A wounded heart left unresolved can cause major problems in our lives, yet many people are the walking wounded without realizing it. In this heartfelt broadcast, Carl touches upon the motivation behind our actions and how God can provide healing to our heart’s wounded condition. The reality is, everyone has faced rejection at one time or another, but how we respond to it, can greatly influence our capacity to carry out God’s calling. Friend, it is time to let go of some things that have held you back. Tune in now for a life changing word, in the first of a three-part series….
Here is a complete transcript of the broadcast (below)…
Friend, we’re talking today about rejection, but particularly God’s remedy for rejection. Now this is a topic no one really wants to talk about. I mean, who wants to talk about rejection? But friend, as we go through life, we’ve encountered a series of rejections, starting in our childhood through adolescence and into adulthood. And if these rejections are not addressed, we can actually succumb to bitterness as well. You see, each time we get rejected, there’s a small wound and that wound can fester unless it is resolved, unless the Lord touches it. But oftentimes we withdraw and say, Lord, I don’t want anybody to go near that wound. I’m going to put my hand over it. I want to cover that. And what we do is we build walls around us to protect ourselves because we were rejected. Therefore, we end up building a wall around our heart that prevents intimacy with other people and with God.
And friend, we don’t want to be doing that. You know, most people don’t think they have a rejection issue. However, you may be exhibiting signs of rejection without realizing it. And we’re going to talk about that in the coming broadcasts. But let me ask you, are you a defensive person? Do you fight everyone? Is your spirit crushed? You know, Proverbs 18:14 says, “the human spirit can endure, but a crushed spirit who can bear.” And friends, some people are very agitated They’re defensive because they’re wounded and they lash out at people. They never want to admit they’re at fault. Okay. And so, you know, they think everybody’s a threat because people have wounded them and people are the source of wounding and they don’t want to be around people. They want to withdraw, go into the cave like a bear and hibernate for six months. I’m sure we all know people like that.
But the truth is we’ve all been rejected to some degree and we need to resolve these issues. We need to say, Lord, do open heart surgery upon me. Be courageous, friend. Don’t let that fester any longer. Now, with the divorce rate in the United States approaching almost 50% and with second marriages having a higher divorce rate, children are increasingly suffering from rejection. And it’s a fruit that is evident in our society, friend. We’re fast becoming a nation of rejects in some ways. And social media isn’t helping this aspect. Okay. Social media is a double-edged sword. You know, you can be rejected on that media and be envious of other people’s number of likes and this person didn’t respond to me and why didn’t they? And you know, so we are vulnerable people, friend. Vulnerable if we’re not rooted and grounded in God’s word and our identity is not tied with Jesus Christ, friend.
Our identity needs to be tied with Jesus. We don’t need to be comparing ourselves between one another. Instead, we should be comparing ourselves to scripture. And when we compare ourselves to others, we could feel increasingly inadequate. So how does rejection start? Well, you may not be chosen to play on a certain school sports team and you were the last one to be picked and people reluctantly embraced you, right? We’ve all been there, friend. You asked a girl on a date, she said no Your first boyfriend failed to show up for an important date but never gave a reason. And that’s the trouble with rejection. We don’t always get closure. We don’t always get that feedback. Why, why, why didn’t this person do this or that? And the why can be tormenting. And we may not have been accepted into a college of our choice and that could have been devastating if you’ve set your heart on it for years growing up and it finally was denied.
And that’s sad. But friend, no matter what has occurred, understand that Jesus can help you get over these things, okay? Another example is that you were laid off from your job for no good reason. They said you were redundant. Just because you were made redundant, friend, doesn’t mean you are redundant. Understand that. You know, I remember a certain time in the oil industry about a decade ago, I was working for a company downtown and it took about three years on this project and there was a lot of frustration Management had not made the right decision. They didn’t purchase the right amount of nitrogen that was required to inject into the ground. And it’s a long story. It’s technical. I won’t even get into it. But we were hamstrung from the beginning. We took over this asset. The asset was already in difficulty and the solution we wanted to get out of the problem, management wasn’t going to provide it. So we were hamstrung from the beginning.
Lots of promises were made to upper management of how we’re going to turn this asset around. But we weren’t able to. Our hands were tied. And so you could argue we were just doomed for destruction. And I was praying one night, I said, Lord, you know, I don’t know what to do with this company. I’ve tried everything I can technically, provided solutions I want your perfect will in this situation. And I called up a friend. I said, I want to pray the prayer of agreement that God would show his perfect will in my career. And whatever needs to be done will be done. Friend, the next day I was approached by my boss and an attorney and was laid off that morning. OK, the very next morning I was laid off. Wow. Talk about a prayer being answered pretty rapidly, dude. I mean, it was like it kind of shook me.
I was like, God, I mean, I presume this is your perfect will. And lo and behold, after some time, within 30 days, I had a better paying job in the same city. OK, and God set that up. He elevated me. He promoted me. And what looked like a dire situation, OK, was transformed into a wonderful opportunity. And some of you could be facing opportunities right now, even though you’ve been severely rejected recently, you’re thinking, man, how am I going to get over this? God has something lined up for you, friend. Don’t quit. Stay the course Seek the Lord’s will. Amen. The good news is no matter how much rejection you have had, God can heal your heart. He can cause you to accept yourself and equip you to show his love to other people. That is key, because when we’re rejected, we’re defensive. We’re fighting people. You know, we just feel vulnerable. We don’t really feel like giving out more love because we’ve been rejected. And really, it’s something that stems from the throne.
The father’s love comes down from above, passes through you to other people, friend. And if you’ve been rejected severely in your life, I’m talking about molestation. I’m talking about people who were abused, OK, in their formative years. And that is tragic. That is disgusting. That is horrible. And I empathize with you so much because the enemy did a work there and it’s trying to affect you, OK? And if you fall into that category, I believe by the end of these broadcasts, the comforting aspect of the Holy Spirit will wrap his arms around you and say, brother or sister, it’s OK. You can let out those emotions. You can cry You can do what you need to do as God heals your heart, friend. If you’re listening to this broadcast, when you’re driving or at work or whatever, just say in your spirit, Lord, that’s me that the pastor is talking to right now. And I want you to do a work of restoration in my heart.
I don’t want to stay the same way that I am, friend, OK? Now, Derek Prince has a wonderful definition of rejection. He says, rejection can be defined as the sense of being unwanted. You desire people to love you, and yet you believe that they do not. You want to be a part of a group, but you always feel excluded. Somehow you are always on the outside looking in. Friend, do you feel like that? Always on the outside looking in, OK? But here’s the irony of it all, OK? You desire people to love you And even if they are loving you, you don’t believe that they are, OK? That’s defensive, right? I have a wound. It hurts so badly. I’m not going to allow somebody else to love me again because of the fear of rejection. So I’m going to put a wall up. And then the Father’s love as well can be held back because a parental figure or authority figure may have abused you in your formative years. And you’re not going to trust authority figures again.
And the ultimate authority figure is God. So these wounds can actually hold back the true love of God that he’s trying to get you to experience, friend. So we don’t identify with our experience. We identify with the Word of God. We let the Word define us, amen? And when we do that, we are then taking hold or appropriating everything that Christ gave us on the cross and saying, I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And that’s a powerful decision. You don’t identify with your wounds. You identify with the healed Christ. And when you do, he will heal your soul, amen? Now Proverbs 18:14, like I said, the human spirit can endure, but a crushed or broken spirit who can bear And friend, if you’ve been abused or you felt successive rejection as a youngster, you may have a crushed spirit. The trouble is you cannot endure tough times. When your spirit is crushed, it has a crippling effect on your life. Proverbs 24:10 says, “if you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.” The trouble is that, you know, that day of adversity has come, for some who are fragile, who’ve been rejected, and their strength is small. They can’t endure through this difficult time.
And now is the time to reach out to God, friend, and say, heal me, Lord. Heal me of these wounds, insecurities, rejection scars, whatever you want to call them, however you want to couch them, okay? You don’t want to have a crushed spirit, friend, all right? Those who are deeply rejected really do feel fragile. Now, there’s such a thing out there as the RBS triangle, okay? And it’s rejection, betrayal, and shame. You know, Proverbs 4:23 says, “all issues stem from the heart.” And when we experience all edges of this triangle, we further protect ourselves by withdrawal or lashing out. Because we feel betrayal, which are broken promises, we feel rejected.
We feel dismissed or excluded. And because of that, we then feel shame and humiliation. Like there’s something wrong with us, right? The enemy can plague that over and over again with us. There’s something wrong with you. If there wasn’t something wrong with you, all these people would be hanging out with you, and you’d have all these friends, and you would be living the life of that soap opera called As the Stomach Turns, or whatever it’s called. Maybe it’s As the World Turns. I’m joking. But, you know, TV gives a wrong picture of life. It’s total fantasy, okay? People laugh at those daytime dramas because they’re not even remotely real, friend, okay? Let’s just get over the hump here We’re comparing ourselves to movie stars or TV stars that themselves are addicts, that themselves are fragile, that were rejected, that were abused but never came clean. It’s Satan’s illusion. He’s feeding everybody a lie that we’ve bought into. That Hollywood crowd, man, they got it all together. If I could only be like them. No, no, no.
Closely related to rejection are the wounds of betrayal and shame. All these facets of the heart produce a feeling of being unwanted, and this fuels the cycle further, friend, okay? And having more fame or attention isn’t going to heal this cycle, no. It’s going to be God. God’s the one who’s going to heal this cycle. Okay, friend, I am introducing this topic to you today. Tomorrow, we’re going to talk about a different triangle That’s the SFC triangle, the triangle of shame, fear, and control, mentioned in Genesis 3:10, and I’m going to read the verse for you, “So he, Adam, said, I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself”, okay? That’s Adam speaking after he sinned with Eve, right? He heard the voice of God. Instead of responding and running to God with open arms and hugging God as he used to, it was now I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself. The glory of God had left them, friend. There was a covering of glory. It had departed, and they saw what they were lacking, which is God’s presence, and that’s the crux of all problems in this life.
We have a man problem in this earth. We have a sin problem. Man is the problem, but he remains blind to the diagnosis of his own condition, and we’re acting out of wounds and rejection and shame and betrayal all the time, pretending everything’s okay. No, friend, that’s not how life really is. God wants to heal you of all these rejection issues. Some of them may have been very serious. You could have been badly abused when you were younger. I’ve met people like that, okay, down the years. Sometimes it takes a one-on-one session of prayer. If you would like that, I’m open to doing that with you. Send me an email, okay? I’m willing to coach and counsel you through and pray and let the Holy Spirit reveal things that need to be resolved in your heart, okay? So here’s the deal. We’re introducing today a topic that some would say is borderline psychology. Why do we do the things that we do? We’re looking introspectively and saying, Lord, why am I motivated this way? I don’t really know why I act this way. I want to change it, and friend, God can change your behavior as he addresses your heart. Anyway, so we’re going to pick this up tomorrow.
https://carljosephministries.com/podcast/jesus-on-trial/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia5CNnqrT3M
Title: God’s remedy for Rejection: Part 1
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