How to Handle Rejection - Part One

**SPEAKER_1** (0:04)
Welcome to the City Lights Church Podcast. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing today, we hope this message inspires you to follow Jesus. You can find out more about City Lights Church at city-lights.church.

**Andrew Scott** (0:23)
Hello. Good to see you all this morning. Why don't you turn to your neighbor, give them your million dollar smile.
If we haven't met, my name is Andrew, along with my beautiful wife. We are delighted to lead City Lights Church. We love this church. We love you. We are so delighted about what God is doing in this place and in our church. And so, this morning we're continuing our new series, our how to series. And this morning, the topic of my message is how to handle rejection. And as I was planning and preparing for this message, I've actually decided that it's going to be a two part message on how to handle rejection. And who knows, rejection is part of everyone's story, every human story. If we were to write a book about your life, my life, there would be at least one chapter on rejection, wouldn't there? There'd probably be more than one, actually, throughout all the chapters, would probably be these phrases. And this morning, I actually want to start this statement, and it's probably not the statement that you would expect. And the statement is this, you don't want to live in a world without rejection. You don't want to live in a world without rejection. Let me give you a couple of examples. We have a wonderful couple that are getting married in our church in October. We've got a couple of couples getting married, but let me just pick on one of them. So, Ethan and Steph over here, should have probably talked to you about this before the service, but the Bible says it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. No, it does not. It does not. So, they're an amazing couple, got a heart for people, loved Jesus, growing as leaders. So, yesterday they have their engagement party, which was fantastic. The weather was beautiful. Now, let me give you this scenario. Okay, there is another girl that likes Ethan. Okay, shocked, right? And she says, I want to marry you too. Now, in a world without rejection, Ethan goes, sure, no worries. Says to Steph, I guess we're Mormons now.
That's one example. What about this? We have some people that work in banking.
They go into work, they're a bank teller. A criminal comes in, not without guns, just dressed nicely, and comes up and says, I'd like to withdraw $100,000 of someone else's money because I have needs. I want a jet ski and a Gucci tracksuit. And I need to fill my car with petrol. All of these things are really, really expensive. And so the teller says, sure, no worries. And the bank manager says, why did you give someone else's money? And they said, well, I didn't want to reject them. Let me give you one more. You're a vegan, okay? You're a vegan, you go to a restaurant, you order a tofu salad. Instead of bringing out a tofu salad, they bring out a one kilogram dry aged tomahawk.
And the bill for $150. In a world without rejection, you go, no worries, I think the waiter was having a bad day. What I'm saying is, we don't want to live in a world without rejection. And that's usually not the first thing that we think about. In fact, there is more to the idea of rejection than we first thought. And I want to give you six different ways to think about rejection. And some of them are essential for human flourishing. Some of them are the way that we are designed. Are you ready for the first one? All right. So let's look at this here. The first one is this, healthy boundaries. Okay, this represents healthy boundaries. What do we know? As humans, I am me, you are you. There are mental, physical, emotional limits that are healthy that we set to guide and guard our relationships, don't we? This is a part of what it means to be human.
And so for most people, they are subconsciously formed, and often we inherit them from our family of origin and sometimes through the different circumstances, relationships that we find ourselves in. That's what defines our normal. But healthy boundaries. Now, as part of having healthy boundaries, we need to reject things and people that would violate those boundaries. Is that good? That's healthy. You agree with that. That's the first one. The second one is this. What have we got? This one. This is what I call life-giving correction. Who knows that sometimes correction can feel like rejection. Now, some of you would know I have a wonderful daughter. She was playing up here. Her name is Miranda. She's a great gift to our family. I've recently been teaching her how to drive. On the first time that I taught her how to drive, I yelled at her. The reason that I yelled at her was not because I was angry, but because I feared for our lives. So she is right now, she is a very good growing to be a good driver, right? The first time I'm there, I'm just chilling because I want to be a cool dad. And I'm holding this kind of like handle. And then I say, you know, we're starting the back roads of Brendale on a Sunday afternoon. No one around. And so I'm saying, stop. And then I'm saying, stop. And then I'm kind of getting into like that, you know, that kind of emergency brace position, and doing a bicep curl. And then I'm yelling, stop, stop, stop. Right? The next time, after the, that was the first time, after the next time we get home and Miranda says, I think I did a really good job driving today. And I said, well, you know that part where you confuse the brake and the accelerator and we went over the curb, that wasn't good. Her response is then, I'm a bad driver. Right? Her response is rejection. I'm a bad driver. And so what we've worked on and we're in a very good place is you are not a bad driver because every drive that we've had has been a safe drive. We haven't hit anybody or anything. We haven't hurt anyone. The car is still intact. I said, there are some things that you need to learn. It's correction. There you have to be focused. You have to know the difference between the brake and the accelerator. If you're going to drive. Now, this is the thing. Sometimes in life, I know very much for me, when someone corrects me, I feel like they're what? Rejecting me. But actually, a lot of the times is, they are instructing me, which is also part of the definition of what it means to be a Jesus follower, right? Is someone who is a learner, someone who is teachable. The problem is, it doesn't feel good to be told what to do. It doesn't feel good to say stop or no. But oftentimes, well, it's the only way. Sometimes it's someone saving our life, and a lot of times, it's the main way that we grow by learning what to do and what not to do. So, life-giving correction. Here's the thing, we'll talk about this later. From time to time, we need to reject behaviours, actions, and attitudes, not just in others, but also in ourselves.