I'm Tired of Being Rejected

Oh, the pain!

I’ve got a problem with rejection. I hate it. It hurts, and I want it to stop. I want to make it go away as soon as it happens.

“No!! Please, accept me, please accept me because rejection hurts,” my mind screams. “It literally hurts!”

Pain is a funny thing, and something that I’ve been struggling to assign spiritual and emotional value to for a while now. I want to know pain’s deal. How does it happen, and more importantly, why, when there seems to be nothing really wrong, do I feel so bad at the hand of rejection? I mean, if somebody doesn’t like you or rejects you, why would that create pain?

We usually think of pain as originating in wounded areas of our body, like a knee that hits the cement or a head hit by a ball, but the truth is that all pain comes from one place—the brain. And here’s where it gets interesting—when we experience rejection, the brain activates the exact same regions that process physical pain— the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula, to be scientific. That’s why rejection doesn’t just feel like an emotional wound; it actually hurts in a way that’s surprisingly physical.

So how do we interpret the pain of rejection? Or more importantly, how do we move beyond it? Some researchers think that social pain is necessary for human survival. In ancient times, exile from the tribe was a death sentence, and so our brains treated rejection as the same type of emergency as a broken leg, a crisis to be corrected and avoided at all costs. This exact brain chemistry is what today helps make us hyper-aware of being excluded or unloved and dead set on fixing that.

So, that got me to thinking, what’s the spiritual and emotional necessity for the pain of rejection? After all, if it’s a real thing—seen in brain scans—then there must be a reason for it. I don’t think healthy brain chemistry stands in opposition to the things of God but stands as a reinforcement of spiritual truth. So, with that in mind, I started to dive into the reasons rejection hurts, and the question I wanted to answer was this: Rather than rejection sounding the alarm signaling disaster, what if it were a simple invitation? Not to fear and perceived isolation, but to the deepest communion of all: the fellowship of Christ’s suffering.

Most of us want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection. Accepting His grace and forgiveness for all of our mistakes. But fewer of us want to know Him in the fellowship of His suffering because, really, who wants an invite to suffering?

But, what if it is there, in the sting of exclusion and the pain of rejection, that we find ourselves walking in His footsteps? Would that somehow dim the sting? Ease the pain? After all, our Lord was rejected, misunderstood, betrayed, cast aside even. He was “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3).

Maybe as we taste rejection, we are tasting something of Christ’s pain. As Paul said to the church in Philippi, "I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and the participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death" (Philippians 3:10). This participation then, should be good for more than mere platitudes and/or the robotic acceptance that says, “It is what it is. I guess I just have to deal with it.” And if it is good for more, then it might just make rejection worth it, mightn’t it?

Well, it is more than worth it because we know that we can consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord, for whose sake we have lost all things. We can consider them garbage, that we may gain Christ. (see Philippians 3:8)

One of the most unhealthy ways to deal with suffering is to keep it from the hands of God. In other words, to blame it on a person, or a situation, or a devil. To look at the pain of rejection as an affront or an attack doesn’t allow rejection to do its spiritual work. Maybe rejection hurts in order to get our attention, not to destroy our life, but to save it, not physically, but spiritually. A person willing to accept this premise is willing to allow rejection to have its way— exposing where they’ve placed their worth— in human approval.

In this understanding of rejection, it is a purifying force, burning away false securities we didn’t even realize we were holding onto. Jesus stood unshaken before the rejection of men because He was rooted in the Father’s love. If we find rejection undoing us, maybe it’s because we’ve built too much of our identity on the fragile foundation of earthly validation.

This isn’t to say that rejection can’t wound us. It can. But it can also reveal us. It can reveal a part of us that is holding onto the illusion of our own sovereignty and need to control what others think not only of us, but of themselves in relationship to us. Rejection is often like a slap in the face, waking us up to the idea that control is an illusion, and letting go of the need to control what others think, do, or accept can be a doorway to spiritual and emotional freedom.

When the pain of rejection pulls us inside ourselves, ruminating over the situation, worrying about the wound left by another, we can fail to notice the hand of God that may just be redirecting our footsteps. What a glorious reality— the hand of God actively working in the good times and the bad. After all, the Bible asks, “Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that everything comes— both calamity and blessing? Why should any living person complain” (Lamentations 3:38–39, NET). How many times have you mourned the loss of a closed door only to realize, in hindsight, that it was the very thing that moved you toward your real calling?

If you want to be like Jesus, consider that when He was rejected, He didn’t linger, begging for their approval. He moved on. And when Paul was rejected in city after city, he didn’t force his way back in; he went, instead, where the Spirit led.

Consider that the rejection you are facing now isn’t abandonment but guidance. Maybe God is prying your fingers off something that was never meant to be in your grip. Rejection can be a harsh but necessary teacher. It forces us to ask: Whose voice carries the most weight in my life? Like Paul said, “Am I trying to please man or God? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Galatians 1:10). If your peace can be shattered by human disapproval, then you were never truly free. But when you embrace rejection—not as a curse, but as a means of watching God work in your life—you become untethered from the need to constantly prove yourself, and you start to see His hand in every moment of your life, offering you not rejection, but redirection.

Jesus made it clear: Rejection is not a possibility for His followers—it is a certainty. He said, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18). So, big surprise—you are facing rejection. You are not alone!

We spend so much energy avoiding rejection, but what if it is not sent for our destruction but as an invitation into the suffering of Christ? If you have been rejected for your faith, for your convictions, or simply for not fitting the mold others expected of you, take heart. You stand in a long and noble line of saints who have been cast aside by the world, only to be embraced by God.

So, I guess that rejection can be seen as a kind of fork in the road. It can either embitter you or sanctify you. It can drive you to self-pity or deeper into Christ. So, instead of endlessly rehearsing the pain, maybe we can ask:

- How is God using this to make me more like Jesus?

- What false security is He stripping away?

- Where is He leading me that I wouldn’t have gone otherwise?

- Am I free from the need for human approval?

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t agree that there are times when rejection is meant to be confronted. But since the normal human reaction is resistance to the pain, I feel like a better first response is acceptance by entering into the suffering of the Savior before ever presuming a fight is what He wants from us. And only after considering the truth that, “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still” (Exodus 14:14). Yes, rejection is painful, but in the hands of God, it is never pointless. So, we are left with allowing it to do its holy work.