Building Resilience over Rejection

When I think about rejection, Colonel Harland Sanders often comes to mind. Most of you know him as the founder of KFC—Kentucky Fried Chicken. After the Second World War, he tried franchising his fried chicken recipe to restaurants, asking them to pay him only four cents for each piece of chicken they sold, but every restaurant rejected him.

He didn’t give up and kept going to one shop after another until the 1009^th restaurant bought his recipe. Can you imagine getting over a thousand rejections? I would have given up after ten rejections. By then, I would think my recipe or the strategy must be useless. How many rejections can you handle?

There are many types of rejections. Of course, sales rejection might be the easiest to handle because you are proposing a transaction. Other rejections are hard to handle. Particularly it gets turned down when you offer a kind gesture to someone or after you work hard to make a presentation.

Sometimes, criticisms are a form of rejection also. Some people are good at dumping criticism at you egotistically. Handling rejection used to be hard for me. A desire for retaliation could brew inside me for days. Sometimes, it explodes after suppressing for a long time, but I am improving!

Sometimes, an unanswered prayer can make you feel rejected by God. Worse yet, a tragedy can make you feel rejected by the Holy One. I know of a pastor who led a thriving church. His wife played the piano, and their children sang in the children’s choir. The entire family was faithful and devoted.

However, one day a car accident tragically killed the son. The father couldn’t handle it and suddenly disappeared, leaving the church without a pastor, the wife without the husband, and the children without the father when they needed him most. He never returned.

Surprisingly, years later, the daughter grew up and became a pastor. She told this story in heart-wrenching humor. There was not a single dried eye in the crowd. In the same tragedy, the father lost faith, feeling rejected by God, but the daughter gained resilience and got closer to God.

We live in a fallen world where we must deal with fallen people and tragedies. God’s will is not always done here on earth, and that’s why Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy will be done.” If God’s will is done here, it will be heaven already.

How do you live in this fallen world? Jesus taught us resilience. Don’t forget that our Lord has been rejected all the time by his own folks in his hometown to eventually being crucified on the cross. He was rejected from birth, having no place to be born, and his king tried to hunt for him to kill him.

He was even rejected by his Heavenly Father at the time he needed him most. He cried on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Did he deserve it? Throughout the Bible, we read about his faithful service to God. He had every right to ask that question. He knows rejection!

No one in this world understands you more than Jesus. So, if you feel rejected, Jesus is the one you need to learn from. He taught his disciples to handle rejection through resilience because that’s the only way to live through this fallen world. You need resilience not only to survive but also to serve.

So, today we will learn how Jesus taught us to be resilient so that we can stop reacting to rejection, facing unnecessary stress, anxiety, depression, and broken relationships. Let’s begin!