The Overcoming Series

Overcoming Rejection and Betrayal

I wish I could tell you, without including the precious work of Jesus Christ, how to overcome feelings of rejection and betrayal, but there is no other way that is possible to overcome them.

Without telling you my whole life story, I’m going to try to convey to you things that have happened, and how I managed to overcome them and heal. I’m going to try to explain how rejection and betrayal can leave you broken, if we don’t turn to Christ, who heals the brokenhearted.

Why is it that in Higher Education, we’re forced to take classes on Sociology and different cultures, without knowing how to examine our own hearts?

Some might say, well, that’s Psychology, but Psychology has absolutely nothing to do with healing, because Psychology can’t and doesn’t have the power to heal. It is only Jesus who can mend us after the rages of the trials and abuse have ravaged us beyond recognition of who we were before these things took place. We may not even recognize ourselves as we once were, after them.

Take a good look in the mirror, see the lines on your face. Likely, those lines came from a trial. They may have came from a feeling of utter shock and disbelief of the situation you once found yourself in. A lot of them came from the thoughts of, “I just don’t understand,” or from simply trying to investigate and discover, “Why?”

I’m going to tell you why. You may come to the very end of the answer, but it isn’t apart from what the Holy Spirit reveals to you about the situation, that you can come to the why. The answer may not lie within your faults, but within the interpretation of the things that another person carries and is driving their motivations. What are those things? Money, dreams of adventure, a false idea of searching for euphoric joy and happiness, pleasure without accountability, gratifying themselves while beholding beauty, sexual addiction, and just being purely evil, otherwise narcissistic and psychopathic, or for lack of a better term, just plain crazy. Sin creates madmen.

Life’s struggles can make us that way if we don’t look to Christ and let his Holy Spirit search out of our hearts and rid us of the things that shouldn’t be in there that are unpleasing or unholy before God. If we are going to overcome, we must cry out to Jesus, and let him show us the path to recovery. Not a path to who we once were, because that person does not exist anymore. We are being conformed into a new creation. No one has delivered a child without pain and suffering to bring forth the birth of a child. That’s why Jesus referred to this often in his teachings. What he is making of us, is a completely healed, and known by him, person. Sin has left us in it’s grips, bound, chain scarred, but he is there to heal us, and release us from the burdens. We may still cry when we look back, but we are going to feel the love of God more in what we’ve now found, than any love we might have held for the person who caused us to be left behind, to be discarded, or to be refused. Those who discounted our love as nothing, and who chose something or someone else instead of us.

What we are left with after the battle is a love like we’ve never known. Jesus is our rescuer. He is our bridegroom. His love is incomparable to anyone’s attempt to love us like we should be loved. Remember when Paul said, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church”? Where would we find someone who is actually loving like that? They may or may not exist. Christ pours God’s perfect love into our hearts by the seed of the fruit of the Holy Spirit, but how much is it being watered with the word for it to grow? God’s love is perfect, in every way. Our love can be based on selfish desires, an unwillingness to open ourselves up to be exposed, and guarding what we reveal to someone about ourselves, which will likely later be used against us. Has that happened to me? Yes, lots of times, which is why I know for certain that it is a thing. It’s a defense mechanism that is innately used to protect self at all costs and preserve our survival and mortality.

I’m going to try not to refer back to Psychology, or Sociology when speaking about these things, but there are certain aspects of them that we might gain from when we see that the laws of nature that are set forth of God, of reaping and sowing, that things we do, and that others do, have effects. Psychology cannot heal us. Forgiveness can heal us. We have to forgive them. We must forgive them. “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” We must realize, the person who has caused us so much pain and suffering are in a sinful state. It may have left you with a feeling of having your heart ripped out and fed to you. It may have made you feel like being completely erased, or actually wanting to be erased from existence. But, we can’t be. There is eternity to face afterwards, and we must choose wisely to do the hard work, and overcome. We must. Our eternity depends on it, and who we choose to spend eternity with. Does God know our pain and suffering? Of course, yes. Does he know we feel like we wish we were dead just so the pain would stop? Yes. So we must look to him to resolve it, because we can’t resolve it by ourselves. Even if we take a microscope and look as closely as we can, only the Holy Spirit can reveal the truth to us of what needs to be seen and faced to move forward in victory. God is truth. God’s words are true. Jesus is the the way, the truth, and the life. And, he can, and will eternally preserve us in it.

Hell is eternal separation from God, so we must choose wisely to rely on him while we are yet here, and choose him instead of relying on our own ability to come through the situation unscathed. We’re going to carry our battle scars, but they’re going to be healed by the healing balm of Jesus’ applying. We’re going to know ourselves better than anyone could know us, or why we do or react the way we do. If your actions are based on biblical principles, nothing you face from anyone unsaved is going to make sense to you. That is the dilemma we find ourselves in unequally yoked together with unbelievers, and we are going to suffer the consequences of those decisions if we do so. We can believe for Jesus to change lives from a distance, because he will if we intercede for them, but we must forgive them and see them as a person lost, dying, and going to hell, to feel pity or empathy for the state they are in, which is the same state we were once in, not knowing Christ.

Heed the battle cry! Run toward the battle! Send the devil on the run! I have done this many times. I claim the victory in Christ Jesus! I will overcome! No weapon formed against me will prosper! Even if I have to lay down my own life for my brother, I will succeed in offering it if it means that I can walk away and not care about it being discarded in order to inhabit fully the new creation God has created me to be. For it is in the desires and mistakes of being influenced by the sinful inner man who is holding us hostage, that we must be separated from it by His power that releases us from caring about it. What we learn of God, is that he has sent his Spirit to create a new son that will separate itself from a scarred, wounded, captured, battle torn person. You see, the battle we face is to crucify the one that has us captured. If we just sit around feeling sorry for ourselves and embrace the pain we feel of what someone else has done to us, we’re nurturing that thing that holds us prisoner. This is hard to understand, but we are a new creation, that must be separated from the old sinful inner man. We are going to come out of it a man of gold that God has purified and created. He’s taken all of the impurities out of us through the battle that we have faced in order to overcome and heal.

We will overcome this thing that has wounded us. And, part of that impurity, is our own selves. That part that wants to hold onto affirmation that what we are feeling is justified, that it was wrong for someone else to do that to us, or for it to have been done to us. But, it’s those things that work for good to purify us. We feel the pain of it because the pain of it is working in us to perform a result. It’s work is facing the truth about ourselves, and what motivates others to deny the Lord and seek out what pleases themselves, not what pleases God, but what pleases them. The whole world is driven by their own desires and motivations. When will we see that we are not living for ourselves, but for Christ alone? And, whatever is done to the mortal man who lives in flesh and blood, who thrives on emotion, is done to proclaim that what we go through here in this body, is only the vessel or avenue that is being used to carry out the good and perfect work of God so that His Spirit can, as fully as this body can contain, dwell in or inhabit it.