Rejection Hurts
Rejection can stop even the strongest man in a single heartbeat, and it can stop all of us (myself included) from doing what we are called to do; At least that is what we tell ourselves. Sure, rejection can stop us from getting into a relationship, but most of us know the pain of sitting in high school having a crush on someone and less know what it took to tell them. Whether they said no, or you simply didn’t ask them, it felt like you were being rejected.
As we grow older, rejection takes different forms. Whether it is about your dream job, your dream home, or that dream person we all face rejection, or do we?
Some of you may have noticed that some of the examples I gave weren’t about being rejected. The high schooler who never acted and told their crush that they liked them was never rejected, and for some of us that was good enough.
Rejection doesn’t stop many people. It is the fear of rejection. I know, a big difference, but in reality, it is a very big difference. You see, rejection isn’t the problem fear is.
Dancing With Fear
When I was younger, I had a saying, “I like to dance with fear, keep it close, that way I always know where it is.” Well, I don’t recommend that anymore because I got hurt because of it. But I also don’t recommend a life without fear. Like most things in life, we must be somewhere in the middle.
I could go on about the different types of fear, irrational fear, and logical fear, but I’d rather just focus on how to handle Irrational fear. And the only way I have ever found to do that is to face it head-on willingly.
But that isn’t where the story ends, is it? Some of us have faced our fears and yet in the moment we made it through, and the fear faded, but the next time we faced them those same fears rear their heads at us and have gotten so much worse.
What is the point of facing your fears if they won’t go away? Making the fear go away, that’s the point, isn’t it? We want to live a life where we do not fear the world around us. Well, that may be the point, but it isn’t how the world works. Fear and pain are inevitable, they will be there until the end of time, so why face them?
Overcoming Fear
This is where we need to change our perspectives on overcoming fear. There is a great story in the bible about Jesus and his friends, they were out on a boat and the sea was raging, quite like our lives when fear was there. it says the friends were afraid, and for context most of them were fishermen so they know how to sail in a storm.
They woke Jesus up who was sound asleep, and they told him to help because they thought that they were going to drown. Jesus calmly got up, walked to the edge of the boat, and said, quiet be still. and the waves and the wind stopped raging.
Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice, being able to speak to our fears in life and just say, “quiet” and those voices in your head would stop, but that isn’t just going to happen overnight. It takes work that sucks. That is exactly what Jesus refers to in the text. Right before Jesus spoke to the wind and the waves, he spoke to the disciples and he said, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid.”
Here’s a better question, why should they have been afraid? It’s simple, the storm was so bad they thought that they were all going to drown. Why would Jesus ask why are you afraid? The key is with the first half, “You of little faith.” Faith in what? in this case Jesus, so what does that matter to us? Jesus doesn’t fix all our problems, Christian or non-Christian alike.
Faith Vs Fear
Why does faith matter? Because faith is the opposite of fear. You might be thinking to yourself, “Isn’t courage the opposite of fear?” And when you think about it, you do use courage to face fear most of the time. So, courage is crucial in this process but in reality, it is a shield, not the opposite.
So, what is fear? Fear is a belief in a negative outcome. If you look up the meaning it says some other stuff, but when you boil fear down to its essence, it is a belief that something bad is going to happen.
Using that meaning, what is the opposite is a belief in a positive outcome. Now if you look that up, you will probably find optimism. but today is taken to an extreme. Where everything will work out if I only believe it. That is why I prefer to use the word faith in its place.
Where to Start
So how do we develop a positive view of the future without becoming blind to reality? It goes back to what I said earlier, we must face our fears willingly. Start with small ones, we don’t start by facing a dragon, we start by facing something that is just stronger than us. For some it might be telling someone how we feel about them, for others, it might be going out and meeting new people, and for others, it might be facing someone who betrayed you and for far too long you have sat silent.
Authors Note:
If you want to read more on how to gain peace I wrote a sermon about it here: How to Gain Peace
I plan on writing more in-depth on this topic, the idea of developing faith in yourself. Not in your ability but in who you are, and this is what I believe so far is the first step. I hope you stick with me to see how it turns out.