How To Deal With Rejection by Pastor Dolapo Lawal: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Rejection: the scriptural way

There are two ways to go about this: the scriptural way or the psychological way. Matthew 21:42

The Hebrew word for rejection is masa. It means to refuse, to despise, or to treat as worthless

The Greek word is apodokimazo. Apo means away from. Dokimazo means to test or examine. Together it means to examine and disapprove. 1 Peter 2:4

The pain of rejection is that they knew you, tested you and disapproved you. Is this good enough? Not good enough

Men tested Jesus, threw Him away and counted Him worthless. God looked at the same stone and called Him chosen and precious

Rejection is always a matter of whose assessment you are going to accept

Rejection is first a wound, then it becomes a mindset

Where the wound comes from

The teen years, roughly age 9 to 16, are when the devil attacks if he could not kill you at birth

• Overprotection. Parents who save you from everything, indulge you, never let you carry your load. A major Ivy League school found students were committing suicide and the common thread was their first failure. You cannot experience your first failure at 19 and take it well
• You can destroy people's lives by loving them too much. God loved Jesus and put Him on a cross. Peter loved Him so much he did not want Him to die. You choose the kind of love you want. There is tough love
• Overprotection breeds entitlement and a false sense of what the real world is
• You need tough skin. Some things you are praying for, you do not have the mental fortitude for the attacks attached to them
• Neglect and talking down on the child. The child gets so used to rejection that it becomes the way they perceive life

The attack is on your identity, your dignity and your purpose

Rejected is not the same as a reject

There is a difference between being rejected and being a reject. One is an event, the other is a mindset and an identity

God was rejected but God is not a reject

How the rejection mindset sounds

• I don't need anybody
• I knew this would happen
• People always leave me
• I don't want to be a burden
• Why would they want me there
• I'm used to it. I'll just do it myself
• God is probably disappointed in me

What people wounded with rejection look like

• Hyper alert to tone. A short text, an unreturned call, a change in someone's face, and the alarm goes off
• They replay conversations beforehand and afterwards, looking for where they went wrong
• Overthinking. Worry is not faith, and whatever is not of faith is sin. To worry is to pick the inferior
• Panic when excluded from a group chat, a meeting or a photo
• Relief, not joy, when someone accepts you. Relief is the emotion of someone who expected the opposite
• Craving attention so badly it shapes how they dress
• Always going back to the toxic ex because they fear something new
• Struggling to believe God loves them personally. They preach it to others but cannot receive it for themselves

It is not a clique because five or six people are close. It is a clique when they clearly tell you they do not want you. You cannot complain that they do not like you when you have not given them a reason to. They have to know you to like you

God has been rejected first

Adam and Eve rejected God's word. God said the day you eat you will die. The devil said your eyes will be open. They believed the enemy and unbelieved God. That was rejecting God, His integrity and His word

Cain also rejected God's counsel. Genesis 4 Humanity rejecting God came long before any of us experienced rejection from anyone

1 Samuel 8:7

• God takes the rejection from Samuel. They have not rejected you, they have rejected Me
• The weight of rejection is too much for a human to carry alone. Only God can carry it comfortably

Romans 15:4 Scripture was written for our learning, that through patience and comfort of the scriptures we might have hope. From scripture we see the way out, that we are not alone, and God's counsel on our situation

2 case studies

1. God Himself can relate

   • Job lost his children who were sinners. God lost His Son who was perfect, for sinners
   • Salvation is not your right. If God did not save you, we would be burning in hell and nobody could question Him. It is purely His benevolence
   • There is nothing you can do to make God better
   • God is not looking for the declaration but for true worshippers. John 4:23
   • Praise is not a bribe. When blessings go up, it is not always blessing that comes down. Two people worshipped God, and the one whose worship was accepted was Abel, who died
   • Why do we worship? To remind ourselves who we have believed. The worship is unto Him but the ministry is for you
   • Jesus entered Jerusalem as king and five days later they chose Barabbas over Him. He grew hands for the man and that man pointed and said kill Him. Yet He said, Father forgive them for they know not what they do

2. David

   • A man after God's heart. Acts 13:22 God really liked him
   • Could the rejection you are facing be because God likes you? Because of the weight of God's investment in your life?
   • Rejected in his family. Favourite of Saul, then Saul wanted to kill him. 13 years running from the master who loved him

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   Pastor Dolapo Lawal

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The love of God is presence and intentionality

John 11:3-6

Jesus loved Lazarus and still stayed two more days. Some of us have a distorted idea of God's love. We think it means enabling anything we do, or sugar daddy love: I give Him praise and prayer, He gives me answers

God's love is presence, intentionality, and making sure you come out as what you were designed for

David and the rejects

1 Samuel 22:2

• Those in distress, in debt and discontented gathered to him and he became captain over them
• They were the rejects of society. David was hurt but he did not spill. He embraced them

1 Samuel 30:6

• The same people spoke of stoning him. Nobody encouraged him. David strengthened himself in the Lord
• Nobody can enter your mind and change it. They can only provide resources for you to change your own mind

Once you embrace the mentality that you are a reject, it spills into everything. The first time, people are drawn to you. By the fourth time you have become heavy, and nobody stays around heavy people. That pattern is why you run out of favour

Before you call it a generational curse, it may be cultural. You heard them speak and you started speaking like that. When you have a wrong mindset, the devil steps aside and watches you self destruct. You will do a better job than him

Exodus 32

• God wanted to start afresh with Moses because Moses was never a slave
• What God was trying to eradicate was their slave mindset. All powerful God can be powerless in your life because of self-rejection

Take responsibility for your life. The person who said it has moved on

Romans 12:19-20

• God is addressing the offended, not the offender. Beloved, do not avenge yourself
• The repayment goes to the beloved. If your enemy is hungry, feed him. He blesses you to help them
• Your vindication is not that they come and confess. Your vindication is that you are now the boss
• Some people who oppressed you were also oppressed

7 ways to respond to rejection

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1. Be honest with your feelings

   Psalm 42:1

   • You will never heal if you are hiding your wound. A Christian can feel depressed. Jesus said, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even unto death
   • David asks, why are you cast down, O my soul? Then he says, hope in God

2. Talk yourself out of it

   • People underestimate the power of words. If people spoke it inside you, you bring it out by speaking
   • Sometimes as you share, you hear yourself and realize it is not that deep
   • Strengthen yourself with your words. They will not do it for you
   • 2 Corinthians 10, Message translation: it is a dog eat dog world out there

3. Take it to God

   Matthew 26:37-39

   • Jesus said, stay here and watch with Me. Not pray for Me, pray with Me. Do not stay in the feeling and say, let them be praying for me. You also have to engage
   • He said Abba, the word babies use for daddy. The tone is, daddy I need help
   • God has made prayer so simple that not being able to pray and telling God you cannot pray is praying
   • Angels ministered to Him with words of encouragement and showed Him the glory set ahead. They gave Him purpose
   • God cannot take away the memory of the pain but He changes your perspective

4. Do not go through it alone

   • Jesus went with three men to pray with Him even though they were sleeping
   • It is not good that man should be alone. That is not only about marriage. You are a derivative of a source, and your source is a community: Father, Son and Spirit
   • When you are alone, you are not functioning in design. Jesus picked 12 who would be with Him

5. Know that rejection does not mean you are bad

   • If people can reject God, rejection is not because you are a bad person
   • There was no sin in heaven and a third of the angels followed Lucifer
   • Some people just do not like you. That is all

6. Focus on who likes you

   Mark 3:20-23

   • In verse 20 a multitude came. In verse 21 His own people said He was out of His mind. There is only one person who does not like you. There is a multitude that does
   • Jesus turned away from those who did not like Him and focused on His focus
   • If you stay around those who have concluded about you, you will be trying to swim in a bed. They will find fault in everything you do

7. Move on to those who receive you

   John 1:11-12

   • He came to His own and His own did not receive Him, but as many as received Him
   • If the Jews will not accept, go to the Gentiles. Do not go with a rejected mindset. Somebody will soon come
   • Too many Christians live in self-pity

Friendship breakup is a pain people do not talk about enough. It hurts because the friendship was your world, so you feel the whole world is against you. But there are just eight people. Think logically about what is actually going on

Rejection is one of the major reasons people commit suicide. This is a life and death situation

Even if the world is against me, the only person who matters is God, and He is for me

Jesus held to His truth without a witness. The whole world was against Him and He kept His confession

Declarations