Who ever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects Him who sent me. Luke 10:16

Before I knew the Lord as my personal Lord and Savior, I thought that I was too bad for Him to save me or want a relationship with me. When I learned that that was a lie and that He died even for a sinner such as me, I couldn’t wait to submit to His authority and I immediately began to live my life for Him.

That’s all nice and tidy….I didn’t think God loved me, He did love me, I loved Him back and we lived happily ever after….HAH.

I still had to live in this world. My desire was to tell the world about Jesus! I had discovered the answer to all the heart ache in my life (which were my own sinful actions and the consequences that resulted) and with that I discovered the remedy….Jesus. I was filled with joy and wanted everyone else to be too. The only problem was, all the people I wanted to tell, remembered who I was before Christ.

I will never forget the heartbreak of sharing the Gospel with someone that I deeply cared about, someone that I really want to know is going to be in heaven with me and their response was “well, after all that you have done, if they are going to let you into heaven then I know that they will let me in”.

Well, that is a great concept, if our salvation was determined by how we measure up against one another. But, it isn’t. Our salvation is determined by how we measure up against the one perfect Son of God. He is the example and the measuring stick and we will always fall short when compared to Him. But God’s desire was to give us a way to obtain perfection and it is through accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior, repenting of our sin and living our life for the life that He gave up for us. So, unfortunately, my friend did not accept Jesus because he was too busy rejecting me.

Have you ever been rejected? It is a difficult thing to deal with. I wish that I could tell you that the last time that I felt rejection was when I first became a follower of Christ, about 20 years ago, but it wasn’t. And rejection is not exclusive to Christians. People reject each other all the time. But for a follower of Jesus, I believe, it cuts a little deeper. First because we are typically being rejected by the very people that we want to rescue from the eternal consequences of rejecting Christ but then the reason that they are typically rejecting us is because they are so incredibly convicted by the transformation that He has made in us!

Thankfully God gave us some pretty awesome examples of those who have been rejected, in the Scripture.

Moses – raised as Egyptian Royalty denied the benefits of being an Egyptian royal, to pursue a life with His brothers the Israelites. His loyalty for them ran so deeply that in his wanderings he came upon an Egyptian treating an Israelite badly and Moses, defending the Israelite, actually committed murder. He would go on to follow and obey God and lead the people of Israel into the promise land that God had given them. And the whole way, the Israelites complained, threatened his life and even had the audacity to worship other gods the minute that he turned his back. Moses was REJECTED!

Paul – In Acts 17-18 we see Paul on a missionary journey, attempting to spread the Gospel and be used by God to save the lost. Paul endures one rejection and assault after another and ultimately leaves telling his last audience in Chapter 18 that their “blood be on your own heads.” This isn’t the only rejection he faces, he ends up in jail on at least 3 occasions for preaching the Gospel. He certainly knew rejection.

Jesus – worst of all is the rejection of the Son of God. Now the men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking him as they beat him. Luke 22:63. Jesus came to “seek and to save the lost” Luke 19:10. And this was His reward…to be rebuked, mocked, beaten and murdered. But, praise God, He IS RISEN and sits at the right hand of the Father. But, He told us a little about rejection before He left.

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. John 15:18-19

Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. 2 Timothy 3:12

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! ²³ Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets. Luke 6:22

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ and you have been rejected, it may seem as though it has nothing to do with Him. But, don’t underestimate the ability of the Holy Spirit to convict others through your attempts at walking like Christ. Our very presence can be a conviction.

If you are not a follower of Christ, first I ask that you go to our Live Preserver page and become a follower of Jesus. I am sure that you have faced and been hurt by rejection as well. But Jesus wants to remove that pain and give you peace, hope and a future. Trust Him, because He will NEVER reject you!

I pray that the next time we feel rejected, we think about these examples that God gives us of those who loved Him and faced rejection. And that we would learn to do as they did because, if we look closely at them, we will see that they all persevered. They continued the work of the Father and didn’t look back. I pray that we would remember that this life and its sufferings are for a short period, but our reward is eternity in heaven and in His “Father’s House are many rooms”. I pray that we would forgive and pray for those who reject us and that we would remember that, although people may reject us, God never will.

Luv ya!