Haunted By Rejection
“Lacey, are you more concerned with how you’re perceived this morning or how well you introduce the book of 1 Peter?”
That question posed by my co-worker and one of my pastors at the time stopped me in my tracks. And it’s obviously stuck with me for years.
I was scrambling on a Tuesday morning. Leader folders, table signs, group rosters, teaching notes filled my hands while deep seeded fear filled my heart. It was the first session of Women’s Bible Study at The Village Church in Dallas. I’d be teaching in the morning and the evening. I’d be leading leaders, coordinating logistics, and all the while shrinking with what these women thought of me.
The idol of approval esteems man over God.
Let’s go back to middle school. Best years of your life, right? We probably all had the friendship drama, the crush on the boy who never gave you the time of day, and maybe even not making the “A” team on the basketball roster.
Now fast forward to today. Let’s cut right to the obvious one. Social media. If you’re not on it, bless you. Keep reading though. And for those who do post, whether daily or occasionally, why do you check to see how many likes you’ve received? Why does a “heart” on Instagram bring you satisfaction?
And stepping away from social media, thank goodness—consider the following questions:
Are you nervous around others? Why?
Do you find yourself lying to others? When we lie, whose life are we trying to preserve?
Do you think often about what others think of you?
Are you crushed when you believe someone thinks less of you/elated if they think highly of you? Whose opinion of you do you esteem worthy of your worship?
Do you run through interactions with others in your mind over and over after they occur, analyzing every detail and agonizing over what that person thinks of you?
Consider Jeremiah 17:5-8, “Thus says the Lord: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
It is here that we see two helpful contrasts. First in verse six, we see the trust in man—cursed, withering, life of drought, always thirsty and never satisfied.
And now contrast this with the biblical picture of fear. Verse eight shows us a trust in God—one that is nourished, renewed, sheltered, resting in the promises fulfilled in Christ.
Our sanctification shows our process in growth, not our perfection of hiding struggles.
The gospel yields both honesty and hope. My husband often says, “In the gospel we get to come out of hiding.” And the gospel gives hope. Christ really is making all things new. One of my former pastors once reminded me, “Never move beyond the gospel.” We all have a daily need for the gospel.
We must feast upon gospel truths daily.
I want to remind us of a couple of truths that I hope encourage us as we examine our hearts. This is nothing new; just one beggar showing another beggar where to get bread.
The first is to remind you of God’s love for you. Gospel astonishment: That God loves you so much where you are that he doesn’t desire for you to stay as you are. Gospel identity: That you are not defined by what you have done or haven’t done, but that you are defined by how God has shown his love for you, that you are in Christ Jesus.
The second is to remind you of God’s goodness to you. This process of sanctification, of examining our hearts before the Lord, of exposing idols we love and lies we believe, is for your good. And for your greater godliness. That 2 Peter 1:3 reminds us that we have been granted all things that pertain to life and godliness.
The third is to remind you of God’s purpose in you. That we don’t know what is best for us, but God does. That he is achieving a greater purpose in conforming us more and more into the image of his son. That he is sovereign.
We must live in light of these attributes of the Lord: his love, his goodness, his sovereignty. The more the Spirit wakes us up to these truths the more fully that it colors the way we see our sin, our suffering, our struggles.
Healthy fear versus unhealthy fear.
How would you define fear? How does God call us to fear? How does he tell us not to fear? The gospel speaks to fear. In the positive, there’s a fear of God that’s God-centered. And in the negative, there’s often a self-centered fear of others.
Now how does this play out in our lives as women? We as ladies are often plagued by our fears and anxieties.
We are often fearful of what others think of us, of rejection.
Where we might have an elevated concern for the opinions/thoughts of others, the gospel says that in Jesus there is peace and that we can, with full confidence, trust in the work of God in the gospel and lay down our improperly placed fear.
But we mess this up all the time don’t we?
Where outside the gospel our response to anxiety and suffering is expressed in denial, anger, bitterness, depression and isolation, the gospel gives us the freedom to honestly cry out in our pain before God so that in the end we can find comfort in him today and from our experiences run to him in worship and hope as we await the day of our redemption at the return of Jesus.
An unhealthy expression of fear points to the idols of our heart, where we make good things ultimate.
What is fear? How do we express our fears? Fear is an emotional response to a perceived threat or danger. What rules our heart will determine what we fear.
The things we worship will determine the things we fear. Whatever masters us, we will make much of.
So if the approval of man is something we worship, then we will have a fear of man. And we fear not having the approval of man. We fear not having the things we want.
The two primary ways pride (or self-rule) manifests itself in our hearts are through fear and lust.
Lust reveals our passions, which are played out in works of the flesh. We lust after the things that we believe we need (as we define those things). Now fear is the response of our hearts when our lusts remain unfulfilled. We fear not having the things we want (as we define them).
So in our lusts, we seek to control to obtain. And in our fears, we seek to control to preserve.
We will either (1) try to control to obtain through our lusts (approval and affirmation from others). Or we will (2) try to control to preserve through our fears (we try to present ourselves a certain way—women always have it all together, right?).
Fear of man that many of us probably struggle with is when we place dependence on people rather than God for our needs, our joy, for our contentment.
Fear of man is foolish. Fear of the Lord is wisdom.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Proverbs 1:7
A fear of the Lord is grounded in wisdom, humility, reverence, and honor before the splendor and glory of who God is and what God does.
Fearing God leads us to a place of rest, because it brings us back to the fact that he is the one who is sovereign, good, and loving.
Fearing God means we are not in control, that God is. But we can never get here if we continue to trust in the false idols of creation.
Where do we look to a person (a husband or a friend, children) to satisfy, affirm, and comfort us in a way only God can?
In our fear/anxiety, the call is to cry out to him, to trust him, and run to the promise of redemption found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Where do we go from here as women who often walk in fear and experience anxiety? We remember, we repent, we run.
Gospel astonishment (Head): We remember the gospel. We remind ourselves of the gospel daily. Never moved past it!
Gospel identity (Heart): We repent. In our fear and anxiety, we repent from anything we have done to find our identity in the opinions of another. We place our trust fully in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Gospel community (Hands): We run with others. We walk in community. We seek to know others deeply and be known by others deeply in freedom and not in fear.