04/14/2023
There’s hardly a worse emotion than feeling or being rejected. No one to sit with for a meal. Someone tells you they don’t love you anymore. People leave you. You’re told you’re not needed anymore. You’ve done your best and to someone, it’s not good enough. Cain felt he had been rejected so he stewed and planned revenge. Eventually he eliminated what he perceived as his threat, his brother Abel. It’s such a powerful and a potentially destructive emotion. It will eat at us and cause us to lose our joy. What is true is that people will fail us, leave us, ignore us, and spurn us. But a disciple of Jesus (John) having spent time with God himself, declared that the essence of God is love. It’s his antidote to the spirit of rejection. Arguably the most famously quoted verse in the Bible is “For God so LOVED the world.” God can’t help but love us. Feeling rejected or being rejected is the worse. It can lead us to dark places. But when God’s love is understood and embraced, it powerfully counters this corrosive emotion. God’s love brings embrace, forgiveness, acceptance and value. But it has to be received. Just like God confronted Cain one day and told him that the devil stood at his heart’s door wanting to come in, God exhorts us today to reject Satan’s (or the world’s) lies of rejection and instead, embrace His love. Don’t open your heart to the long-suffering effects of rejection. Open it instead to the love of God. Never accept rejection. Instead reject anything that would counter God’s truth of you being that unique, valuable, important and loved person. God loves you. He has chosen to abide in you. Receive it and now go and love one another.