something that happened at church.
You know, God is God and God is good. Ok? So God is good.
The next layer of that is God is good to me.
And when I, you know, the activity I talked about tracing God’s hand of faithfulness.
So many times, God has allowed certain things in my life and I thought it doesn’t feel like God’s been good to me in this, you know, but I I’ve come to the understanding, God isn’t doing that to me.
He’s doing it for me and he will see me through to the other side and I will be able to praise his holy name.
Amen. And so God is good, God is good to me.
And the last, and this is the most important God is good at being God.
No human should have to carry the weight of trying to be their own.
God, no human should have to carry the weight of trying to figure things out so many times in our society today with so many controversial issues.
People will say Lisa, what’s your opinion on this? And what’s your opinion on that?
And they want me to make some big political statement? And I’m like, why does my opinion matter?
Why does my opinion matter? God has already said the truth and that’s where we need to go.
God is good at being God. I love that.
And I just thinking to people watching us on the other side of this screen, you know, those three statements are, are massive statements and, and um, I know because you said you wrestled your whole life to get there.
And so have I because for a long time, I didn’t believe that God is good because how could a good God let so many bad things happen?
I certainly didn’t believe that God was good to me.
I think 12 years of abuse really just thought, well, even if God’s good to everyone else, it’s not to me.
And some of you watching this, you’re thinking that, well, you know, that’s ok for you, Lisa.
That’s ok for you, Laurie or Christine.
But God isn’t really good to me or that God is good at being God.
You kind of think, well, maybe if I was running the planet, things might look a little bit differently.
But I’m here to tell you that the devil is a liar and God is trustworthy.
The scripture tells us that God is light and in Him, there is no darkness.
And this is just the phrase that I felt to say to you. God has no dark side.
It took me many, many years to get to that truth that God has no dark side. People do.
People do hurt you. Uh Life is full of broken humanity.
The world is fallen and broken, but you need to know that you can trust God. God is good.
God does good and God is working all things together for your good. He has no dark side.
He is trustworthy. He is worthy of your trust. I don’t know what you’re confronting in your circumstance right now.
And someone has let you down, someone has walked out on you, someone has betrayed you, someone has abused you, someone has violated you.
I want you to know God is not that someone and you need to take the pressure off either your husband or your wife or your kids to be Jesus to you.
Only Jesus can be Jesus. You can trust Him with your broken places.
You can trust Him with your, with your hurt. Jesus will heal you everywhere you hurt.
I think sometimes when we experience a rejection today, 10 years from now, we look back and see it as God’s greatest protection.
Like praise the Lord. I did not marry that dude that broke up with me that night that we hope that’s right.
By the way, he came back just a few months later.
And I was like, dude, you told me who you were and I’m gonna believe you the first time.
So I did not marry him.
But um you know, when I was writing uninvited, I wrote it because I really, really was so thankful that God had healed me from so much rejection.
And so when I turned in the manuscript, I really was like, wow, God, thank you. Thank you.
Thank you for just giving me this perspective on the other side of so much hurt.
And I really thought I’m good, like I’m really, really good.
And then um when the edits came back from this book, my editor sent me a note.
Normally I have about 250 edits that have to be done.
When I turn in a manuscript, this one came back with 3000 and then two deeply devastating personal rejections happened in my life and I wound up curling up in my bed with the pages of the book that God gave me last year.
Having no idea how much I would desperately need it this year in this.
So, you know, I say that because rejection is something so sneaky.
You know, we can think that we’ve got it all handled today.
But tomorrow someone, you know, we live with people, we do life with people and people have broken places and unresolved spaces in their heart.
And um I just think if you aren’t currently going through a rejection today, I’m not speaking rejection into your life.
But I’m saying, let God prepare you now so that you can weather the storms of, of some of the hardships that could eventually be coming and, and if it’s not you, then it’ll be one of your kids and reading, I think, and getting God’s word and his truth and good solid advice about how to deal with injection will allow you to be able to give good advice to your kids who are going through rejection or your friends who are hurting so many times we don’t know what to say.
Well, this is 300 pages of what to say.
And I, you know, I think that the more we can be empathetic toward one another and come together and remind each other of the truth, the more we can stop listening to the lies.
And I think that, you know, the greater the rejection often it’s because the enemy knows what’s coming.
And the fact is that um there’s a great destiny and I, I think, you know, um, any of us.
There, there just seems to be this cycle and then the enemy will come at us.
Um often at weak moments, vulnerable moments just when you’re exhausted and um it tends to take it up.
But you think throughout scripture where you mentioned David um rejected by his father, you know, rejected by so many um Joseph, rejected by his brothers and got thrown into a pit.
But that rejection is what then set him up for his destiny.
And so it’s never, it’s where you learn in those places to go to God. It’s never not painful though.
And I, I think that’s the whole thing is sometimes we think I’m gonna get over it and the danger is that we’re gonna build walls to protect ourselves, which become a prison and lock people out.
And so I think, you know, I, I, I think some of you might have just seen even the vulnerability with Lisa going, you know, I didn’t even know a year later, I was gonna need those very words myself.
Um And the truth is that sometimes you’re feeling vulnerable and you feel betrayed.
I mean, Jesus himself, can you wonder how he must felt when Judas who walked with him, um betrayed him and rejected him for 30 pieces of silver.
And sometimes I think I was thinking as Lisa was talking, there’s someone on the other side of the screen and you feel for the equivalent of 30 pieces of silver, someone has just sold you out and um, and you feel like you are just uh forsaken that there’s no sense of future or hope.
But I want you to know that Jesus is right there with you and what the enemy meant for evil.
You’re gonna stand like Joseph who looked at his brothers and there was no even anger in him.
He said, look, you meant this for evil, but God meant it for this very purpose to save many people alive.
So I want you to know that in the midst of your Brokenness, in the midst of your pain, in the midst of this rejection, even though people have left you and betrayed you, it’s real.
You, you saw the emotion with Lisa, that is real.
But what is even more true is that Jesus is with you in the bottom of that pit, Jesus will bring you out of that pit.
Jesus will make you stand up in the place that He has prepared for you and Jesus will give you the grace to be able to turn around and say what the enemy meant for evil.
God meant it for good. God is working for you and this thing is gonna turn around and God is gonna have his way with your life and you are gonna be the head and not the tail deliverance is coming in.
Jesus name, it’s coming. What, what do you love most in this book?
What was your favorite chapter. Well, I think my favorite statement in the book and it comes at the very very end, it says rejection.
It may be a delay or a distraction or even a devastation for a season.
But it is not your final destination.
You are destined for a love that can never be shaken, taken tarnished or diminished.
And that love is the love of Christ and the calling of God on your life.
The calling of God on your life is to make sure that, you know, you have a story.
It’s a glorious story, a story that you can tell to the glory of God.
You have a story, but we’ve got to make sure that it’s God’s words, not their words or her words or his words.
It’s God’s words that become the words of the story you must tell, you know, I, I, I, I keep thinking because I know that there are so many people that are uh the enemy comes at us with rejection and it’s always about our destinies.
I lo I love what you’re saying there.
I, I’m just thinking uh the first time I was in Bible college that I spoke at our chapel in front of the whole chapel.
Uh when I finished um because the, the dean of the Bible school really didn’t like female communicators.
So he stood up and he sat in front of the entire Bible college, Christine Caroli because that was my name um there, Christine Kali, after that kind of speaking, you will never speak publicly again.
Nobody would ever invite you uh to do.
And that in imagine that rejection, I was like the, I hope you’re watching the night.
I just want to say this and I don’t know if it’s really cool to say it.
But, you know, he’s been promoted to heaven and I’m still here preaching around the wall.
That’s all I’m saying. But anyway, so, but it’s what I, I in all of that, you just go wow, that.
But you know that almost style that it took months for me to have the courage to ever.
But again, how much was that aligned to my destiny?
Of course, you know, this is this gift that God’s given me to preach and teach.
But that rejection, that public humiliation in front of like you, you’re not good enough, you can’t do it like all of us.
It causes you to shrink and um that sort of paralysis and I could look at everything in my life that I’m doing today, whether it’s rescuing the victims of human trafficking or that, that abuse all through my life.
That was just that rejection of, of who I am and my destiny. God’s turned it around.
I’m saying this because I want to give hope to people with Lisa here.
Um Laurie, you and I have talked so much through our life.
You, you think of significant times where you know, you were, it just scorned or someone just kind of wrote you off or rejected.
And here you are together with Matt leading the largest Christian television network in tens and hundreds of millions of households around the world every day.
Because I, I think rejection is always assigned with destiny.
Every time the enemy comes to paralyze us through rejection, it’s because we’ve got something great to do in our lives.
And I think that’s what you just reiterate all the time.
That’s what I loved about the book in particular because it always came back to me and I, I pray that’s why I want people to get it because um you know, I say this a lot.
I go there, a lot of people write books and then people are anointed to write books.
And I truly believe you, I’ve said this to you since the day I met you that God’s got an anointing on your life you’re teaching give um in, in showing people the, the keys to how to break out of their bondage into their freedom.
That that’s what um is in this book. I was always told that I didn’t know how to communicate.
And my daddy, and now my daddy wouldn’t have hurt my feelings or anything.
But it took me years to talk and my brother, my older brother talked for me till I was, my dad probably would have said 10 or 11, you know, but I grew up with not being able, you know, Laurie doesn’t know how to communicate well.
And so I kind of, I shouldn’t say I live under that, but I’m very well aware of my, um, of, of my problem.
But so that is definitely tough because I think of the last person that should be sitting right here is me.
So I know what, let me just paint a different picture for you. Ok?
Because the reality is that God could have picked anyone come on to put in that seat and God chose you.
And I believe that you could look at that as a rejection that uh is a limitation in how in your perspective about your communication skills.
But I see it as a beautiful humility.
Proverbs 11 2 says, pride leads to disgrace, but humility leads to wisdom and I’d rather hear someone who speaks in humility but has great wisdom to share like you than the most slick communicator in the world that eat up with pride.
Thank you. That’s sweet. I love what you said.
Um The, the voices of condemnation, shame and rejection can come at you, but they don’t have to reside inside of you.
And that’s what this book is gonna do for you.
It’s gonna help free those, those parts and you, we were talking about your, your prayers that you wrote in here and I want you to pray for the audience here at the last few minutes.
Lord Jesus. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We have a love that we never have to doubt.
We have a love that we never have to wonder about. Lord. Thank you.
What you have shown us in going to the cross and dying on that cross.
I, I think so many times about you sitting in the garden of Yosemite and uh in the shade in the shadow of the olive tree.
And you prayed this prayer, father, if it be possible, then let this cup pass from me and you knew God with you.
All things are possible and the the struggle of sitting there in that moment of desperation, not just because of the physical pain of going to the cross, but because of the emotional and spiritual pain of taking on the sin of the world.
And then God having to turn his face.
And so Jesus as, as you sat there in that garden and you stayed there, you said not my will but yours be done.
Oh God, I lift up that same prayer that Jesus lifted up, not my will, but yours be done, not for my ease and not for my comfort and not because I have all these desires for people to like me and, and, and for me to fix whatever whatever relationship problems.
Lord I hand all of that over to you, not my will, but yours be done. Thank you Jesus.
In your holy name. We pray. Thank you. Amen TBN.
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