The Rejection Infection
LYSA TERKEURST
“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Matthew 5:44 (NIV)
The plastic seats were green. The desks a dirty beige. The perfect pale color to make pencil marks easy to read.
That’s how I saw what was making the group of girls in front of me laugh. They looked at me and then added to Jennifer’s desk art: a frizzy-headed stick figure with huge buck teeth and crazed eyes. I knew even before I saw the name scribbled, she’d drawn me. Me. An awful caricature of me.
It’s been years since I sat at that dirty beige desk. But it hasn’t been years since I’ve had those same feelings of rejection and hurt. Of course, they aren’t from girls drawing pictures. But meanness hurts, no matter what age or how it’s delivered.
You can take the girl out of middle school, but for many of us, you can’t take the middle school out of the girl.
If you’ve been hurt in this way, you know what I’m talking about. If we’re a stuffer type of person, we want to withdraw and get away from the source of our hurt. If we’re more of an exploder person, we want to attack so they’ll feel as badly as we do.
But here’s where things get a little complicated. Jesus flies in the face of conventional wisdom and instructs us, “love your enemies.”
Seriously?
Something deep inside us whispers, “Don’t you dare love this person. This situation is the exception.”
Let the internal battle begin.
But what if I were to assure you Jesus isn’t being cruel or naive in His command for us to love? He’s actually showing us how to get free from the sting of another person’s wounds. When we’re wounded, we can either pursue healing by extending love back, or, we can refuse healing and allow the “rejection infection” to set into our wound.
Here are three things to remember:
The Command
My job isn’t to fix my enemies. My job is to be obedient to God in how I deal with them. And He tells us in our key verse how He wants us to deal with those we would label our enemy.
“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” (Matthew 5:44).
I don't know about any of you - but I have been struggling with a situation like this for several months now. Well, it's not REALLY an enemy, but a "mean girl" issue that has eaten me up inside. After all . . . we are adults - no longer in high school - right? But that doesn't stop the same tactics from being used - isolation and rejection. And it doesn't prevent the same old feelings from cropping up inside.
This devotion really spoke to me today. Because, just like forgiveness, it is really not about the "other person" but about me, about you - being freed from the pain of the hurt. I fell into the category of "refuse healing and allow the "rejection infection" to set into our wound." NOW, I need to work on cleaning out that infection and letting the Lord heal me.
The way I am starting this is by adding this person specifically to my prayer journal (instead of "lumping this person in with the rest of their family"). I am going to pray blessings on this person and pray for their heart to be transformed by God - not by me - because of their own past suffering. We all are who we are because of what we have been through - it forms our character. Only Jesus Christ can change us - but we have to want it first. I will pray for their personal healing.
Sometimes it takes getting raw - exposing ourselves to each other so that we can pray for each other and learn from each other. I pray that this devotional speaks to you or that you can use it to help another with their own suffering. PRAISE GOD for how he works through us.