How are you to respond when you experience times of rejection? Should you curl up in a dark corner and engage in self-pity? Will you withdraw from life completely and disown the people who love and accept you? No!

You are to do three specific things when you feel an intense need to belong.

1. Believe what God says about you.

Through the years, I have had a number of divorced or widowed people say to me, “I feel like a nobody.” My response to them is, “That’s not what God says about you.”

God says you are a somebody. You are so special and valuable to Him that He sent His Son to die for your sins, and He made it possible for the Holy Spirit to come and dwell within you. He did that to remind you on a daily basis that you are valuable beyond measure in His eyes.

“But I feel so all alone in the world,” someone might say.

You aren’t alone, because God is with you. He has promised to stay right by your side, regardless of what happens to you. Even if everybody you know has rejected you, God will not leave you. Be assured that you are forgiven and a full-fledged member of God’s family. In Christ, we are His children, never to be denied, rejected, or turned away from His presence.

2. Seek God’s acceptance first.

Divorce is devastating because it destroys a person’s sense of belonging. It creates an even greater need to belong, a need that isn’t felt as keenly or as deeply when a person is happily married.

A woman whose husband had recently divorced her confessed to me, “I don’t feel as if I belong anyplace anymore. My life has been ripped apart. What can I do?”

“Go to Christ,” I said. “Trust the Lord to be the One who provides for you. He alone can give you identity and supply comfort in your loneliness. Do everything obediently in service to Him, trusting Him to direct your path. Know that He will shelter you from evil, uphold you, and provide daily guidance. Depend on Him with your entire being, and surrender completely to His will.”

Is God’s acceptance of you more important than acceptance by other people? You have been given the ability and prerogative to ignore God, continue on your own way, and rebel against His desire enjoy a growing relationship with you. But why not spend time in His Word to see the deep, unconditional love He has for you? Why not give in and yield to His compassionate, fatherly embrace?

3. Recognize that God will never reject you.

Perhaps you are afraid that you might one day lose God’s acceptance and love. Nothing, my friend—absolutely nothing—can destroy your standing in Christ or diminish the love He extends to you. Not now, not ever.

When my grandson was very young, the first thing he would do when he came to my house was demand to sit on my lap. He had a sense—rightly so—that there was no other person I would rather have been with in that moment.

Friend, that’s the way God feels about you and me. He delights in being with us. He holds us tenderly. And there is no other person in the world He would rather be with. The amazing truth about our infinite God is that He is capable of expressing to us all His love and attention. In our finite minds, we can not grasp that. But in God’s great and infinite love, He can completely meet my need for belonging, just as surely as He can fully meet yours.

When you feel as if you don’t belong, come to God with a desire to sit for a while in His presence. Come with a willingness to be held, like a child, in His everlasting arms. Allow yourself to relax. You are 100 percent welcome there. The Father longs for you to be with Him.

Adapted from “Our Unmet Needs” by Charles F. Stanley, 1999, pp.197-203.

For the past decade, doctors and psychologists have been taking notice of the health benefits of reflective writing. They note that wrestling with words to put your deepest thoughts into writing can lift your mind from depression, uncover wisdom within your experiences, provide insight and foster self-awareness. Similarly, a recent news article discussed the benefits of confessional writing, where one is freed to “explore the depths of the emotional junkyard.” In my own experience, writing has no doubt been a helpful way to sift through the junkyard, though perhaps most effectively when open to being surprised by beauty and not merely reveling in the messes.

Writing is helpful because the eye of a writer seeks the transcendent—moments where the extraordinary is beheld in the ordinary, glimpses of clarity within the junkyard, beauty in a world of contrasts. When Jesus stooped over the crumbled girl at his feet and wrote something in the sand, the written word spoke more powerfully than the anger of the Pharisees and well beyond the sins of the prostitute. As singer songwriter Michael Card writes of Jesus’s scribbling, “It was a cup of cold water for a thirsty adulteress and an ice-cold drenching in the face to a group of angry Pharisees.”  Writing is a tool with which we learn to see ourselves more clearly, a catalyst for which we can learn to see thankfully beyond ourselves.

In the C.S. Lewis novel, Til We Have Faces, the main character, Orual, has taken mental notes throughout her life, carefully building what she refers to as her “case” against the gods. Finally choosing to put her case in writing, she describes each instance where she has been wronged. It is only after Orual has finished writing that she soberly recognizes her great mistake. To have heard herself making the complaint was to be answered, for she now sees the importance of uttering the speech at the center of one’s soul. She profoundly then observes that the gods used her own pen to probe the wounds. With sharpened insight Orual explains, “Til the words can be dug out of us, why should [the gods] hear the babble that we think we mean?  How can they meet us face to face til we have faces?”

There is something about writing that can introduce us to ourselves and to the image of another. Daring to utter the words at the center of our souls we may find the words leading us to truer selves. What if God could use your own pen to probe the wounds of your life? In the intimate descriptions of life recorded in the Psalms, the writers of the Psalms express loneliness, joy, even frustration with God. “What gain is there in my destruction, in my going down into the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your faithfulness?” (Psalm 30:9). Yet the psalmists walk away from their words with a clearer sense of reality. And, I would add, their words have been a source of encouragement to countless lives, pointing many to wisdom, to beauty and depth, to a God enthroned on high.

As Jesus stood with the girl at his feet in the middle of a group armed with stones and hatred, the Word that brought life into existence and worked the heavens with his fingers, crouched down in the sand and with his finger changed a life. Might this Word so move us also such that our own words bring us to know ourselves, the beauty and the mess, each other, and God.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

Morning “He led them forth by the right way.” Psalm 107:7

Changeful experience often leads the anxious believer to inquire “Why is it thus

with me?” I looked for light, but lo, darkness came; for peace, but behold,

trouble. I said in my heart, my mountain standeth firm; I shall never be moved.

Lord, thou dost hide thy face, and I am troubled. It was but yesterday that I

could read my title clear; today my evidences are bedimmed, and my hopes are

clouded. Yesterday, I could climb to Pisgah’s top, and view the landscape o’er,

and rejoice with confidence in my future inheritance; today, my spirit has no

hopes, but many fears; no joys, but much distress. Is this part of God’s plan

with me? Can this be the way in which God would bring me to heaven?

Yes, it is even so. The eclipse of your faith, the darkness of your mind, the

fainting of your hope, all these things are but parts of God’s method of making

you ripe for the great inheritance upon which you shall soon enter. These trials

are for the testing and strengthening of your faith–they are waves that wash

you further upon the rock–they are winds which waft your ship the more swiftly

towards the desired haven. According to David’s words, so it might be said of

you, “So he bringeth them to their desired haven.” By honour and dishonour, by

evil report and by good report, by plenty and by poverty, by joy and by

distress, by persecution and by peace, by all these things is the life

of your souls maintained, and by each of these are you helped on your way. Oh,

think not, believer, that your sorrows are out of God’s plan; they are necessary

parts of it. “We must, through much tribulation, enter the kingdom.” Learn,

then, even to “count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.”

“O let my trembling soul be still,

And wait thy wise, thy holy will!

I cannot, Lord, thy purpose see,

Yet all is well since ruled by thee.”

 

Evening “Behold, thou art fair, my Beloved.” Song of Solomon 1:16

From every point our Well-beloved is most fair. Our various experiences are

meant by our heavenly Father to furnish fresh standpoints from which we may view

the loveliness of Jesus; how amiable are our trials when they carry us aloft

where we may gain clearer views of Jesus than ordinary life could afford us! We

have seen him from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, and he

has shone upon us as the sun in his strength; but we have seen him also “from

the lions’ dens, from the mountains of the leopards,” and he has lost none of

his loveliness. From the languishing of a sick bed, from the borders of the

grave, have we turned our eyes to our soul’s spouse, and he has never been

otherwise than “all fair.” Many of his saints have looked upon him from the

gloom of dungeons, and from the red flames of the stake, yet have they never

uttered an ill word of him, but have died extolling his surpassing charms. Oh,

noble and pleasant employment to be forever gazing at our sweet Lord Jesus! Is

it not unspeakably delightful to view the Saviour in all his offices, and to

perceive him matchless in each?–to shift the kaleidoscope, as it were, and to

find fresh combinations of peerless graces? In the manger and in eternity, on

the cross and on his throne, in the garden and in his kingdom, among thieves or

in the midst of cherubim, he is everywhere “altogether lovely.” Examine

carefully every little act of his life, and every trait of his character, and

he is as lovely in the minute as in the majestic. Judge him as you will, you

cannot censure; weigh him as you please, and he will not be found wanting.

Eternity shall not discover the shadow of a spot in our Beloved, but rather, as

ages revolve, his hidden glories shall shine forth with yet more inconceivable

splendour, and his unutterable loveliness shall more and more ravish all

celestial minds.

 

There is grain for sale in Egypt.   Genesis 42:2

Famine pinched all the nations, and it seemed inevitable that Jacob and his family should suffer great want; but the God of providence, who never forgets the objects of electing love, had stored a granary for His people by giving the Egyptians warning of the scarcity and leading them to treasure up the grain from the years of plenty. Little did Jacob expect deliverance from Egypt, but there was grain in store for him.

Believer, though all things are apparently against you, rest assured that God has made a reservation on your behalf; in the roll of your griefs there is a saving clause. Somehow He will deliver you, and somewhere He will provide for you. Your rescue may come from a very unexpected source, but help will definitely come in your extremity, and you will magnify the name of the Lord. If men do not feed you, ravens will; and if the earth does not yield wheat, heaven will drop manna.

Therefore be of good courage, and rest quietly in the Lord. God can make the sun rise in the west if He pleases and can make the source of distress a channel of delight. The grain in Egypt was all in the hands of the beloved Joseph; he opened or closed the granaries at will. And so the riches of providence are all in the absolute power of our Lord Jesus, who will dispense them generously to His people. Joseph was abundantly ready to help his own family; and Jesus is unceasing in His faithful care for His brethren.

Our responsibility is to go after the help that is provided for us: We must not sit still in despondency, but stir ourselves. Prayer will bring us quickly into the presence of our royal Brother. Once before His throne we have only to ask and receive. His stores are not exhausted; there is still grain: His heart is not hard; He will give the grain to us. Lord, forgive our unbelief, and this evening constrain us to draw largely from Your fullness and receive grace for grace.

The family reading plan for May 21, 2012

Isaiah 22 | 2 Peter 3