Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Experiencing Rejection

“Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?  He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. 
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. 
Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.  Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, 
yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; 
the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; 
and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:1-6 NIV)

Rejection is a hard thing.  A friend recently shared with my wife how she had mentored a student for several years only to be told her approach didn’t work for her anymore; she was moving on to someone else.  I remember a few years ago, my wife was meeting with a student on a regular basis and then, after the semester break, the student said she was too busy to meet and she basically never saw her again.  And in my many years of ministry, I, too, have tasted the bitterness of rejection by people who didn’t like what I said or how I did things.  I remember one woman, in a church where I served as an elder, would not speak to me because she disagreed with a decision the elders made.  Even after I sought to reconcile with her, she would have nothing to do with me.  

The truth is, a life well lived is going to include rejection along the way. It is part of the falleness of our world.  And this will especially be true if we have chosen to follow Jesus.  Peter warns us (I Peter 2:20-21) that following Him means walking along the path of suffering and, as Isaiah writes, this suffering includes rejection.  

The desire to be accepted and liked is a powerful one.  Yet, the pursuit of acceptance by others can lead us down the road to a compromised life, standing for nothing more than what others desire from us.  The reason Jesus was despised and rejected was because he embodied, and spoke, the truth.  He was only out to please His Father, no one else.  And this, too, is the life to which we are called if we are following Jesus.

Today, remember the One you follow; He, too, was rejected.  Yet, He remained faithful to the will of His Father.  Through His strength, you have the ability to do the same.

© Jim Musser 2016

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