My incredibly precious husband was so eager to hear me share the message, that he forgot to begin the video right away. You only missed a little bit. The full text is below.
What a gift it is to be called to share words of grace and hope with the world. I am honored.
Cara
March 26, 2017
We are in the middle of a sermon series called, “Name Your Fears,” where we have been exploring common fears. Regardless of what the topic has been each week, (fear of failure, fear of being alone, fear of church, fear of money) we have consistently discovered that there is power in acknowledging our fears and calling them out. While our tendencies may be to avoid thinking about the things we fear, we are empowered in the process of identifying and overcoming the fears that hold us back from peace and wholeness.
There is a quote that I remind myself of often, and it says, “Of the things we choose to worry about half never happen, and the other half we can handle.”
As I was searching for the original author of this line, I came to find out that many wise folk have said similar things.
In fact, five hundred years ago, Michel de Montaigne said, “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”
There has even been a research study done that looked into how many of our imagined calamities never materialize. In this study, subjects were asked to write down their worries over an extended period of time and then identify which of their imagined misfortunes did not actually occur.
Sounds like an interesting practice to me. Imagine if we began identifying our fears, writing them down when they come to mind, and then look back on our list in hind-sight.
It turned out that in the study, 85 percent of what people worried about never happened, and with the 15 percent that did happen, almost all of the subjects discovered either they could handle the difficulty better than expected, or the difficulty taught them a lesson worth learning. This means that 97 percent of what you worry over is not much more than a fearful mind punishing you with exaggerations and misconceptions.
So, there is perspective in that, I believe. We are capable of much more than we give ourselves credit for.
Though our fears aren’t based on anything concrete, they can affect us physically. Each time a fear crosses our mind, our heart may race, our awareness is heightened and our defense mechanisms are activated. Fight, Flight or Freeze…our bodies are ready.
So, this week, the Fear of Rejection. Most of us have been rejected at some point in our lives. There is no way around it. Relationships end, you are turned down for the job, you are judged unfairly by someone else. You’re picked last for the kickball game, you’re not in the club. It happens.
And just like our other fears, we worry about being rejected more than we are actually rejected, and in those cases of being rejected, it typically turns out that we do make it through the heart-ache better than we expected.
Sometimes, rejection can even end up being a motivator for us. If we disagree with the other person’s assessment of us, we can go out of our way to work harder and prove them wrong. There are countless success stories which follow that exact story line. A simple Google search turns up “35 Famous People Who Were Painfully Rejected Before Making it Big,” including Walt Disney, Oprah Winfrey, Jerry Seinfeld, JK Rowling, Madonna….the list goes on.
Too often, though, we simply agree with the person’s evaluation of us and we go on with life carrying a feeling of inferiority or of being "damaged goods.”
Even when we know on a cognitive level that that they are wrong, we allow their rejection to confirm our worst fear — perhaps that we ARE unlovable, that we ARE destined to be alone, or that we are not worthy of goodness and success in life.
At the core of rejection is a spiritual issue. And the spiritual issue is that until you are right with God, until you understand that you are loved apart from anything of this earth, you will always maintain your fear. Because if people who are supposed to love us can reject us, then what is stopping God from doing the same?
The answer to that question is “grace.” In the Methodist Church, we believe in God’s prevenient grace, a grace the “goes before.” A forgiveness, an acceptance, an unconditional love that is freely given to you before you do a single thing. It’s a grace that goes before anything you have ever done. It’s a grace that goes before anything that has ever been done to you. It’s a grace that goes before any of the hurtful, demeaning words that have ever been said to you or about you.
What stops God from rejecting us? It’s God’s grace.
Romans 5 “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ….
And how are we justified? How are we made right to have that peace? While we were weak, while we were yet sinners, when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready...at the right time, Christ died for us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
What about the times when we are the rejecters? When we reject the things that are happening to us in life. We fight with all that is in us to control our circumstances, to change the things that, if we are honest, we have no control over.
Again, we’re faced with a spiritual issue. Until we can view our lives through the eyes of God, we are only able to see that which is right in front of us. We are looking at a single puzzle piece, when God can see the entire picture. We judge the parts that we see as good or bad, and when the bad outweighs the good, we reject it. We reject the day, we reject the year, we throw it all out as bad.
How many people do you see do this at the end of each year? “Oh, 2016, that was an awful year. I can’t wait for 2017.” As if on January 1st, something is going to magically change, or as if no good actually occurred in 2016. Life is made up of both.
Anyone here watch the show, “This is Us?” Oh, love that show. That’s a good thing that happened in 2016. On the after show, Chris Sullivan, the actor who plays Toby was talking about relationships, and he said, “You share the joy…and the pain. The only way to true connection is through the second part. There’s not much to learn from pure joy, you just experience it.”
I want to share with you a story about a man who was able to see more than the single puzzle piece that was his life.
There once was a wise man who won an expensive car in a lottery. His family and his friends were very happy for him and came to celebrate. “Isn’t it great!” they said. “You are so lucky.” The man smiled and said, “Maybe.” For a few weeks he enjoyed driving the car. Then one day a drunken driver crashed into his new car at an intersection and he ended up in the hospital, with multiple injuries. His family and friends came to see him and said, “That was really unfortunate.” Again, the man smiled and said, “Maybe.” While he was still in the hospital, one night there was a landslide and his house fell into the sea. Again his friends came the next day and said, “Weren’t you lucky to have been here in the hospital?” Again he said, “Maybe.” (A New Earth, By Eckhart Tolle)
This man could have won the car and been ecstatic, viewing his life as good. But if it weren’t for winning that car, he could have avoided the devastating accident that left him injured and viewing his circumstances as bad. Of course, if he hadn’t been in the hospital, he would have suffered a much worse fate when his house fell to the sea.
He was able to live into the events of his life, not embracing them or rejecting them as they came, but simply experiencing them and accepting each without judgement.
We know the joy in life, we appreciate the joy, because we have experienced pain. We resist discomfort with all our might, but we also learn and grow from it.
I have a friend who prays deep, incredible prayers. Being with her in prayer makes you feel God’s presence in an incredible way, and I want to pray like her. I want to feel God in that way when I speak to him. Then, I consider her life. I reflect on the events that gave her the opportunities to cry out to God with no filter and bare her soul to God because she had no other choice. She let God have it as she fought against events in her life, and it was only on the other side of that raging against God, that she found herself still safe, in the loving embrace of God’s grace, that she was able to talk so personally to her Creator.
How can we possibly accept the parts of our lives that devastate us?
As we learn to live Christ-centered lives, we hurt, we grieve, we take it out on God, and at the right time, we move forward in hope.
I don’t want to step over the process of grief, here. It is not spiritual or admirable to pretend that all is well. It is not healthy to hide or try to fight despair. Just as we can’t stop tragedy from entering our lives, we cannot stop the natural process of grieving from take place. We must allow it to have its time. We give grief the time to sit in our lives as long as is needed. And when we are ready, we move towards healing, with hope.
Romans 5:3-5 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
God’s hope does not disappoint us.
Let us pray.
