Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 74
TRANSCRIPT
Do you ever find yourself walking into a room and wondering what the people in the room are thinking about you? Or do you find yourself staying toward the outside of a group of people, even people you might be friends with? When you compare yourself with those around you do you consistently find yourself feeling like you don’t fit in with the crowd? In today’s podcast we are going to look at how the stronghold of rejection can taint the way we look at ourselves and others.
I’m Lee Whitman with Restoring the Foundations and today I want to look at a very common stronghold that affects many people to a greater or lesser degree and we might not even be aware of it. It is the stronghold of rejection. For some of you this stronghold has had a drastic effect on your life causing you to pull away from people for the fear of being rejected again. Many people who live with this stronghold have developed coping mechanisms to protect themselves from being rejected again. We will talk about some of those patterns more in depth in this podcast. Other people are being affected by this stronghold on a lesser degree and many not even be away that is it happening. We will also talk about these effects.
Peter, no not the apostle Peter, grew up with an older brother and an older sister who loved to tease their younger brother. In fact, they were relentless in their teasing, and since Peter’s mom and dad saw this teasing as just harmless fun, they did not stop it. Peter was big for his age and had to wear clothes that you bought in the big and tall section of the department store. In fact, he had to buy clothes that were marked as husky. You can guess what his brother and sister teased Peter about. They called him names like Porky, or Peter the eater.
One of the ways that this stronghold of rejection works in a person’s life is that they begin to expect rejection. So, when Peter started going to school, he automatically expected that the kids at school were going to reject and tease him the way his brother and sister did. So, Peter developed very few friends, in fact he only had one friend and that friendship was with a child who was physically challenged and did not fit in with the other children as well. This stronghold convinced Peter that he did not belong and that he would always be on the outside of the group.
The stronghold of rejection puts pressure on a person to believe that they will always be rejected. Nancy grew up on the farm. She was the only daughter with four older brothers. Life on the farm meant a lot of hard work. From the time the children were old enough they were given chores around the farm according to their age and ability. The boys were given chores out in the field or in the barns. They got to drive the tractor and bail the hay. They worked with the livestock and rode the horses. Nancy’s chores were always in the house helping mom clean or prepare food for the hungry men. She was never told directly that she could not do certain things because she was a girl, but the lesson was obvious by what she was given to do. Nancy grew up and married a guy who was also a farmer. They began attending a local church where women were never given a place of leadership. Nancy did not strive for anything more because she grew up expecting that she would not be allowed to do certain things because she is a woman. This is a form of indirect rejection. She was not being rejected as Nancy, people loved her, and she had many good friends, but indirectly she was being rejected because she was a woman.
This indirect rejection happens often. People are rejected for the color of their skin. They are not being rejected for who they are as a person, but they are being rejected indirectly because of their race. People also experience indirect rejection because of their political affiliation, their religious persuasion, if you work a white collar or a blue-collar job, and any number of other factors. You can even experience indirect rejection if you root for the wrong sports team. I was walking down the street in Wembley England on the day of a football match (we would call it soccer game) and accidently had on a red t-shirt. The main color of one of the teams playing that day was red. I got yelled at by several of the other teams’ fans and my heritage and lineage was called into question because of my red shirt. That is a form of indirect rejection.
This stronghold also causes people to perceive that they are being rejected. We did ministry with someone who believes people are thinking thoughts about her when they walk into church because of her background. Because of the pressure that this stronghold puts on, this person had already decided that people were judging them and found them not measuring up. That is the extreme of this type of pressure. But it also can affect someone on a more subtle level. Let’s say you are in a conversation with someone at church. These are people you have known for quite a while. Have you ever found yourself wanting to share some information with them about something going on in your life, but you have held back because you are not sure how they will respond. That is a type of perceived rejection.
This stronghold also causes people in a marriage relationship to experience this perceived rejection. Communication is a complex thing. It is not just what you say but how you say it and when you say it. In my pre-RTF days, I was a counselor, and I would often have couples come in for communication issues. One couple came in because the husband had quit sharing much of anything important with his wife and she could not figure out why. The husband agreed that he basically quit sharing his thought with his wife because in his mind she didn’t want to hear them. When I asked why he felt that way he told of a time when he was attempting to share something very important with his wife and she totally blew him off and did not listen. He had been living with this stronghold of rejection and so this perceived rejection started telling him that his thoughts and feelings didn’t matter. He believed that she didn’t care what he feels. When I asked his wife about this attempted conversation, she had a much different story. She described that he brought this subject up at a time when basically the house was on fire. The kids were screaming and needed her attention, and she had four other things going on at once and he picked that moment to share something vulnerable and important. His timing was horrible, but the stronghold of rejection got ahold of her resistance to listening and caused him to completely shut down.
This stronghold also causes people to reject themselves. Self-rejection is more common than many would think. How many people really like the way they look? You hear it all the time. I don’t like my nose, or if I was taller, or if I didn’t have to wear glasses and on and on the self-rejection goes. I know when I first started speaking in public and later heard the recordings, I didn’t like the sound of my voice. I wished I sounded more like James Earl Jones. But this is the voice that God has given me, and it is good. God designed each of us just the way we are with a purpose in mind. And there is nothing wrong with the way God created you. You are a unique one-of-a-kind masterpiece. This spirit of self-rejection causes you to hold back the incredible wonder of who you are.
A prism is a transparent many-sided glass object used for dispersing light into a spectrum of colors. There are no two prisms that are exactly alike so there are no two prisms that reflect the light exactly the same way. We are designed to be like a prism. There are no two of us exactly alike and the way we reflect the life of Jesus living through us to the world around us is also unique. In fact, the world needs the reflection of Jesus through each of us in order to get the full spectrum of who Jesus is and what He is like. Without your reflection of Jesus, the full spectrum view of Jesus is not complete. The spirit of self-rejection wants to tell us that we are not enough just as we are that we need to change in order to be better. If I was somehow different, I would be better. That is simply not true. Jesus made us just as we are, and He wants to shine His Life through the unique prism of who we are.
So, you can see that this stronghold of rejection puts pressure on us to expect rejection, to feel indirect rejection, to perceive rejection, and to have self-rejection. What are some of the Ungodly Beliefs that go along with this spirit of rejection.
A common Ungodly Belief that often goes along with the stronghold of rejection is the lie that I don’t belong. I will always be on the outside. A stronghold like rejection become the lens that we look at life through. Let’s say that my glasses were colored with a red tint. Everything that I looked at through those lenses would be tinted with red, right? Rejection in this case becomes the lens that we look at life through, so we are going to interpret situations and circumstances through the tint of rejection and most of the time come up with an Ungodly Belief. Rejection causes people to interpret situations and circumstances according to the stronghold of rejection. How is it that two people can experience the same situation and interpret it totally differently? Because one is looking at life through a lens of rejection and the other one is not. Two people can walk into a new group of people, and one will say I don’t belong, I will always be on the outside. The other person will say, I have an opportunity to make some new friends. The difference is the pressure that rejection puts on the one.
Another common Ungodly Belief is My feelings don’t count. No one cares what I feel. Peter that I talked about earlier had this Ungodly Belief. Looking at his brothers and sisters teasing, and the fact that his parents did not make it stop through the lens of rejection told Peter that his feelings didn’t count. No one cares what he felt. Because of this belief Peter lived life from that belief, in other words, he didn’t allow others to know his feelings, because he believed they wouldn’t care. And because he didn’t share his feelings with others, it reinforced his belief that others didn’t care about his feelings, that his feelings didn’t count.
Another Ungodly Belief that is common with the stronghold of rejection is that no one will love me or care about me just for me. Remember that part of this stronghold operates in self-rejection. When someone rejects themselves, they have a hard time believing that other people will really care about them without them having to do something to earn that love or care.
Another thing that happens as a result of looking at life through the lens of rejection is people under this stronghold get easily wounded. When you believe that people are going to reject you, you see rejection in many actions. Karen lived under this stronghold of rejection. When she would go places, she expected to be rejected. She could not find a church to attend because every church she when to the people rejected her. In one church she went she decided to try going to a singles gathering to see if she could find new friends. At the gathering very few people talked to her reinforcing her belief that she would always be on the outside. When we talked with her about that hurt that people didn’t talk to her, we found out that she sat in the back and when people came to talk with her, she had very little to say to them. In other words, she acted like a porcupine and wondered why people didn’t hug her. Her wound was self-inflicted because she was living out of the stronghold of rejection.
You don’t have to live with the stronghold of rejection. Even if it is only affecting you a little bit, it is effecting you too much. Galatians 5:1 says it is for freedom that Christ set us free. Freedom from what? Freedom from anything and everything that has un in bondage. Especially this stronghold of rejection.
Prayer
If you recognized that you need help getting freedom from this stronghold of rejection, please contact RTF at ministry@restoringthefoundations.org.
