ISAIAH:
Isaiah was written by Isaiah, son of Amoz. His name means ‘The Lord is salvation’ and was written between 740BC and 680. Isaiah lived during the period marking the expansion of the Assyrian Empire and the decline of Israel. The king at the time was pressured into making some decisions and Isaiah warned Judah that he sin would bring captivity at the hands of Babylon. The visit of Babylonian kings enjoys the Hezekiah set the stage for this prediction. Now Isaiah did also predict that God would redeem and restore his people from Babylonia and although during this book we see Gods judgement and salvation, we also see a side of God of him never leaving us. After a quick stop tour of the theology of Isaiah you might be thinking ‘What has this got to do with me?’
This blog is about rejection and this can be a sensitive area, an area that sometimes can bring up hurt and pain from the past. Rejection is something that everyone at some point in their life faces. Rejection in life can come at us from a variety of different ways. From being chosen last at school, to have a relationship break down or even not being in the right friendship circle, rejection happens in one form or another for every single person on Earth. For you it might have been you asked someone out and they said no, or we were chosen last in sports at school or even for someone of us it could have been that our mum or dad haven’t been around and that is where we feel rejected. It might have been none of these, but I am sure that we can all think of one time in our lives were rejection has hit us and we feel alone. Rejection is apart of our life here on Earth, but when rejection comes we have to ask a question. How do we react? Do we now embrace or live in fear of rejection?
Isaiah 41:10
“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand”
For your generation we can see how much fear of rejection grips us. To do this all you have do it take a look at social media. We are all on some form of social media. Whether that be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat or Tumblr, most of us will be on something. Social Media is now no longer just a place online for us to share content and connect with others around the world. A lot of people now use Social Media as an affirmation device. When we upload a selfie to Instagram, we ask ourselves a question. That question being ‘Am I Liked?’ or ‘’Am I Accepted?’. We want people to like our funny status, we want to get love on our new selfie on Instagram. We know this because we become fixated on the number of ‘likes’ or ‘thumbs up’ we get for something and I am all sure you have done that thing, where you upload a photo to Instagram and you realise you only get 3 likes and so when you think no one is looking you give it a little deleted. You see we delete it because we feel like we haven’t got the acceptance or affirmation that we wanted from our following or friends. Although this specific example is about social media, at some point in our lives we face rejection in some form or another. When rejection hits it is easy for us to develop a fear of further rejection. This fear of rejection stops us from taking risks and it stops us from trying again. When we get our affirmation from Instagram and then our photo doesn’t get the likes, so we delete it, we then reject ourselves and think we can’t do it, which then stops us from telling our friends about Jesus. All of a sudden we start thinking “What if I tell my friends about Jesus and what if it goes wrong. What if they no longer want to be my friend?”. Fear of rejection can have such a stronghold on us and this is something that each and every one of us need to keep an eye on to make sure this doesn’t grip our lives. When this fear has ahold of our lives we become limited to what God has called us to do and holds us back from all that God has for us.
We can spend our whole life trying to get people to like us and accept us. Whether that be right now at school or at college or at university or when you start your job or when you retire, there will always be times where we want people to accept us and give us the ‘like’ that we want. The good news is if you are a Christian in this room, then you have already received the one ‘Like’ that truly matters, that one like that truly makes a difference in your life. Did you know that when Jesus died on the cross, he didn’t say, ‘When you are good enough I will accept you’ or ‘when you attend church for 10 weeks in a row then I will accept you’. No he says during our sin he accepts us.
Romans 5:8
8But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The bible says that while we were still sinners, Chris died for us. If anyone has the right to reject us, it is Jesus, since he knows out every thought, works and action, past, present and future! Yet he still chose to accept us. We will always have moments of rejection by man, but we have been and always will, accepted by our Maker. So lets all that revelation of love and acceptance to enable us to overcome the fear of rejection.
Isaiah 41:10
“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand”
When we do have a fear of rejection, why not believe this truth. Take the first part of the sentence. So do not fear! Who hear believes that this is the word of God? Who believes that God doesn’t lie. So if you believe that God doesn't lie and that he is for us and that this is the word of God, breathed through God and the Holy Spirit then we need to believe this truth. To be #Fearless we need to believe this in our heart. Do not fear. We don’t need to have fear, why? Because of the next part of the sentence. For I am with you! When we are going through rejection, when we have had that no, or chosen last, or whatever it might be we know that God is with us. God is with us, through the good times, the times where we are on fire for God, on fire with trusting God where it is easy to believe yes my God is with me, but when we have hit that rejection, when we have hit the loneliness that can follow rejection, we need to hold onto the truth that my God is with me right now. Through the high times and through the low times my heavenly father is with me. In fact you might be experience rejection right now, you might have a father who has rejected you and you might be struggling to believe that our heavenly father won’t reject you, why not pray and say God I don’t know if I can believe that you won’t reject me or believe that you are always there for me, but God please show me you are there, show me you won’t reject me, show me you are there, show me you won’t leave me.
I WILL STRENGTHEN YOU
When we work out, we get muscle, we become strong. We use weights to gain physical muscle on our body and when we get muscle this means we can carry and hold more things and more weight. Now if you are to imagine that spiritually. How do we become spiritually strong, through spending time with God, building on a relationship with Jesus. Without the weights we can’t get strong, and without Jesus we can get spiritually strong. The more spiritually strong we are. When fear of rejection hits us, we are strong enough to be able to combat it, take the weight through Christ and keep pushing forward.
I WILL HELP YOU
OK, so we spiritually work out, we pray, we worship, we are filled with the holy spirit, but I still feel like I can’t go on, I dont know if I can do it. Well we have the good news the the God that put every single star in space in all the universe is there to help you, you sitting in the Hastings Centre on that seat wants to help you. You never have to do anything on your own and you can trust him. When you get rejected and you feel on your own and you feel like you can’t keep going forward you know you have God with you and in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
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