Identifying Rejection in Your Life

In my talk yesterday, I cited a verse from Proverbs 18, verse 14:

“A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?”

Another translation says, “A wounded spirit.”

I explained that a wound in the spirit goes deeper than the conscious mind. It’s below the level of that which we can actually understand or even apprehend with our conscious mind. It goes below the level of our conscious memory. It often stems from some experience in early childhood, but our conscious mind can’t endure that experience and blots it out. But it’s not blotted out from the spirit. So the wound continues there in the spirit, deep down, below the level of conscious mind and conscious memory.

And the Scripture says, “A wounded spirit who can bear?” That takes away strength. It takes away initiative. It takes away the joy of living. It’s a wound that saps out our life.

I gave various examples of how rejection may be brought on. I read from Isaiah 54, the poignant picture of a wife who married in youth and was rejected by her husband. I pointed out, too, that sometimes the rejection is the other way around. It’s the wife who rejects the husband, but whichever way around it comes, the agony is indescribable.

And then I spoke about the way it can arise in childhood, even sometimes before birth. A child in its mother’s womb, but the mother doesn’t want it. Maybe it’s an illegitimate child, or the parents are at loggerheads, or there’s not enough money to feed all the children that are there already. So the mother, during pregnancy, has this negative, hostile attitude toward this child, and it’s born with a sense of rejection, of being unwanted.

Or there’s the child who doesn’t receive the manifest love of parents, especially of a father. Sometimes the parents really love the child, but they just don’t know how to express it and manifest it. The child cannot receive love that isn’t manifested.

Or there’s the case where there’s more than one child in a family, and one child is favored at the expense of another child or other children. And the children that don’t receive the manifestation of love and favor feel rejected by their parents.

Now, today, I’m going to speak about the results of rejection, how we may recognize this problem in ourselves and in others. Probably, I should begin by briefly going over my definition from yesterday. I said that the opposite of rejection is acceptance. If we don’t have acceptance, probably we do have rejection.

There are various other words or phrases that would describe what I have in mind: the feeling of being unwanted, or excluded, or worthless, or not really belonging, or somehow on the outside looking in. As I give that little list of words or phrases, I wonder whether something in you is saying, “That’s my problem.”

Now, let’s look at the results. I believe the primary result is the inability to receive or communicate love. I believe it’s a fact that none of us can communicate love unless we first received love. This is brought out, as a matter of fact, in the New Testament in a statement by John in 1 John 4:19. He says,

“We love because He,’ that’s God, ‘first loved us.’”

I don’t believe a person *can* love unless that person has first been loved. Consequently, a person who’s never been loved cannot transmit love. And here’s a tragedy that frequently goes from generation to generation. A little girl is born into a family where she doesn’t experience love. She has that sense of rejection, so she can’t communicate love. In due course, she marries, becomes a mother, has a daughter. She cannot communicate love to that daughter, so the daughter develops the same problem as the mother: rejection. Grows up rejected. She, in turn, marries, has a daughter, and that daughter has the same problem.

And so this terrible problem is communicated from generation to generation. And I’ve dealt with people to whom I’ve said, “Listen, sometime or other, this thing has got to be cut off. It’s got to be dealt with. Why don’t you let it happen in *your* life, so that *you* don’t go on passing on rejection to the next generation?”

Now, let’s look at the secondary results of rejection. I would say there are three main ways that people commonly react to rejection. First, the person who gives in. Second, the person who holds out. And third, the person who fights back.

Let’s look at the person who gives in first. This is the kind of person who says, maybe never verbalizing it, “I just can’t take this. Life is too much for me. There’s really nothing I can do.” And I’ve learned by experience in dealing with people, there’s a succession of negative emotions and attitudes that follow on as a consequence from rejection. I’ll give you a list, usually in the order in which they usually develop.

Out of rejection comes loneliness. Out of loneliness, misery. Out of misery, self-pity. Out of self-pity, depression. Out of depression, despair or hopelessness. And if despair or hopelessness takes its course, then the final end is an attitude of death or suicide. That’s two different ways of facing the same thing. Death says, “I’d rather be dead. I don’t want to go on living.” Suicide says, “I’m going to end it all.”

But each of them is commonly at the end of that progression: rejection, loneliness, misery, self-pity, depression, despair or hopelessness, and finally, the attitude that desires death or contemplates suicide. And remember that, apart from the mere negative emotions I’ve mentioned, very commonly, there’s a demonic influence at work. It’s more than just a natural reaction. It’s something natural which is exploited by evil spirits: tormentors, destroyers.