The deepest rejection I ever felt was in my first parish. Although we were a growing congregation, we encountered financial difficulties. These difficulties were large enough to warrant a conversation with parish leadership. At our next scheduled meeting, the church council discussed our financial situation. To my surprise they named my salary as the key source of our financial difficulty. I felt blindsided.

I tried to be cool and professional. I tried to lead the group in a frank discussion about how we might trim our budget or re-allocate some funds. “Might we reduce this budget item?” I asked. “Could we move monies from the Fellowship Group into the main account to balance our numbers?”, “Might we evaluate all of our staffing?”  Each line item and parish expenditure was brought forward, but dismissed. All was in good order…except me.

Of course, they were correct; I was the big item on our budget. My salary loomed over the other expenses. Still, as the pastor of this small but growing community, I could not help but feel dismissed and devalued. I felt as if every staff person, ministry endeavor, and expenditure was deemed valuable and good, except mine. The discussion left me feeling ineffective and unwanted.

I left that meeting feeling utterly rejected, as a pastor, but also as a person. I drove home, put myself to bed, and stayed there for the next day.

Rejection can be crippling to our spiritual lives. Rejection eats away at us, it consumes us. It matters not how it is expressed, or by how many people, rejection easily becomes all-encompassing; it rises within as the only voice we hear, and so it becomes the defining word over us.

In many ways this is nonsensical. Why do we give such credence to one negative comment rather than a plethora of encouraging statements?  Logically we know this shouldn’t be the case. We know we should rest in encouragement and love rather than in negativity.  But we can’t always guard against rejecting comments, and when they come, they shake us in the deepest part of our soul.

Often, our first inclination is to prove ourselves. In the face of rejection, we will declare our worth, and forcefully exert our value. If we can establish why people should speak well of us, we believe the feelings of rejection will be overturned. We will be vindicated, and people see how great we are. Yet attempting to prove rejection wrong actually maintains its control over us. The words of rejection are still given power, and even though we try to work against them, rejection still defines our identity. 

How many times have we worked ourselves to spiritual exhaustion by simply trying to prove ourselves to God, to others, to ourselves?

No, rejection isn’t overturned by affirmation. Living by affirmation is just another version of defining ourselves by what other people say. Rejection is dismantled when we strip it of its defining power. This occurs when we recognise that our identity is based a deeper voice, a higher voice. When we live from the standpoint of eternal love, spoken over us from our very creation, the darkness of rejection is dispelled. The way to battle rejection is to reestablish God’s love as the center of your identity.

You are not who (or what) other people say you are.  You are not who your own inner voice declares you to be. You are made in God’s image and redeemed in God’s love. You are precious and holy. This is not something religious polite God says to make you feel better. It is the basis of your entire existence.

Can you let God’s love be the ground upon which you stand? Can you let the voice of the one who said “I have loved you with an everlasting love” speak louder than any negative whisper you hear? Henri Nouwen writes, “Every time you listen with great attentiveness to the voice that calls you the Beloved, you will discover within yourself a desire to hear that voice longer and more deeply. It’s like discovering a well in the desert.”  How might allow that voice to define you?

True, resting in God’s love won’t stop feelings of rejection from happening.  Words of rejection, if they come, will still sting. But the difference will be that they will no longer define you. Their power has been thwarted by the voice of the one who created you.