Chosen

I won’t be the only one who finds the experience of rejection difficult or perceives it in places where it doesn’t really exist, but I learnt a long time ago that I couldn’t let the feeling of being rejected pass unchallenged. Rejection often feels a lot like being cut with a knife, small ones are like paper cuts, for me there are dozens of tiny ones every day and they build up over the week until I hurt all over and every new one is agony. Bigger rejections feel like someone has stabbed me in the guts. Often the rejection is totally unintentional or even imagined, or a consequence of a seriously unrealistic desire for intimacy and belonging in places or with people where I feel safe.

Whatever the cause I have become adept at applying gospel first aid to feelings of rejection, in the knowledge that if I don’t, sooner or later I will become completely incapacitated by the anger or more usually, the swirling sense of emptiness and pain. Reason and reality don’t make much of an impact on raw emotions, they feel like a rebuke and make me feel helpless. Yes, I know perfectly well that I am not justified in feeling rejected in this situation, that I am probably imagining things, that people have limitations and a hundred other reasons why my feelings are unjustified. Which is why most of my friends will hopefully not even know that I feel them, I do my absolute best to hide how hurt I am most of the time, knowing that it is utterly unfair. But the feelings exist and they exist all the time and knowing they are wrong and unfair and out of proportion doesn’t make them go away. It just makes me feel ashamed of feeling them.

So like I say - gospel first aid. “I have loved you,” says the Lord, “I will never leave you or forsake you”, “you are precious in my sight”. Quick prayer, “Lord Jesus please help me.” Repeat over and over until you calm down and perspective and/or your sense of humour snaps back in. In my experience the emotion of rejection can only be quelled by a stronger emotion of safety and security in Christ.

So that’s all fine, except maybe I want to live in a world where I’m not constantly doing first aid. Maybe I particularly don’t want to live in a world where occasionally a toxic mix of exhaustion and rejection produce hysterical panic or overwhelming anger and consequent stupid and dangerous behaviour because it gets beyond my first aid skills.

One possibility I am exploring this week, suggested by a very helpful friend, is to look at the Bible and spend time investigating what it means to be chosen by God. I know from experience that finding a truth to speak day by day into my heart can bring real change to difficult emotions. I’m hoping that it might be possible to find such a deep and abiding sense of acceptance and belonging in Christ that I am protected from the intensity of my feelings of rejection by people.

I have been looking over all the places where the Bible talks about being chosen and have picked out the following themes and verses to meditate on:

We are chosen to receive

This is the most common reference to being chosen in the Bible. God has chosen us in order to pour out his love and blessings. I have found 30 things that we have been chosen in order to receive, including freedom, deliverance, mercy, victory, purpose, peace, joy, glory and gloriously, the Holy Spirit. Most powerfully for me, we have been chosen to be loved.

Romans 8 is my favourite ‘chosen to receive’ reference, it spells out in detail the extent of the cost and the consequences of God’s choice to love me. Because I am chosen I cannot ever be rejected or condemned or separated from the love of Christ. It is a well of acceptance and love that can never run dry. It has been purchased for me so abundantly and at such a cost that all I ever need bring are my empty hands to receive it.

³¹ What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³² He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? ³³ Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. ³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶ As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;

 we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We are chosen to belong

To me, the most precious way we are chosen is to belong to God’s family. We are told throughout the old and new testaments that we are chosen to be children, to be adopted, to be God’s people, to be God’s possession and to be on God’s side. I hunger after secure relationships, to belong, to be safe, to have a place where I will never be turned away. I hunger after relationships in a way that I know in my mind can never be fulfilled by people. But God can give me what I need. He can satisfy that hunger, he alone has the resources and the capacity to provide the love and intimacy that I crave. We are children, chosen to be a treasured possession. I belong to God and to his people. Deuteronomy 14:1-2 declares this very clearly – along with a very specific application!

You are the children of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave the front of your heads for the dead, ² for you are a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession.

We are chosen to become

God chooses us just as we are but he doesn’t choose us to leave us just as we are. We are promised in many places that we are chosen in order to be made more like Jesus, to bear fruit, to be holy, to love. This is a precious truth. I am not stuck in my sin and idolatry, I am free to change, to grow, to flourish. This is how I know that I am not wasting my time trying to learn these truths, change is not just possible, but if I keep walking with Christ it is inevitable.

John 15:16-17

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.

Colossians 3:12

¹² Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

We are chosen to proclaim

Finally we are chosen to proclaim. We receive and belong and become so that we at last are able to give. Give hope, give peace, give forgiveness, give compassion, give truth, give love, give Christ.

1 Peter 2:9-10

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. ¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

I am chosen, before the creation of the world he saw me and knew me and chose me. He said I want you, you are mine, you belong to me. I choose you to love you, to pour out my overflowing blessings upon you, to give you everything you don’t deserve, simply because I want to. I choose you to purify you, to make you whole, to fill you with love and beauty that shines from the inside. And when I am done with you, you will be so loved and so lovely that others will look upon you and praise me.

This is the truth I need to face the manifold and constant rejections of life. The truth that can sing to my heart when my brain has stopped working, when reason is overwhelmed and nothing makes sense any more. This is the truth that we all need. God grant us the power to learn it.