christian living on Rejection

In his book The Logic of the Spirit, James Loder talks about a woman with whom he had been in a therapeutic relationship for years. This woman’s underlying issue seemed to be a complete sense of rejec...

James Loder, in his book The Logic of the Spirit, talks about a woman with whom he had been in a therapeutic relationship for years. This woman’s underlying issue seemed to be a complete sense of reje...

Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation...

Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: “These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot...

In the New Testament sin is not merely an individual, privatized transgression of a moral standard (sins is typically used for specific transgressions). It is far more radical than that. Sin is a mist...

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

Verb two: God chose. “Just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love” (Eph.1:4) Everybody I have ever become acquainted with has a story,...

Recovery is not a process we can will, but consists of experiencing many small deaths, the passing of significant anniversaries, until our identity is solid and natural in the pronoun “I.”

People by nature build, tear down, and rebuild. We build our hopes, get disappointed, and then search for renewed hope.

As the darkness began to descend on me in my early twenties, I thought I had developed a unique and terminal case of failure. I did not realize that I had merely embarked on a journey toward joining t...

Much that we have interpreted as a defect of sanctification in church people is really an outgrowth of their loss of bearing with respect to justification. Christians who are no longer sure that God l...

Writer Michael Novak says that doubt is not so much a dividing line that separates people into different camps, as it is a razor’s edge that runs through every soul. Many believers tend to think doubt...

Our courteous Lord does not want his servants to despair because they fall often and grievously; for our falling does not hinder him in loving us.

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end...

In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light fo...

It is not finished, Lord, There is not one thing done, There is no battle of my life That I have really won. And now I come to tell thee How I fought to fail, My human, all too human, tale Of weakness...

Adversity is always unexpected and unwelcome. It is an intruder and a thief, and yet in the hands of God, adversity becomes the means through which His supernatural power is demonstrated.

The indwelling Spirit shall teach him what is of God and what is not. This is why sometimes we can conjure up no logical reason for opposing a certain teaching, yet in the very depth of our being aris...

As Christians, we do not need to justify who we are; Jesus took care of that. We are loved and forgiven. When I’m tempted to advertise my accomplishments, qualifications, or résumés when talking with ...

Not one thing in your life is more important than figuring out how to live in the face of unspoken pain.

No grieving; no healing. Know grieving; know healing.

What self denial! What self abasement! What self emptying! He, whom no infinitudes can hold, is contained within infant’s age, and infant’s form. Can it be, that the great ‘I AM THAT I AM’ shrinks int...

I am sorry I ran from you. I am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. For you meant only love, and love, and I felt only fear, and pain. So onc...

Triumph and failure always go together in the wait of faith. They are the head and tail of the same coin. Show me a person who has had no struggle with waiting, whose faith has known no swings between...

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Sometimes the process of growth looks a lot like destruction and pain. But you’ll realize with time that you’re not breaking; you’re healing.

He hurls our sins overboard. What a picture of the way God treats our sins. Corrie ten Boom, a dear saint of the last century, used to say, “And then God put up a sign saying, `No fishing allowed.”‘ W...

Sometimes it is helpful to see what life looks like on the other side of faith, that is, for those who believe that God does not exist. Bertrand Russell, the renowned philosopher and avowed atheist, h...

While movies and novels often present stories of a budding love interest willing to give up everything for “true love” (Romeo and Juliet, for example), the renowned poet, and later clergyman, John Don...

Leader: While God’s love never fails, our love does fail. All too often, our experience of love is confused, distorted, and disappointing. That is due to the sin in the world and the sin in our own ...