Have you ever been in a gathering where you should have been welcomed as a friend but were instead spurned as an intruder or even as an enemy?
Sometimes that kind of rejection can be justified. If a murderer shows up at the funeral of his victim, he shouldn’t be surprised if the family and other mourners treat him like a pariah and ask him to leave. But that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m asking if you’ve ever found yourself at a place where you should have been welcomed but weren’t? The rejection was not due to anything wrong you had done. The people there just didn’t like you. They didn’t want you. And they didn’t want you precisely because there are qualities about you that they don’t like. That’s difficult all by itself. But what if the qualities that offend them are the very qualities that align with what God calls you to be?
At that point, their rejection says far less about any deficiency in you than it does about the deficiency in character of the ones rejecting you.
[Listen to the rest of the sermon at the Spotify or Apple Podcast links below.]
