Tag: rejection

God’s Special Possession

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

1 Peter 2:9-10

If you are a follower of Christ I want to encourage you today that you are a member of a chosen people. You are a part of a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession. You are adopted into the family of God. You are a part of a Kingdom that is not of this world but that has started breaking out in our world. Now, you are the people of God. Now you live in grace and have received God’s mercy. You are a beloved child of God, a co-heir with Christ of this glorious inheritance in the Kingdom of God.

It is so easy to forget these truths. This is particularly true if we see life through the warped lens of rejection. If at a very young age we were rejected by friends or family, it can be particularly difficult to see the world clearly. We begin to see everything colored by rejection. Because we were once truly rejected, we now see rejection everywhere we look even when it’s not there.

A person who looks through the lens of rejection struggles to receive feedback because they assume they are being personally rejected. This kind of person can struggle to show grace to people around them, assuming that every mistake someone else makes is somehow about them being rejected. If someone forgets an appointment it suddenly means the worst case scenario; it means the friend intentionally avoided them. Everything that can appear as a small slight becomes a major issue.

When a person looks through the warped lens of rejection long enough, they will find themselves hosting the spirit of rejection in their lives. The whole assignment of a demonic spirit of rejection is to make sure the person either is rejected or at least feels rejected as often as possible. A spirit of rejection will tempt a person to fold in on themselves in despair and depression. Or, it will tempt a person to lash out and reject others before they can be rejected again.

No matter how many times you tell a person with a spirit of rejection that they are accepted, loved, treasured, safe, welcomed, etc., they struggle to believe it. They usually have been listening to the lies that they are rejected for so many years, they struggle to believe the truth. This is when they must hear from the Lord and not just from people.

They need to be set free from a spirit of rejection not only through deliverance prayer but through a rebuilding of the truth. They need to be saturated in the truth of the Bible and discover how God sees them in order to tear down the lies that they so readily believe. It has to be more than just encouraging words. Nice words alone won’t breakthrough. It has to be encounters with Lord–truth encounters and power encounters.

Do you struggle with rejection? With feeling rejected all the time by most of the people around you? It could be that you are believing a lie. It could be that the rejection you experienced when you were young has warped the way you see the world. Maybe people aren’t rejecting you even when you feel rejected. Your feelings are lying to you, and the enemy is lying to you. Maybe it’s time to discover what God says about you and how He feels about you. Maybe it’s time to saturate your thinking with the Word of God.

A spirit of rejection

Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior. His father was Gilead; his mother was a prostitute. Gilead’s wife also bore him sons, and when they were grown up, they drove Jephthah away. “You are not going to get any inheritance in our family,” they said, “because you are the son of another woman.” So Jephthah fled from his brothers and settled in the land of Tob, where a gang of scoundrels gathered around him and followed him.

Judges 11:1-3

It doesn’t take a psychologist to see how Jephthah being born to a prostitute and feeling rejected by his family led him to connect to “a gang of scoundrels.” This same story is playing out in our culture over and over again.

I’ve prayed for a number of people in the last couple years in extended prayer sessions that last two to three hours. During these prayer sessions we focus on inner healing and deliverance. Inner healing is when wounds of the heart are uncovered, forgiveness is given, judgments are forsaken, and the love of the Father and peace of Christ are invited in to bring healing. Deliverance is when demons, who often entered a person through the wounds of the heart or generational sin, are cast out.

It is a regular occurrence to find a spirit of rejection as the primary, and often the most insidious, demon a person is dealing with. A spirit of rejection often attacks a person in early childhood and sometimes in utero. This spirit then becomes a kind of “door opener” propping the doors of a person’s life open for other bigger and stronger demons to enter.

It’s not hard to see the strategy of the enemy here. If someone has a spirit of rejection, they feel a pervasive and constant sense of rejection from everyone in their life. Even small slights become major wounds. Over time a long line of rejections–relationships, work situations, church, and family–start to mount. The lens through which a person sees the world is colored by rejection. This is the set up.

Now when other sins start to show up in a person’s life (anger, hate, lust, pride, homosexuality, greed, fear, lying, gossiping) it is nearly impossible to address it with that person without them feeling rejected. They will live in a constant state of feeling that any confrontation of their sin is a rejection of them. They will demand full acceptance, not only of their person, but of their sin. In other words, they will so strongly identify with their sin, they will demand that you accept it as a part of them.

Loved ones are now trapped. How do you let this person know that they are fully and completely loved and yet that their sin is hurting them? A spirit of rejection is often at the root of this dilemma.

A spirit of rejection enters a person’s life at such a young age, they are often unaware of what life feels like without its talons dug into their heart and mind. Babies can often sense what is happening in their mother in utero. If a child was an unwanted pregnancy, a spirit of rejection can attach itself to that child before they are even born. It was given access by the rejection of the mother. I’ve prayed for a number of people where this was the situation.

The antidote to a spirit of rejection is to renounce it, break its bondage, and cast it out in Jesus’ name. It’s important to no longer believe the lies that rejection whispers.

Additionally, experiencing the acceptance and love of the Father is essential. God is able to perfectly love and accept who we really are and who we are created to be without embracing our sin. Without experiencing the acceptance of the Father, a spirit of rejection will often worm its way back into a person’s life. We must go to God and hear from Him about who we really are and how He sees us. A single word from Him is more powerful than years in a counselor’s office or a decade of sermons.

Jephthah was a mighty warrior. That is his true identity. That is who he was before rejection had a chance to speak a different identity over his life. We need the Father to remind us of who He created us to be. We need to daily hear His words of acceptance and love.

Has a spirit of rejection gotten a hold of your life?