Rejection Our Bitter Pill

It is a sad fact that the Church of today is very little different to society at large.  We very often get caught up in situations that promote strife rather than inject peace into the same situation.

I have personally experienced this rejection.  Once when I was working as a PA in a church the Pastor told me that he wanted me to handle the loaning of Church property out to members.  Apparently he had not made this known to the leadership or made it known to them of his intention. So, as it happens, one of the ex-officio leaders called in to arrange a meeting with the Pastor to arrange for the loan of some furniture for an event.  I told this man that the pastor had suggested I take charge of said loans and promptly he ended the phone call.

Shortly after the phone call was ended the pastor had a visit from the member in question.  The following morning I was dressed down by the pastor about my “performance” and told that “in future I would do exactly what I was told to do” if I wanted to stay in the job.  I felt like I had been moved into a condition of slavery or something like that. A little later the pastor went on holiday and my position was restricted to being an answering and diversion one where for certain calls I was to advise the elders and for others I was to pass the message on to the property person.

I felt that I was no longer trusted in that position and after three weeks of twiddling my fingers I stopped going in to work.  I fell into a depressed state at home and, while we didn’t leave the Church I was hurt for a long time

Pain like rejection is a normal state even for Christians and I was no different to others in this regard.  I didn’t connect what I was going through with Jesus’ words about rejection where he said that we should be to experience rejection just as He had, and was facing up to.

This was a learning episode, one that I have yet to deal thoroughly, but as He deals with me I am learning to deal with it more appropriately.  And this is the challenge of episodes like it, if we are learning at the Masters feet then what we are learning should be to respond to rejection or whatever with the Masters love and tolerance. We need to see the situation as through His eyes and deal with it in His love, rather than to go and blow up at all around us about the injustice of what we are going through.

I doubt if anyone in this situation sees it as anything less than a personal insult but the fact of the matter is that Jesus only took out His anger once that we have in the New Testament and then it was as a result of His Father’s house being treated as a market of thievery, an insult most anyone would have deemed just, maybe except for the racketeers.

Look to Jesus in the times of trouble, workout how He would have responded in your situation and remember always that you and I are working in the Masters business even when things do not go as we wanted them to.

As His representative we are always on display and how we react is seen as His representative, further the picture we paint as His followers shows other people how not just our faith on display but also what He means in our lives.  So lift your game followers give a glorious display of Heaven on earth and bring others who will want to know our Jesus of Nazareth.