What is Rejection and How Can I
    Overcome the Fear of Rejection?

This article on healing addiction is an introduction to our series of 24 teachings, "Matters of the Heart," that are individually posted on this site and available as a complete set in our workbook which can be purchased as a download or ordered through the mail. The lessons are also available on CD and DVD as 24, 1/2 hour teachings. All scriptures are from the NKJV unless otherwise noted.

One of the “giants in the land” that many of us have had to face is the fear of rejection. This giant is extremely hard to defeat—unless you learn God’s way of resisting it! Let’s begin with a simple principle for overcoming fear of rejection: the first thing to do is get a total victory over past rejections.  As long as you or I are carrying painful feelings of rejection coming from past experiences, we will ALWAYS fear future moments of possible rejection. Our inner thought will necessarily be, “I can’t let this happen to me again, because I never get over when it does.”

In truth all past experiences of rejection can become powerfully instructive for us in our quest for overcoming both rejection and fear of rejection. Granted, for many of us as children what we learned was, “Wow, that really hurts! How can I avoid it?”  In reaction to the pain, we may have retreated into shyness or tried to win everyone over by being the center of attention; we may have become perfectionists or developed a false personality. None of these coping mechanisms defeat rejection, instead they ensure that past feelings of rejection will control us and keep us from becoming our true self.

Now note that each coping attempt is based on the idea, “There must be something wrong with me—that is why I am being rejected. So, how can I change me to avoid this pain?” This false idea is at the heart of the problem. If there truly is something wrong with me as a person that deserves me being rejected, then my heart naturally is going to feel an enormous pain. Anyone’s would. Who wants to be a person who does not deserve to be accepted and loved?

But this is NOT the truth about you or me—ever. God who created us wants NO ONE rejected! He Himself loves everyone with such an enormity of passion that He was willing for His own Son to suffer for the sake of restoring us to Him forever. If we are Christians, then we can know that we are fully accepted by Him (Ephesians 1:3-6) and that He will never reject or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). Are you aware that He has commanded everyone on earth to love and accept you just as He does? (Matthew 22:39).

From this we can see that whenever anyone rejects us, it is contrary to God’s will for us, contrary to His love for us and acceptance of us, and that therefore it is a sin against God as well as against us. Now don’t get too prideful—you have committed this same sin against others too! But do take home to your heart the message that rejection by others is always their sin, not yours. And you do not have to take anyone’s sinful thoughts or feelings into your own heart and torment yourself with them.

God has made you sovereign over your own feeling system, partly for this reason—so that other people’s opinions about you won’t be able to rule over you. You can choose to learn how to let His opinion about you become the basis of your new feeling system (see Accepted in the Beloved (Main Healing Lesson 17) and Negative Emotions). As you learn to overcome past feelings of rejection, you will find it much easier to overcome fear of rejection.

Learn to get victory over past rejections
and you won't fear any future one!
 

Interested in going deeper?

For further study and for help working these truths into your heart and life, see all 24 Main Healing Lessons and Head to Heart Guides posted on this site or in the store.

Or better yet, let us minister to you in person
     --at one of our Savannah Seminars...