To be perfectly honest with you guys, I thought that this was something that I had overcome. The fear of rejection can be a powerful force in our lives if we  allow it to be. The bottom line is that rejection hurts and once you feel it enough, it logically makes sense that you would decide that you never want to feel it again. The fear of rejection became for me a sort of defense mechanism against the world. It became a way to keep the world at arm’s distance for the sole purpose of never wanting to be hurt again.

The problem with this defense strategy is that you also block out the love of other people and more importantly…the love of God. Regardless of what it may seem like, God loves you and his love for you is not supposed to be a mere concept in your mind. I believe that God wants his love for us to be the wind in our sails for lack of a better way of putting it. Perhaps one of the most significant challenges standing in our way when it comes to experiencing this love is the fear of rejection.

The reality is that people can and will hurt you. Most of the time they don’t even necessarily mean to but this is sort of the reality of the world we live in. The pains and bruises that we get from relationships (especially the closest ones) can leave us in a place where we never want to be vulnerable again. This is no way to live. Does being vulnerable expose you to the possibility of being hurt? Absolutely. But what’s the alternative? The alternative is to shelter yourself from all hurt and in so doing to shelter yourself from all love giving you an existence of fear and loneliness.

My challenge to myself and to you is that we would allow ourselves to be open again. You may have been hurt and it may have really cut you deep. I don’t want to minimize that pain at all but those wounds can heal. There are close friendships out there waiting for you that are worth the pain of being open and transparent. More importantly, there is a God who loves you dearly but the only way you can experience that love is to open yourself to it.