How He Speaks to Me
No matter how good the class was last week, no matter how nice the women are, no matter the church is not two miles from the house, I am never excited about going to my Wednesday night Bible study. But every week, every single week, I am stopped dead and captivated by the speaker, no, not the speaker, by the message. We are doing a Beth Moore study called "Living Beyond Yourself: Exploring the Fruit of the Spriti". We are only on the third video and have started exploring the actual Fruit of the Spirit" (Gal 5:22-23, " The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Against such things there is no law.")
Now I know, some of you are ready to stop reading. Hang with me. Just let it fall across your heart like it did mine tonight.
Tonight, in the video, Beth Moore discussed love and with that (and my paraphrasing will not begin to do her message justice) the one obstacle that prevents us from truly loving all and being loving to everyone and that is rejection. She reminded us all of the rejection scars we still wear on our hearts, how the wound of a past rejection left a void in our life that we filled with something (or some one) that we would not have chosen if we were in our right mind. She reminded us of the lengths some of us have gone through to fill that vacancy, or perhaps the continual chain of attempts we have made to fill such vacancies (i.e. the love of my life broke up with me, so I hooked up with some other man and ended up preganant; the man left when the baby came so I started drinking...) We tend to believe that we must either recover the rejected (get whatever it was back - the man, the job, the child) or we must reject what rejected us (to get revenge).
And while she spoke on all of this, she shared passages of Scripture that remind us that Christ was rejected (and still is! "The entrance test to hell is to simply reject Christ") but that didn't seem to make the wounds I carry feel any less. To know that in some way I can relate to some small portion of Christ's sufferings does not make me feel any better about my own suffering.
But then Beth Moore reminded us of the Sovereignty of God; that not only does God have a plan for our lives (my life verse, Jer 29:11) but that he has a plan for the REJECTION in our life. He uses the rejection. Sometimes he appoints rejection so that we don't for less than the best He has in store for us. (Think back, ever get upset over a rejection but now you can say that was a good thing it happened?) She reminded us also of the Supremacy of God; that God can handle everything - including our rejection.
She made the point that if we had never known what it was like to be rejected, how could we truly embrace what it means to be chosen?
We concluded the night by reading I Cor 13:8, "Love never fails". Beth spoke to the exact thoughts arising in my head, "yes, maybe God's love never fails, but I have loved someone before and it was not enough. My love has failed."
And then she translated "fails". The Greek translation (ekpipto) means: "to drop away, to fall (away or off). And there was an incredible visual scene they played out that shows us that every time we have loved and the recipient of our love let our love drop, or rejected our love completely, our love did not fail...it did not drop away...it never hit the ground....while it may not have been caught by the one we intended,
it was caught by God.
And He is holding onto it for us, and will give it back to us in His glorious kingdom.
Not only did I realize tonight that my wounds from past rejection will forever taint my life (and not in a good way) if I do not turn them over to God; not only did I realize that God has used those rejections for my own good; not only did I realize that God has the power and the desire to take away the pain of those wounds; but that every time I thought my love failed in the past, it went to God. He caught it. My love has never been lost on anyone, it has always gone to God. And He is holding it like a treasure and will return it to me when I am in His presence.
I can say little more tonight than an AMEN and a heartfelt Thank You God.
Now I know, some of you are ready to stop reading. Hang with me. Just let it fall across your heart like it did mine tonight.
Tonight, in the video, Beth Moore discussed love and with that (and my paraphrasing will not begin to do her message justice) the one obstacle that prevents us from truly loving all and being loving to everyone and that is rejection. She reminded us all of the rejection scars we still wear on our hearts, how the wound of a past rejection left a void in our life that we filled with something (or some one) that we would not have chosen if we were in our right mind. She reminded us of the lengths some of us have gone through to fill that vacancy, or perhaps the continual chain of attempts we have made to fill such vacancies (i.e. the love of my life broke up with me, so I hooked up with some other man and ended up preganant; the man left when the baby came so I started drinking...) We tend to believe that we must either recover the rejected (get whatever it was back - the man, the job, the child) or we must reject what rejected us (to get revenge).
And while she spoke on all of this, she shared passages of Scripture that remind us that Christ was rejected (and still is! "The entrance test to hell is to simply reject Christ") but that didn't seem to make the wounds I carry feel any less. To know that in some way I can relate to some small portion of Christ's sufferings does not make me feel any better about my own suffering.
But then Beth Moore reminded us of the Sovereignty of God; that not only does God have a plan for our lives (my life verse, Jer 29:11) but that he has a plan for the REJECTION in our life. He uses the rejection. Sometimes he appoints rejection so that we don't for less than the best He has in store for us. (Think back, ever get upset over a rejection but now you can say that was a good thing it happened?) She reminded us also of the Supremacy of God; that God can handle everything - including our rejection.
She made the point that if we had never known what it was like to be rejected, how could we truly embrace what it means to be chosen?
We concluded the night by reading I Cor 13:8, "Love never fails". Beth spoke to the exact thoughts arising in my head, "yes, maybe God's love never fails, but I have loved someone before and it was not enough. My love has failed."
And then she translated "fails". The Greek translation (ekpipto) means: "to drop away, to fall (away or off). And there was an incredible visual scene they played out that shows us that every time we have loved and the recipient of our love let our love drop, or rejected our love completely, our love did not fail...it did not drop away...it never hit the ground....while it may not have been caught by the one we intended,
it was caught by God.
And He is holding onto it for us, and will give it back to us in His glorious kingdom.
Not only did I realize tonight that my wounds from past rejection will forever taint my life (and not in a good way) if I do not turn them over to God; not only did I realize that God has used those rejections for my own good; not only did I realize that God has the power and the desire to take away the pain of those wounds; but that every time I thought my love failed in the past, it went to God. He caught it. My love has never been lost on anyone, it has always gone to God. And He is holding it like a treasure and will return it to me when I am in His presence.
I can say little more tonight than an AMEN and a heartfelt Thank You God.
Comments
stacy
Thanks for sharing this. I read your post just when I needed to hear it the most.
Amy, thank you for writing this. It was only recently that I realized that my "pattern" in dating was that I was trying to get back the guy who wooed and then rejected me when I was 17. (I spent ten years in that pattern.) And boy am I glad for that rejection NOW and for the subsequent rejection by the last man that fit that mold.
This is hard work, isn't it? Good for you for doing it.
I love this last bit: "My love has never been lost on anyone, it has always gone to God. And He is holding it like a treasure and will return it to me when I am in His presence."
Oh what joy that will be, dear sister!!
xo,
SL
PS I just failed the vw and the new one is longer (or so it seems) than our 26 letter alphabet...