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Peggy Joyce Ruth, aka "the Psalm 91 Lady" is author of a variety of Psalm 91 book titles with over six million copies in print. She taught a weekly Adult Bible Study for more than 35 years in her church in Central Texas as she shared how to make God’s Word your final authority. Known for her easy-to-understand style of communicating the Word of God and warm storytelling, Peggy Joyce's heart is that her books and teachings will bring you into the same freedom from fear she experienced and help you put God's Word to work in your life.
I call this Bible study one of the deepest wounds a person endures. Now, did a great deal of reading and researching, and I'm convinced that this is so often the center of so many problems because we're going to be talking about rejection. Rejection seems to be really at the bottom of a lot of things. Now, seems to be so many people at least have some degree of rejection. For some, it may just be a mild form of rejection, but there are a lot of people in today's world now that deal with extreme rejection.
Speaker 1:So I believe that we can profit from learning some of the signs of rejection. Now it has been said that rejection is the deepest wounds that the human body can endure. And I've thought about that, and I've looked at a lot of people and looked at their lives, and I thought, you know what? There may be some truth to that. So that's our objective of this bible study, now to learn ways of overcoming rejection.
Speaker 1:Now this week, we're gonna look at number one, what is rejection? Number two, what part does the mind play in rejection? Number three, what are some of the causes of rejection? And number four, three categories or three ways in which rejection manifests. Okay, number one, what is rejection?
Speaker 1:Well, let me ask you first. What is the opposite of rejection? Okay, it's acceptance. Rejection is the absence of acceptance, and it can be real or it can be imaginary. Okay.
Speaker 1:Number one. Real rejection comes from having someone fail to accept you in one way or another, where you're not being accepted. Number two. Failure to accept yourself. I see this happen a lot.
Speaker 1:Self dislike, self hatred, those are real forms of rejection. And number three, we're gonna look at some causes of rejection. Now, imaginary rejection comes when a person either believes that he's being rejected or or when he fears that he's going to be rejected. When in reality, often it may not even be true. You know, it might may just be something they've imagined.
Speaker 1:Either way, it's gonna be destructive to the person, whether it's real or imaginary, if they believe it until it's eliminated god's way. Okay. Now rejection and the fear of rejection is a spirit. It's a demonic spirit. A lot of people don't realize that.
Speaker 1:But it's a real live spirit being, and it thinks, it plans strategies, its purpose is to destroy. And when a person realizes it's a real demon spirit, sometimes they're more willing to go after it. Now, we know that fear is a demon spirit. Everybody knows that. But sometimes we fail to realize that rejection is a demonic spirit as well.
Speaker 1:And when we understand that, I've seen people go fight against it when they finally realize that. But our fight is not against flesh and blood, so God wants us now to learn to fight rejection in the spiritual realm. Now for a person to begin to come out of rejection, it helps to know the goal, or it helps to know the objective now behind the spirit of rejection. Satan has a plan that he hopes to accomplish through rejection, and his plan is to get us first to receive the rejection. You know, that's his first goal.
Speaker 1:We don't have to receive the rejection that's offered, or at least today I want us to realize we don't have to continue to accept that rejection. Now if someone rejects us, too often we think, well, what choice do I have? You know, they're rejecting me. How do I have a choice in that? Well, just because that's been a pattern in the past does not mean that it has to continue being the pattern.
Speaker 1:Satan has a plan for the goal of rejection, and we can overcome that plan. And when we realize that, sometimes people come out of it so quickly. Number one, Satan wants the one being rejected. He wants them or the one who thinks they're being rejected. He wants them to finally get to the place where they don't feel worthy and where they think they deserve the rejection.
Speaker 1:And they start rejecting themselves until they no longer even like themselves. Okay, number three. He will begin to reject others. It has a domino effect. Now at that point, rejection has accomplished its total objective, which is destruction, and that's what Satan's after with the spirit of rejection.
Speaker 1:Now not everyone in rejection has carried it to the extreme, but that's the ultimate goal now of the enemy. Now that, in a nutshell, is what Satan is trying to accomplish here. Okay, so our objective now is to reverse the process, and we can. Okay, now let's look at what part does the mind play in rejection, and why is the mind so important for coming out of the rejection. Well, every single area in our life now where we consistently have trouble for no apparent let up, we can find that the problem is wrong thinking.
Speaker 1:Practically every one of them. We're wrong in our thinking process, and rejection is no exception. The problem of rejection begins right here in the mind. I've never seen it not be here, and if we can ever realize it's coming from the way we're thinking, a lot of people say, Well, okay, I can take care of that. It's wrong thinking.
Speaker 1:Therefore, the problem has to end here, and, we have to get it right in our thinking. Now Satan's battleground is the mind, and that's where we're either gonna win or lose when we realize that. And the mind has to be renewed in order to get the victory. Now the fact that wrong thinking is behind rejection is why the fear of rejection now can be just as destructive as the actual rejection itself. Because the rejection and the damage, it's imaginary, But when a person's in it, they don't think it's imaginary.
Speaker 1:It's big to them. But in rejection, now damage comes from how we perceive something. It comes from your perception that goes on on the inside of you. Now, a thought has substance in the spiritual realm, whether it's negative or positive. A thought is a creative force now that can produce a mood, what mood you're in.
Speaker 1:It can produce an attitude. And finally, it can even produce a personality. You know, have you ever experienced having your whole mood just suddenly change? And I think we all have had times when we were just happy as a lark and suddenly a negative thought comes. And instantly with it comes a mood change.
Speaker 1:Okay, happy as a lark in instant depression happens to a lot of people. A thought is a creative force. And rejection thoughts now, whether they're obvious or whether they're subtle, they're creative. And what starts out as a mood can literally become quickly an attitude, and finally, if if it's not taken care of, becomes a lifestyle. Okay.
Speaker 1:And our soulish realm now is the switch that turns God's power on or off. Now we can either turn on to God, believe him, believe his word, or we can think like the world thinks and take on its rejection. And we have that power within our soul to go either direction we wanna go. And some people, when they learn that they have the possibility of going either way, sometimes that'll make them stop and say, okay. I'm gonna change.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna do it God's way. But we do have that power in our will in our mind. Now, our will decides what we're gonna think on, and our subconscious will decide what we're going to store in our subconscious mind. So, really, we're the product of our thought life. This is the whole crux of rejection.
Speaker 1:Now, when someone takes in thoughts of rejection or when they hang on to some kind of rejection ideals, maybe from their childhood, those become subconscious wounds. We don't realize they're wounds inside of us that affect our entire outlook on life. Now, our neighborhood growing up, it was all little boys with the exception of one little girl, two years younger than the boys. And when they got tired letting her play with them, they would say real hurtful and ugly things to make her go home. Well, everything a person does or thinks is often colored now with memories.
Speaker 1:You know, things they remember happening to them when they were young are are subconscious thoughts of rejection. And they hang on to those until they finally get healed. And if they don't get healed, it only grows worse and worse. For example, two people can walk into a situation where they both are given the cold shoulder, And one will shrug it off, to pay it no mind, and just think, oh, the offender's probably just having a bad day today. You know, they'll get over it.
Speaker 1:Or they'll think, they just need to know me better. If they knew me, they would like me. While the other one who fights rejection subconsciously sees the incident as a confirmation to the fact that they're not accepted. They see it totally differently, and they see it as a personal affront. Okay.
Speaker 1:Now what makes the difference in these two people's outlook? We're going to find out that it's how we see things. It's how we perceive things. The subconscious thoughts that we've come to accept and live with are what makes the difference in the different people's outlook. Now the one in rejection somehow becomes convinced in their subconscious mind that, they're unloved.
Speaker 1:You know, it's really not important how they come to that conclusion. It's just important to find out how to get rid of it. So many people, they want to go back and find out why they got us the rejection. That's not important. Just find out how to get out of it because everybody deals with a certain amount of rejection.
Speaker 1:And until that deep seated thinking changed, they'll go on being wounded. They believe that they're unloved because of maybe some message that's gotten through to them that they've picked up in the past. There might not even be an ounce of truth in it. For example, if someone told you that you had big ears, they told you, Those ears are just way too big in proportion to your face. Even if there was no truth in that, even if your ears were in fact a little bit on the small side, it would affect you if you thought it was the truth.
Speaker 1:It's what we perceive as truth. It's what we take in as truth. Now many a childhood playmate has said ugly, hurtful things that went deep into that person's subconscious mind, and it began to color their whole outlook on life. I've seen this happen so many times with kids that they play together, and one just shrugs it off and another will take it in, and it begins to grow. The ideas we accept, whether they're real or not, they're gonna cause you to create your environment.
Speaker 1:They're gonna cause you to put up walls to protect and defend yourself. Because when we're in rejection, we're not trusting God to be our defense. And a lot of people don't even think about trusting God in that. They just think, Well, I'm just rejected. People reject me.
Speaker 1:And anything that we believe to be the truth that doesn't line up with the Word of God is going to cause inferiority. Now, rejection is no exception. Now, your conscious mind will often evaluate whether it's true or not. We think we look at it, we think of it consciously, and we think, No, that's not true. And they'll maybe throw it out.
Speaker 1:But the subconscious mind doesn't evaluate. And if it's not renewed in the light of the word, many times that's in your subconscious, you receive something that you would never receive in the conscious. It stores up hurt in the subconscious. Everything we do is preceded by thought, but not necessarily a conscious thought. And most things that affect us adversely, came in, it was preceded by a subtle subconscious, soulish thought or maybe something in the emotions.
Speaker 1:Even certain sounds or certain smells that we've stored up can change the entire mood. I'm going give you an example. A number of years ago, when I was young, I was in my twenties, I would find myself in a really good mood since suddenly then I would get depressed. And I thought, what on earth? I couldn't figure out what was going on.
Speaker 1:Well, one day the Lord reminded me years before, when I was just a child, I would wake up in the middle of the night terrified that something was going to happen to a member of my family. And when I was older, I went through deliverance and we'd taken care of it and it really wasn't a problem anymore. I I was trying to figure out what on earth was going on. But I started noticing that it every time I would get depressed, I would notice that it was the sound of an old oscillating fan. And I thought, when I heard that fan, I would get depressed.
Speaker 1:And and I started checking and saying, Lord, what's going on? And the Lord reminded me that back when I would wake up in fear, I would be sleeping under an oscillating fan. And so my subconscious had stored that sound and associated it with depression. And that happens a lot of times. The same thing can happen with a certain smell.
Speaker 1:There was one guy that always felt rejected by this girl that he liked in high school, and years later he could smell that fragrance, that perfume, and he said rejection would immediately come on him. Well, he finally remembered that that was a stored memory of the smell of her perfume, and his subconscious had stored that smell and had accepted it as rejection, you know. Okay. Now I'm gonna name some of those subconscious negative attitudes and feelings that rejection produces that we may really never have consciously thought on. But these things in the rejection really don't bother so much in the conscious realm.
Speaker 1:It's in the subconscious realm. Feelings of being unwanted. You may never have consciously thought, People don't want me around, and yet still have subtle feelings of being unwanted or not belonging. Feelings of being left out. You know, I'm always left out.
Speaker 1:Feelings of being outside looking in and not knowing how to get in. Those feelings will bring in a general overall low self worth. Now, they may not be conscious feelings that you dwell on. A lot of people will say, No, I've never thought that before. It's just a general overall impression that kind of colors everything without realizing it.
Speaker 1:Now, the reason I spent time describing the rejection and describing the feelings that it produces and the part that the mind plays is because the first step to recovery is identifying the problem. Sometimes the minute we identify the problem, we can be rid of it. A doctor has to make an accurate diagnosis before he can adequately describe a cure. He has to identify the problem in order to treat it. Well, the best way to solve the problem of rejection is to recognize it.
Speaker 1:So many people don't recognize it. They don't even realize they're operating in rejection. Rejection can also enter through circumstances that are out of a parent's control. I've seen the times when a child is left in the hospital and they can't bring them home, complications come in. And they didn't get that early caressing, and the rejection often evolves.
Speaker 1:When a child is deprived of a parent's love due to death, sometimes it's military service or maybe a sickness, a broken home, rejection often evolves. And it's really out of the control of the parents. It's out of control of the people that are around them. When a child is unfavorably compared to a brother or sister, it can be an unspoken comparison, and rejection follows. Fear and anxiety on the part of a nervous new mother.
Speaker 1:It can communicate rejection when rejection is certainly not there. She loves that new baby. But it's new to her, and sometimes it's putting across a spirit of rejection. Now, are things that God wants to heal so that we can live whole and wholesome lives. A child needs lots of touching.
Speaker 1:We've talked about that before. Touching is the affirmation of love, and there's times when one child will receive an extra measure now of love and attention. And let's say a child who is chronically ill, maybe over a period of time, they'll get a lot of touching and loving. Or maybe it's a child that's handicapped. Or once in a while, it's going to be a parent who just simply has a favorable child they love that child and they show it.
Speaker 1:Okay, for whatever reason, when one child gets more attention, it's going to often leave scars and wounds and hurt and rejections now in the other children who look on longingly and they feel the rejection. Rejection wounds usually go back to childhood. Most all of them will go back to childhood. It's like in Genesis 30 seven:three-four. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his sons because he was the son of his old age, and he loved that child.
Speaker 1:And so he made him a very colored tunic. And evidently, he wasn't thinking about what it was going to do to the other children because the other brothers saw that their father loved Joseph more than all of the rest of them, and so they hated Joseph, and they couldn't speak to him on friendly terms. Okay. Now we've been pretty hard on Joseph's brothers. And and, of course, they did badly when they sold Joseph into Egypt, so that was horrible.
Speaker 1:But we can trace the root of the problem right back here to to Jacob's unwise decision as a parent to favor one child over another. It never fails to bring in wounds. Now, there are hundreds of ways that rejection can enter, but the good news is that it can be overcome. And so many people that are in rejection and they feel like everybody doesn't like them, they think they can't come out of it. But the good news is they can.
Speaker 1:You know, and I can't say that often enough that God has answers for anything that comes against us. So this next statement is very important. The door to rejection is opened anytime someone searches for whatever reason. When they search for their true identity, their purpose for living, or their acceptance when they try to find it from anyone or any place other than in Jesus. There's only one place for it to get the acceptance.
Speaker 1:And when we receive it there, it doesn't matter what goes on around us because God's gonna give us the everything that we need. But when that happens, the door to rejection opens, and the ultimate search now and the legitimate search to find it in in the right place is only when we run to the Lord. When we say, God, I've got a problem going on, but I know you can answer it. And God's ready. He's waiting.
Speaker 1:So ask yourself, From whom and from what now am I drawing my identity? How do I see myself? Who do I really think I am? If we'll ask ourselves those questions, sometimes we have the answer right in front of us. If you see yourself as simply so and so's child, especially if you see yourself as so and so's least favorite child, or or if your identity is tied up in the fact that you're simply so and so's husband or wife or so and so's mother.
Speaker 1:If that's how you see yourself, that and you don't see yourself as having any value, if that if that's the major source of your identity, then rejection thoughts are going to always evolve. Or if you're looking to what you can do in life to give yourself a purpose for living, then rejection thoughts are going to come because what what we do for ourself now, it's never going to be enough. It's never going to satisfy permanently. Or if you look to the wrong source for acceptance, if you're dependent upon somebody else to make you feel accepted, we have to have somebody's acceptance here or there, then anybody other than Jesus, gonna find out there's gonna be a time that disappointment's gonna come in. They're gonna disappoint us in some way, and rejection will follow as surely as night follows day.
Speaker 1:See, a process evolves. Rejection thoughts formulate, and as those rejection thoughts are put out as seed, the only harvest that can come is rejection. And now as you hold those rejection thoughts in your mind, as you meditate on the times and the ways in which you've seen yourself rejected and you start thinking back, well, golly, they sure treated me badly. I don't think they like me. Not only does it magnify the incident, but the mind is like a magnet, and it literally attracts more rejection.
Speaker 1:It takes it in. We could spend an entire Bible study on the causes of rejection, but these that I've named are the basic causes. And practically all rejection is just a version of one of those attitudes that's been adopted from childhood and practically every time it came in in childhood. When a husband or wife is rejected by a mate, that's a common deep wound that has to be dealt with. But many, many times, you'll find that one of them had some problems in childhood.
Speaker 1:And most of the time, rejection wounds that were received in adulthood now are a projection or a continuation of those childhood wounds. Now, if it's marital rejection, it'll often take on the new dimension of shame and humiliation, and it just compounds the problem. Rejection is a horrible problem. I think people just say, well, everybody has a little bit of rejection, But we don't realize that is one of the biggest things that the enemy uses against us, and that's when we have to look into it. We have to realize how dangerous it is, and it it just needs to be healed, and God wants to heal it.
Speaker 1:Rejection is an internal wound where the subconscious soul becomes wounded and crushed. And since it's deeper than the conscious mind, you know, it also goes even deeper than the conscious memory. It's not even the memory that we're remembering. It's just the rejection that we're feeling. Because the incident itself may be long forgotten, and that's why these wounds in the soul are different and they're difficult to diagnose.
Speaker 1:Because most people don't consciously remember the incident. It was painful, so the conscious mind learns to cope by forgetting it, but the wound is there all the same until it's healed. Just because it's been pushed down, it still vestures and it's going to cause problems. In Proverbs eighteen fourteen, it says, The spirit of a man can endure his sickness, but a broken spirit, who can endure it? Okay, we can't.
Speaker 1:And that's why we have to learn God's healing power. In Proverbs fifteen thirteen, it says it in a different way: A joyful heart makes a cheerful face, but when the heart is sad, the spirit is broken. Okay, now I've seen people with a sad countenance from a wounded heart, and they honestly, if you ask them why they were sad, they'd probably deny that they were. No, I'm not sad. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1:They'd never even know that their countenance was showing it. They wouldn't even be aware of that. Sometimes they don't even have a conscious memory of the hurt, but it's recorded in the subconscious, so the results shows up all the same. Okay, there's a sadness about them. It's kind of like a sad spirit's over them.
Speaker 1:Rejection will usually manifest either mild or extreme in one of three categories, and that's why if you mark these down, sometimes it'll help you to recognize it. Number one: There's a group of people who have been rejected and they give in to it. They don't fight it. They wallow in it. And this first category now is obviously preoccupied with self.
Speaker 1:And they're constantly thinking, you know, how I'm being affected, how I feel. Loneliness, self pity, hopelessness, despair, misery. These characteristics literally control their whole existence. When you think about them, that's what you think about. Even when they're doing something fun, there's a spirit of gloom that's over them.
Speaker 1:There's a subtle self pity message, which is in fact a death message. That's what self pity is. And that self pity message is continually being sent out that communicates the message, I've been so mistreated. And sometimes they're not saying it. They're not even really consciously thinking it, but that's the message that's being put out.
Speaker 1:They've usually been in this mode for so long that it's become such a way of life then that they don't even know how it feels to think any other way. Their whole existence revolves around their mistreatment. And many times that mistreatment is their major topic of conversation. They'll talk about it in other people even. And that's what they think about, so out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
Speaker 1:Now, suicide usually falls under this category. It's sad. It's almost as bad as that joke told about the guy who had been invited to go to his first football game. And afterwards, when he asked, did you like the game? He said, well, I'm never going to another one.
Speaker 1:And they said, well, why? Why would you not go again? He said, because every so often, they'd stop the game, get in a little huddle, talk about me. Well, of course, that is a little bit absurd, but that's sort of characteristic of this first group. To whatever degree it has that they're feeling the rejection, it has to be dealt with.
Speaker 1:It may be subtle. It may be huge. Okay, the second group of people who are plagued with rejection are the ones who become indifferent. They just become aloof. They've put up walls of defense mechanism.
Speaker 1:Sometimes they'll carry an air of superficial happiness. You know, they'll pretend that happy and everything's okay. But it's forced and sometimes it's even exaggerated. It'll be an exaggeration where they try to make everybody think that they're in good shape. Sometimes they're extremely talkative, sometimes even loud trying to appear happy.
Speaker 1:It's a cover up and it's a defense mechanism, but it's easy to detect that it's a false front. It's a wall of indifference and sort of aloofness. Now, in this group are the ones who want people to agree with their thoughts and ideas because it makes them feel accepted. If somebody accepts what I think or what I say, then it makes me feel like I'm being accepted. And they become hurt and rejected when people don't agree with them, don't agree with their ideas.
Speaker 1:Now even though they try to fool even themselves into thinking that they don't care whether anybody agrees with them or not, They really do care. If you reject their ideas, you're rejecting them. And it's it's a big problem in a lot of people. Now, it's always a deep seated rejection that causes people to pretend that they don't care what people think about their lifestyle, and yet they get angry and upset over gossip or judgmental attitudes because they've been hurt. And so anytime they see it, anywhere they see it, they get angry.
Speaker 1:Deep down, they do care, but they cover it up until they want people to think they don't care. Okay. Now the subconscious message is, I've been hurt so badly, but it's never going to happen again. And I find that in so many people, that they have been hurt and deep inside, they're never going to let it happen again. They're trying to protect themselves.
Speaker 1:I won't allow anyone to get emotionally close enough to ever hurt me again. And people who use sarcastic put downs against other people, many times they do it in an attempt to be humorous and they're always, they're always covering up a rejection inside of themselves. A person who's critical, judgmental, fault finding rejection is there. Now, that doesn't excuse wrong behavior. It just helps us to know where to look for the problem to get it healed.
Speaker 1:Now, some people in rejection will withdraw physically and alienate themselves from people. I've seen that happen so many times. All that does is perpetuate the problem. You can remember in school when certain kids would withdraw from the other kids because they felt rejected. They felt shy.
Speaker 1:And the further they would withdraw, the more they were forgotten. Therefore, the more they felt rejected. So it was just something that just kept perpetuating itself. Okay. The third category then, or the third way in which rejection manifests, is the one who gets resentful and bitter.
Speaker 1:And I've seen this happen many times, where hurt turns into hatred and then rebellion and they become they just become fighters. One group talks it, one group tries to cover it, and one group fights it. The rejection is gonna fall in one of those three categories. Now, this is usually the hardest type of rejection to recognize and the hardest for the person himself to even recognize. There's a deep seated anger over the deep rejection hurts and they lash out at everyone, you know, subconsciously.
Speaker 1:They're trying to get even. Sometimes they don't even know what they're trying to get even for, but they just feel like they've been done wrong. If you read the life story of Nikki Cruz, this is a a good example. Nikki is a former gang leader. He found Jesus under David Wilkerson's ministry in New York City.
Speaker 1:His testimony is that when he was eight years old, his mother literally rejected him. We don't really know the reason why, but he said that it felt like he had been torn completely apart. In Nikki's own words, he said, I hated the whole world. I used to love to hurt people because psychologically I was reflecting the pain that was inside of me. He said, When I would walk down the street in my neighborhood, I was like a mad dog.
Speaker 1:And he said, People would actually hurry to get away from me. And, of course, that added to his rejection when they tried to get away from him. Nikki went on to say that when Jesus came into my life, he said, He delivered me and He healed me. And now, he said, I consider myself a blessed child. Nikki said, I'm not a curse anymore.
Speaker 1:He said, Now I'm a blessing. I'm a testimony of the grace of God. Now, he's a textbook example of this third category. The decade of the nineteen sixties produced a generation of rejected children. It's really sad when you look at what happened during that generation.
Speaker 1:And they manifested this rejection in anger and rebellion, this category three. Many, many children reared in the early nineteen sixties had the misfortune of living during a decade now where it was in thing to keep up with the Joneses and to see to it that your children had more than your neighbor's children. It became a status symbol in a lot of homes to lavish cars and boats and European trips and money on their children. Now, not that these things are necessarily wrong in and of themselves, but money can't replace acceptance. And during that particular decade, in most of the homes where there was a status climb trying to go on was in process, There was little, if any, home life.
Speaker 1:They were just trying to do for their children to look big. Acceptance and love from the parents, especially expressed love from the father, was what they needed and what they were longing for. So these kids, many times, they they felt rejected and betrayed because they could see through that. It produced a huge number of young people who rebelled and lashed out at the world with drugs and alcohol and sexual perversion. There was so much of that that was going on during that time in the upper echelon of money.
Speaker 1:And crime, a mass manifestation of rejection in these affluent homes. I did a study on that, and it was amazing how much went on there. In the very rich neighborhoods, it was interesting how it went on in almost every home. Now, all three of these categories or these ways of dealing with rejection are defensive. Even though it may appear to be very offensive, it really was a defensive mechanism.
Speaker 1:It's still a defensive measure, a way to cover up the hurts and the wounds that just seem intolerable. In Proverbs eighteen fourteen, it says, Who can stand a broken heart? And that's basically what we were seeing during that period in time. And it becomes a curse that's handed down now to the next generation and the next and the next many times until someone allows God to break this rejection cycle. Now I used to think, boy, when someone's been hurt that badly, it looks like they'd turn around and do the opposite for their children.
Speaker 1:You think they'll say, well, that happened to me, but I'm not gonna let it happen to my children. But we've gotta realize someone can't give out what he doesn't have. If it wasn't given to him, he doesn't have it to give out. They can't give love and acceptance when they don't have it. So we have to get it in order to give it away.
Speaker 1:And it's never too late to get the acceptance when we get it from the right place. And that's why God's word is telling Jesus. Go to Jesus to get that acceptance. When when there's anything in you, even the least little bit of feeling unloved or unaccepted, run to Jesus. And that's where the answer's going to come in.
Speaker 1:Jesus is the only answer to straighten out the plague of rejection. And it's worldwide. It's not just in one category of people. It's worldwide. There will always be an inability to communicate love unless that one first receives love now from the one who is love.
Speaker 1:You can almost see someone who's been under rejection and their life has gone badly. The moment they find Jesus, it's almost an instant turnaround. That's what's interesting. In first John four nineteen, we love why? It says, we love when we realize he first loved us.
Speaker 1:A person can't love unless they know that they've been loved first. And when a child is born into a family that has never expressed love, then they'll marry and have children, but they're still not gonna be able to express what they never experienced. A curse perpetuates the sin. We find that in any area. No matter what the curse may be, it's going to perpetuate the sin until someone deals with it and breaks the cycle to keep it from passing on.
Speaker 1:One pitfall that some parents fall into, once they discover some things that their parents did wrong in their life that open the door to rejection, they decide by the arm of flesh that they're going to try to fix it. We see that happen a lot where they think, Well, my parents did this wrong, so I'm gonna do it right. But when they try to do it right in their own strength, with their own wisdom, it never works. Sometimes it even causes more harm. Or when it's a single parent trying to overcompensate for a missing parent and they begin to smother the child in an attempt to see to it that no rejection I'm not gonna let rejection to come to my child like I had rejection, but when they're doing it by the arm of flesh, it's not gonna work.
Speaker 1:But they find out that because it's coming out of fear rather than trust and reliance on God, that it adds a new dimension to the problem. So don't begin to panic. The good news is that someone did deal with it. Someone did break the cycle, and that was Jesus two thousand years ago. So Jesus is the only real answer to rejection.
Speaker 1:Father, I thank you that you want people healed and delivered and set free from rejection. It's one of the biggest curses that comes on mankind. And it's not just a sin. It's a demon spirit, and that's why it causes so many problems. So, father, I thank you.
Speaker 1:I'm believing that even with this series, father, that a lot of people are going to see the problem, and they're gonna turn it over to Jesus and allow themselves to be set free. Lord, that's what you're wanting. You're wanting us to see the problem, see where the where the problem came from, and and then realize that you've given us an an answer. You've offered it, and all you're waiting for us to do is just reach out and receive it. We thank you for that, Lord.
Speaker 1:We thank you that you love us so much. You want us all set free. We're living in a fallen world, but, father, that doesn't mean that you haven't given us an answer that will pick us up out of the muck and the mire and and give us freedom and set us free. And you want us to receive it in Jesus' name. Amen.