Rejection

Description

Derek Prince describes rejection as one of the deepest wounds of the human spirit. A person begins to live with a sense that they are unwanted, unloved, inferior, or that there is no place where they truly belong. Prince uses the picture of someone continually standing “outside” — watching others enter into closeness, love, and belonging while they themselves feel excluded.

Frank and Ida Mae Hammond point out that rejection is often accompanied by fear of further rejection and by self-rejection. A person wounded by others begins to expect the same thing to happen again, and may therefore push people away before they have the chance to hurt them again. Over time, what came from outside may be turned inward: “if they do not want me, there must be something wrong with me.”

Prince describes two common directions in which such a wound may continue to operate. One leads through loneliness, suffering, and self-pity toward depression, despair, and even a desire for death. The other, through resentment, hardness, and hatred, may lead toward rebellion and rejecting others.

Rejection can begin very early. Prince gives particular attention to a lack of love and acceptance from parents. A child may have material needs provided for and still grow up without the sense of being wanted and loved. In his teaching, rejection may appear even in the prenatal period when a child was unwanted or the pregnancy was met with strong resistance. In this context Prince also speaks of a spirit of rejection.

John Eckhardt describes rejection both as a wound and as a spiritual influence that may lead to fear, withdrawal, inferiority, shame, self-sufficiency, perfectionism, and a continual striving for approval. A person then attempts to obtain through achievement and the acceptance of others what, at a deep level, they are unable to receive as a gift.

Henry W. Wright also treats rejection as a powerful attack on a person’s identity. In Be in Health teaching, a spirit of rejection attempts to persuade a person that their worth depends on whether other people accept them. Wright calls this way of thinking a form of unbelief, because the person begins to believe human rejection more than what God says about their value and acceptance.

Especially important in Wright’s teaching is the movement from rejection to self-rejection. A person may first experience lack of love, rejection, or abuse from others and then take that message against themselves: “I am unworthy of love,” “there is something wrong with me,” “I do not deserve acceptance.” Wright connects this way of thinking with the activity of an unloving spirit — a spirit opposed to love that distorts a person’s view of themselves and makes it difficult to receive and give love.

For this reason rejection also recurs in many of Wright’s materials on possible spiritual roots of disease. It often progresses into self-rejection, self-hatred, bitterness toward oneself, and guilt. In Be in Health teaching, these elements appear, among other places, in discussions of possible spiritual roots of autoimmune diseases.

One example is the profile for type 1 diabetes. Be in Health describes Wright’s observation that in cases he worked with there was often rejection or hurt from the father. The person then began to question their own worth and whether they could be loved, which could develop into self-rejection.

The same fundamental problem recurs in Prince, the Hammonds, Eckhardt, and Wright: the experience “someone did not accept me” begins to speak to the person as though it were the truth about who they are — “I am unworthy of acceptance.”

Prince directs the answer to rejection toward the cross of Christ. He teaches that Jesus Himself experienced rejection so that a person could receive the Father’s acceptance. The path to freedom includes forgiving those who wounded them, laying aside resentment and rebellion, and receiving the truth that in Christ a person is wanted and accepted by God.

Wright moves in the same direction from the standpoint of identity. A person’s worth is not to be built on whether another human being accepts them, but on who they are before God. This means rejecting lies that have been accepted against oneself and receiving God’s love instead of agreeing with self-rejection.

Eckhardt likewise connects freedom from rejection and self-rejection with receiving the work of Christ and God’s acceptance. If a spirit of rejection or an influence connected with it is discerned, agreement with it can be renounced and it can be commanded to leave in the name of Jesus Christ.

At the heart of this path is a movement from:

“I am rejected, unwanted, and unworthy of love”

to the truth:

“my worth and belonging are not defined by human rejection; in Christ I am accepted by the Father.”

“Though my father and my mother forsake me, the LORD will take me in.”
Psalm 27:10

Sources

Derek Prince — “God’s Remedy for Rejection”; “From Rejection to Acceptance”; “A Wounded Spirit, Who Can Bear?”

Frank and Ida Mae Hammond — “Pigs in the Parlor” — rejection, fear of rejection, and self-rejection.

John Eckhardt — “Destroying the Spirit of Rejection: Receive Love and Acceptance and Find Healing”.

Henry W. Wright / Be in Health — “Rejection”; “Unloving”; “A More Excellent Way”; materials concerning rejection, self-rejection, and possible spiritual roots of disease.

Bible: Psalm 27:10; Proverbs 18:14; Isaiah 53:3; Ephesians 1:5–6.