Accepted | Welcomed | Loved: Colossians 1:21-23
The Power of Being Accepted
Colossians 1:21-23
TURNED DOWN
All of us have received a rejection letter stating, “Dear Applicant, you are a great person with great skills. Regretfully, at this time we have decided to go with a different applicant. Google search the word “rejection” and you will find countless articles on how to “make your life rejection proof” or “how to turn rejection into your advantage.” Most of the kinds of rejection mentioned address intermittent or one-off situations. But what about repeated and sustained rejection?
Rejection hurts. It makes us feel like we lack value and are worthless as a person. Bring turned down for a job, being turned away by someone that we love, being excluded from a circle of people who we thought were friends all have deeply negative side affects. Suffer a series of rejections at the same time over a number of years and you have a condition known as Chronic Rejection.
CHRONIC REJECTION
While these articles maybe helpful, they trivialize what is a much more profound issue in the lives of some people who face chronic rejection. Chronic rejection is the long term exclusion from numerous areas of life. The darkness, the isolation, the detachment that comes over a person who has been estranged for years permanently shapes a person.
ALIENATION
The result of chronic rejection is alienation. This is far more significant than the feelings that can be quickly overcome when the girl you had your eyes set on has just said no to your invitation for a date.
Alienation is the deep reality that you are isolated, disengaged, separated from the normal world of acceptance that most people experience. Many have described the alienation experienced from chronic rejection as something like living alongside the real world, but not living in it. You are an observer of life, but not a participant in it. It is not a place that anyone wants to live. Being outside, estranged from and alienated in society is devastating. It takes something miraculous to be healed from this condition.
ACCEPTED BY GOD
The healing from this condition begins with God’s acceptance. In Christ Jesus, you are accepted, loved, and welcomed into His family. You are home. You are part of his reality. You are now a participant in life and no longer an observer only. He makes you a welcomed and productive member in his family.
Listen to the teaching on Colossians 1:21-23 and let God heal you from the condition of Chronic Rejection. All things are possible.
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation” (Colossians 1:21,22).
