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Why Rejection Means You Belong

Why Rejection Means You Belong

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Reading time: 3 minutes

Rejection can be extremely painful or even life-threatening. However, for the Christian, for the child of God, rejection is an attack without merit. It doesn’t feel like it at the time, but rejection can be good. Would you rather be accepted by God or by Satan? Would you rather be rejected by God or by Satan?

Rejection is Related to Belonging

If you’re excluded from one group, you automatically belong to another.

If someone hates you, then someone else loves you.

If one person forgets you, you’re remembered by another.

If someone goes out of their way to reject you, that means you’re significant.

How can these statements be true? Belonging is conserved. No one can “unbelong” themselves from everyone everywhere. All believers have a built-in community. We have an identity made in God’s image meaning we’re somebody even when we feel like a nobody.

Rejection can be Temporary, Bad, or Good

Rejection is not always bad. Understanding its different types will help you focus on the good.

Temporary

When you reject yourself, you deceive yourself. When others reject you and you agree with it, you are likewise deceived. This is temporary rejection (God accepts you, man rejects you, and you reject you). It’s temporary because it comes from an incorrect belief. God will help you know the truth.

Bad

If you reject God and God rejects you, you have nothing. This is bad rejection (God rejects you, man might reject you, and you reject you). It’s bad because there is nothing worse in life than being rejected by God. God fully accepts His spiritual children, so this only applies to non-believers.

Good

If you’re rejected by the people who reject God, then you belong with God. When you’re enemy rejects you, you only gain. This is good rejection (God accepts you, man rejects you, but you accept you). It’s good because it solidifies that you truly belong to God.

The Lord is on my side; I will not fear.
What can man do to me?

The Lord is on my side as my helper;
I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.

It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to trust in man.

The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone.

Psalm 118:6-8, 22 ESV

Jesus, the cornerstone, had much to say about belonging and rejection.

The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.

Luke 10:16 ESV

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

Luke 11:23 ESV

For the one who is not against us is for us.

Mark 9:40 ESV

Turn Your Rejection Into Belonging

Those who do not know who they truly are in God’s eyes are vulnerable to rejection from the world. We are born with the desperate need for acceptance. Without any connection or guidance from God, we will believe whatever we experience. The less you know yourself, the more rejection stings because you need others to help you learn how to accept yourself.

Think about the worst rejection you’ve ever had to face. Perhaps you craved the attention of so-and-so, but they poured contempt on you. Or you trusted so-and-so and they betrayed you. That’s the worst feeling ever.

What happens when you’re rejected? You just figured out where you don’t belong, which means you also found where you belong. For example:

  • If someone tells you he no longer wants to date you because you’re too quiet, then you belong with people who appreciate you being soft-spoken.
  • If someone excludes you because you are “too competitive”, then you belong with people who value being ambitious.
  • If someone persecutes you because of your unwavering faith in Jesus, then you belong with people who know and value the true God.

Review times of rejection and allow these experiences to strengthen (instead of weaken) the sense of who you are.

Learn more about love, suffering, and rejection.
Last updated 2025/02/09

Shame Is A Prison

Shame Is A Prison

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Reading time: 3 minutes

Shame might be a prison, but Christians are no longer prisoners. You have the freedom to leave the cell anytime. Past behavior can fuel guilt and shame only because of a poor understanding of what God has done for you.

What you do does not define who you are. What you do is only one moment in time. What you do might be mean, evil, or hurtful. If we could never change, then what we do would offer a picture of who we are. We would bear the shame of our actions forever.

Fortunately, because of a relationship with God, we can grow more loving. In this case, the hurt that Christians cause does not ultimately define who they are. God has shown us a better way and He is helping us have the heart that can love like He does.

Shame Results When You Fail To Look To God For Definition

Tenth Avenue North has a fantastic song, You Are More. You are more than what you do. That’s true because worth ultimately originates outside of creation altogether. Only God, as Creator, has the power to define what is worthy.

Those who look to him are radiant;
    their faces are never covered with shame.

Psalm 34:5 NIV

If you only look within and find defects and sin you will experience shame. When you believe that doing defines who you are, you’ll be caught in hopelessness. I started my book, Confident Identity, with the following description:

Shame is the deep-down sense that who you are is defective and worthless and therefore, you aren’t needed or wanted by anyone. Shame is a problem of epidemic proportions. All who struggle with it become isolated from the cause and the cure: relationship. Relationships have the potential to affirm or to reject who you are.

Shame can be activated when someone has done something wrong to you or you’ve done something wrong. It lingers when you haven’t received forgiveness and acceptance. Abuse, getting what you don’t need, and neglect, not getting what you do need, aggravate your need for acceptance.

Accepting God’s Acceptance Cancels Shame

God accepted Mary and He accepts all His children no less.

And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

Luke 1:30 ESV

He accepts you because of Christ’s sacrifice, no doubt. But Christ’s sacrifice was not given begrudgingly for a people that He believed to be worthless. He loves and saves because that’s who He is. But the people He sacrificed for have worth. His sacrifice proves exactly how valuable they are. He accepts you because of who you are – who He made you to be – not what you’ve done.

Emotional health requires the ability to separate the results of wrongdoing (guilt and shame) from the benefits of unconditional love (peace and confidence).

For all Christians, guilt and shame should be temporary and acceptance should be eternal. God allows you to reconsider what you’ve done and start with a clean slate. This means hope.

Shame thrives without the hope of forgiveness and a new start. It is only possible when you feel trapped in a prison cell with no hope of escaping. Make a list right now of what is keeping you in prison. For every hopeless situation, God has a way out. Nothing is impossible with God. Elizabeth, Mary’s relative, conceived in her old age.

And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

Luke 1:36-38 ESV

Tell God you’re ready to start over with a clean slate. Ask Him to show you the way out. Then tell Him to, “let it be to me.”

Learn more about overcoming shame.
Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay

Why A Cult Becomes Attractive

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Allison Mack, a former Smallville actress, has been in the news recently for her alleged participation in a sex cult. She led other women to participate in physical mutilation, starvation, and sex acts.

How could someone end up convinced this is okay?

What is a Cult?

A cult is different from a religious movement such as a Christian church in one very important way. A cult has an underlying, intentional mission to exploit its membership for its own selfish gain. The leadership might be the only ones who benefit and the only ones aware of the full extent of the cult’s destructive agenda.

A healthy church, while never perfect, has an explicit mission to help, nurture, and strengthen its membership. God wants us to be committed to Him and His church but He never coerces us against our will.

A cult usually has three defining characteristics:

  • Members are required to maintain an unquestioning commitment to the cult and its leadership.
  • Members tolerate exploitative manipulation (whether they see it as such or not).
  • Members harm other members and anyone outside the cult they can influence.

See International Cultic Studies Association or More About Cults for more details.

What Kind of Person is Attracted to a Cult?

To be attracted to a cult, a person must have a deep unmet need. Since this describes most if not all people, the person must also lack an absolute worldview and suffer from low self-worth. By absolute worldview, I mean a solid understanding of what life is all about, based on fact, not fiction.

Other factors leading to vulnerability to joining a cult include:

  • Having a strong need to belong
  • A desire for meaning and to make a difference
  • Lacking boundaries – an inability to define oneself
  • Lacking confidence – an inability to discern and confront questionable behavior
  • Lacking independence – an inability to think for oneself and make one’s own decisions
  • Acting with blind trust – a willingness to give up one’s identity and follow another’s
  • Dissatisfaction with how life is going

Notice that many of the factors are good and normal. An empty person looking for an answer will be drawn to a cult because a cult has answers. A naive, desperate, and/or gullible person will not catch that the answers are evil; instead, they will see only superficial good intentions. Having an answer to the meaning of life is a core need. Without meaning, you’re extremely vulnerable to signing up for the first movement that comes your way.

The Perfect Protection Against a Cult

If you won’t stand for something good, you might end up following something evil. Invest your best effort to develop a confident identity which includes an absolute worldview. Knowing your worldview and identity keeps you safe. A worldview can’t be what you hope is true; it must contain some elements of what is actually true.

Life is demanding. To meet the demand, you must come to a greater knowledge of who you are. In particular, you must understand who God made you to be.

Don’t fall into the same trap as Allison Mack. Popularity and fame are poor substitutes for meaning and identity. You can’t have meaning without knowing your identity. Learn how to develop a Confident Identity.

Why Gender is Binary

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Gender is binary because it’s part of your identity. Before you were born, you were a thought in God’s mind. God designed you to be either male or female.

Dictionary.com defines identity as:

The state or fact of remaining the same … under varying aspects or conditions … the sense of self, providing sameness and continuity in personality over time and sometimes disturbed in mental illnesses, as schizophrenia.

Identity can’t change. Any aspect of your identity must be permanently yours, or else it really isn’t part of you. You can lose a job, your health, or even a loved one. But no one can steal the identity God gave to you.

Changing Your Appearance Doesn’t Change Your Identity

Trying on different clothes can be fun. The purpose is finding the clothing that best fits with who are you. Moods, styles, and expressions are meant to change frequently. Clothing goes out of style all the time.

Your identity will never go out of style. Share on X

Changing your hair color changes your appearance. Putting on different styles and colors of clothes accents your identity. This gives life a sense of adventure. You can paint your home a different color every day if you like.

Changing Your Thoughts Doesn’t Change Your Identity

You might be able to arbitrarily change who you think you are. You’ll never be able to change who you actually are.

Say I am a hamburger. Say it again every day when you wake up. Say it every time you feel any doubt about who you are. If you don’t know who you’re supposed to be, eventually, you might convince yourself that you’re a hamburger.

Your mind is a powerful gift. You can use it to disconnect from reality. You’ll never be able to change reality.

Be careful what you wish for. You might journey down a path leading to no place good. Life is tough. Don’t make it more difficult and confusing than it already is.

You can stop saying you’re a hamburger. Try I am made in God’s image.

God Gives You Your Identity

You have an identity that remains the same under varying circumstances. God expects us to discover what that is, not send in the bulldozers and try to out-create Him. The secret to maximum life enjoyment is aligning who you think you are with who God says you are.

You have freedom of choice but God is in control.

The heart of man plans his way,
    but the Lord establishes his steps.

—Proverbs 16:9

You can’t be whoever you want to be. You can pretend to be whoever you want to be. You can decide what you want to do with what God has given you. You can be more of exactly who God made you to be.

God Made You Male or Female as Part of Your Identity

God is a fixed point. You’re either moving away from Him or toward Him.

God defines reality. Gender is a fixed, specialized role. God assigned you a specific role to play.

God calls men and women to different roles. Otherwise, why would He have bothered to create such distinct genders?

You’re either male or female but you can express both masculine and feminine traits. There is actually significant flexibility within your role.

Most things can be done by both genders. But God made men and women to compliment each other, not compete with each other. God designed some activities especially for one gender.

If you attempt to blur your gender identity, you’ll move further away from God and who He designed you to be.

Gender Demonstrates Who God Is

God created gender to help us understand who He is. God is masculine as compared to the rest of creation. Marriage between a man and a woman, each with distinct roles, creates a picture of who God is. Marriage is a sacrament — a living picture husband and wife experience as they relate to each other. Marriage services as a constant reminder of who God is and who we are as Christ’s bride.

But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

—1 Corinthians 11:3

The gender roles provide a clear structure of authority. God doesn’t intend for us to tinker with His design. Doing so creates a false image of who He claims to be.

Gender is binary because, as a part of creation, it communicates who God is.

Sexual Abuse Devastates Identity

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I wrote an article for Darlene Harris, creator of And He Restoreth My Soul Project. Her goal is to provide healing resources for those caught in the crossfire of abuse.

If you suffer from the effects of abuse or know someone who does, this article explains the emotional and spiritual struggles of abuse and offers steps for recovery. Read Part I: Sexual Abuse Recovery From a Christian Perspective. Part II will be posted on May 14.

The Christian’s Advantage to Lasting Fulfillment

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The secret to fulfillment is hunger. The stronger your desire, the greater your fulfillment. You can strengthen your desires by first being aware of them and then correctly prioritizing them.

You can starve for lack of a healthy desire. When you ache for the right stuff, you’ll be satisfied.

Do you realize you have more than one way to experience fulfillment?

When most people think of their desires, they focus on their immediate physical needs. But God also created you with emotional and spiritual desires, which provide a deeper level of satisfaction. Think of these desires as three stomachs, each with its distinct appetite or craving:

  1. Worldly Desires (food, sex, entertainment, etc.)
  2. Identity Desires (purpose, love, etc.)
  3. Kingdom Desires (glorifying God by living for Christ)

To experience contentment and satisfaction, you must learn how to manage your desires. You can’t rely on one stomach to the exclusion of the others. You’d starve. The secret to fulfillment is attending to all three desires with the right priority and balance.

After your worldly fulfillment reaches its capacity, move on to experiencing and fulfilling your identity desires. As your identity fulfillment reaches its capacity, move on to your kingdom desires.

Worldly Desires

Worldly desires are temporary physical wants or needs. They won’t be around in heaven, or they’ll function differently. Physical desires are like sugar. Sugar is highly desirable but fails to provide lasting nutrition.

Being satisfied, content, and fulfilled aren’t only possible, they’re also God’s will for you. However, gaining your heart’s desire doesn’t mean you can have every possession or pleasure you’ve ever wanted. Having every superficial want met in the way you want it isn’t possible. If you eat too much of the same food, your taste for the food will eventually become saturated.

Instant pleasure is different than lasting joy. Most things are wants, not needs. If you ache too long for the wrong things you might end up getting what you want.

Don’t make the things of life more important than God intended. If you don’t exercise self-control, you could end up getting what you want without fulfilling God’s purpose for your life. Some desires really are distractions and not worth the effort.

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 10:39 ESV

Identity Desires

Identity desires are like organic, whole foods. They fully nourish and fill you in ways that sugar can’t.

Meeting these desires should take priority over your worldly desires. When you focus on identity desires, you reach for the best things in life — the things that no one can steal.

Five longings God meets when you’re His child:

  1. Unconditional Love and Acceptance: God knows who you really are. He always sees you at your best, even when you’re at your worst. God is love.
  2. Persistent Hope: God has the plan to make life better. At some point in the future, life is guaranteed to be perfect and last forever.
  3. Imminent Purpose: God created you to play a critical role in accomplishing His plans. God wants your active participation. God has a specific purpose for your existence. In this respect, you’re indispensable. You aren’t optional or replaceable. You’re significant and important.
  4. Faithful Security: God is always with you. He will never abandon you. He will never leave you nor forsake you.
  5. Meaningful Connection: God participates in an interactive relationship with you. God wants a dialogue with you. God is your father.

God is responsible for meeting these needs. No other person is completely capable like God is. Cloud and Townsend say that relationships are God’s delivery system for all emotional needs. However, you can’t expect or insist any one particular person meets your needs.

You won’t be able to enjoy life unless your identity desires are being met. If you’re unsatisfied with work and life, this probably means a basic emotional need is unmet. When these needs go unmet, your hunger should drive you back to God.

Kingdom Desires

Kingdom Desires are fulfilled by spiritual food. While all healthy desires are from God, kingdom desires are an exceptional hunger for seeing God’s work completed.

Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”

—John 4:31–34

You have an advantage as a Christian. You have a stomach (an appetite) for spiritual fulfillment. Humans won’t ever be completely satisfied until they experience a spiritual hunger only God can fill.

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.

—Matthew 5:3, 6

If your identity desires are met, you should be able to pursue your kingdom desires. But this doesn’t mean you’ll naturally pursue kingdom desires unless you intentionally put them first. To appreciate spiritual fulfillment sometimes you must fast from worldly desires and look beyond identity desires.

God desires that you pursue Christlikeness and fulfill the great commission. When Paul explains contentment to Timothy, he mentions several examples of Christlike behavior: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.

—1 Timothy 6:6–11

Godliness is acting maturely like God. Contentment means you’re satisfied with what you have while pursuing God’s kingdom. Don’t give up the eternal in order to hold onto the temporary.

How fulfilled are you as a Christian? Do you see your advantage? Isn’t God amazing how He created you to have multiple appetites? What can you do right now to ensure you have a balanced desire diet?

Photo by Edgar Castrejon on Unsplash