The other day I watched a testimony (or story about how Jesus has shaped somebody’s life) of somebody’s freedom from rage and rejection. [Click the above YouTube video to watch.] This caused me to wonder, what does rage and rejection have in common? What is the connection between rage and rejection? For one thing, from a physiological standpoint, both rejection and rage release the same hormones into the body: cortisol and adrenaline. Since those two emotions (rejection and rage) release the same chemicals into the body, could it be that those two emotions go hand in hand (by working together)?
The guy in the video, JP, was adopted from Korea, and so (like many adopted children) he carried a “spirit of rejection” since birth that he needed to overcome. Although his adoptive parents loved and accepted him very well, he still carried a rejection mindset because of how his birth parents apparently didn’t want him. Despite the way that God the Father accepted and saw him, a taste of which was demonstrated by the love and acceptance of his adoptive parents, thoughts and feelings of rejection still ate away at him from the inside-out.
How can rejection produce rage and anger? JP was mad at himself because he felt that he wasn’t good enough for his birth parents. He felt that there was something innately wrong with him, and so he resented and rejected himself. Dr. Charles Solomon has said that depression is like an “internal temper tantrum', so JP’s perceived rejection resulted in feeling angry towards himself, causing him to feel depressed and joyless. (1)
In his teenage years, JP joined a gang, because there he found a community who appeared to give him the love, acceptance, and inclusion that he so deeply desired. They “had his back” and provided a resemblance of friendship. In reality, this connection he had with the gang was toxic and unhealthy, for those bonds of “friendship” were not rooted and grounded in God’s love, but in toxic mindsets or traits such as rejection, fear, pride, anger, narcissistic control, substance abuse (“sorcery”), etc.
I could relate to his testimony, since rejection and rage were the two emotions foremost in my mind when it comes to my personal story. Dr. Henry W. Wright has observed that although he doesn’t understand why, for whatever reason, second-born children or “middle children'' are typically the ones who take the hit of “the unloving spirit” (self-hatred) and of the spirit of rejection.
As the second oldest of nine, I believe that this was applicable in my case. Like occurred with JP, this does not necessarily mean that my parents failed at showing me the love and acceptance I needed. In both cases, our parents likely did an amazing job at modeling God the Father’s love to the best of their ability. Rather, it was a spirit of rejection that we inherited [generationally] at birth that held us back and prevented us from receiving the love of our parents, God, and others.
When it comes to feeling rejected, I don’t necessarily remember feeling rejected by my parents, but primarily from my older brother in a couple key early life instances from which I didn't resolve those feelings of rejection for a long time. It appears that I longed for his acceptance and friendship, but felt rejected when he occasionally ostracized me when I wanted to spend time with him and his friends. Although he involved and welcomed me with genuine acceptance later on growing up, I had carried a rejection mindset from the formative experiences of my younger years. (I’m not blaming him, but taking personal responsibility for the ways that I had embraced self-pity and rejection in the way I thought about those experiences rather than moving forward in forgiveness, love, grace, acceptance, confidence, and wholeness).
This rejection mindset manifested in other ways as a child. Psychologists labeled me with Asperger’s Syndrome, a condition which characterized me as lacking in proper social skills and displaying a low emotional intelligence. Such a diagnosis exacerbated my feelings of worthlessness, inferiority, and of not being good enough. I had speech problems, for which my parents put me in speech therapy from around kindergarten through the fifth grade. Such therapy proved helpful and enabled me to overcome speech problems with sounds involving “s,” “th,” “ch,” “l,” “r,” etc. I still had problems with correctly speaking “r” sounds until the 9th grade, when God fixed that problem supernaturally at a youth group encounter.
JP’s journey or process of deliverance and healing occurred as he spent time feeding himself with the truth that would make him free. He demonstrated this hungry posture of seeking God as he listened to Pastor Vlad’s messages, took notes, and put them into practice. See Proverbs 8:17, 32-36; Jeremiah 29:13; Matthew 5:6; 7:7-8. The same applies to my own journey as I learn to live out the love and acceptance that God has for me in relationships with other people over time. See John 8:31-32; Matthew 7:24-27; James 1:21-25.
During my middle school years, I carried a lot of rage, self-hatred, thoughts of depression, social anxiety, rejection, and isolation. Because my younger brother seemed so happy, I became annoyed, jealous, and envious of him and my anger would sometimes spill out on him in the form of calling him names and occasional attempts to physically trip or to beat him up. I would use intimidation, warnings, and verbal threats in attempts to control or to get him to stay away from me, since (as an extreme introvert) I wanted to be left alone.
Having surrendered my life to Jesus for Him to have His was in my life around the age of 10, I knew that Jesus called me to a higher standard of conduct in my relationships. Therefore I knew that what I was doing was wrong and felt like a hypocrite because I had difficulty living out what Jesus modeled. Still I knew that my only hope for change was to keep learning and applying Jesus’ words to my life. As I was memorizing and taking a deeper look into Jesus’ sermon in the Bible recorded in Matthew 5-7 in the 8th grade with a group of friends from my church, both Jesus’ words and my friends challenged me to change the way I thought about my younger brother (see Matthew 5:21-24; 1 John 2:9, 11; 3:15; 4:20).
In 9th grade, a classmate invited me to a youth group (gathering of young Christians at another church), where I was deeply touched and awed by the supernatural joy and peace that seemed present in the singing and in the message that I hadn’t quite experienced in such a way before. The message was about having “joy in your salvation” and also about God’s qualities found in Galatians 5:22-23: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law."
--Galatians 5:22-23 NKJV
Although I had memorized that verse growing up, I had the piercing realization that those qualities of love, joy, patience, kindness, self-control, etc., were not present in my life, feelings, and actions. I knew that this needed to change, and that I could not do this by my own efforts, since I couldn’t be loving or joyful or kind to people no matter how hard I tried.
After the message, the Ukrainian-American pastor said to raise your hand if you have not thought about the gospel (that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead) over the past two weeks. (4) Since maybe I was afraid of God punishing me for lying, I raised my hand to that question, just to be on the “safe side.” Then the pastor said to come to the front of the room if you had just raised your hand to the previous question(s).
As all this was happening in my seat, I was imagining Jesus being whipped, abused, mocked, beaten, spit upon, and crucified in a way that became more real to me. That is, I wasn't just thinking about Jesus going through that abuse as an impersonal historical fact, but I had a deep impression from God that He did all that for me. It was as if a film reel went through in my mind of the times that my older brother ostracized, neglected, or forsook me, and also the times that I verbally, emotionally, and physically abused my younger brother.
As I envisioned Jesus being rejected, abused, mocked, and abandoned, I realized that He did it for me personally. I knew that He died on the cross for all mankind, giving everybody the opportunity to enter into a personal relationship with Him. But now in that powerful moment, I realized that as God, He also had me on His mind, as if He would have done it all for me, even if I were the only person on earth to receive His sacrificial gift of friendship, love, and acceptance.
When I went to the front of the room, the pastor had the others in the room gather around to pray for me and the other random guy who raised his hand. One person who prayed for me asked God to "take away his heart of stone and give him a heart of flesh." As they prayed, I felt something like a warm "liquid wave of love" come and wash over me. It felt like Jesus’ blood was poured out on me like a waterfall of forgiveness, coursed throughout my entire body or bloodstream, and removed all the poisonous hatred and anger that had been deeply rooted in my life and emotions.
Sometime around the tail-end of that experience of receiving God’s touch, the pastor(s) also encouraged me to open my mouth to speak in an unlearned language as they were doing and modeling for me. Having been seeking this “baptism of the Holy Spirit” that I heard about in Matthew 3:11 and elsewhere, I attempted to do the same, trusting for God to fill me with Himself. Although I had never “spoken in tongues” before, I had been wondering if that was a real thing by which we may communicate with God and enjoy Him in deeper or fresher ways. But ever since that night that I was “baptized in the Holy Spirit,” I noticed that I no longer had trouble with “r-sound” speech impediments, indicating that God had indeed done a miracle with my tongue.
That was not the only miracle that happened with my “tongue” from that night. Since God removed my hatred, anger, resentment, unforgiveness, and bitterness from my heart, I no longer would cut down my younger brother with unkind, abusive, critical, angry, or hateful words. Socially, I also would not be so withdrawn from the people in my high school, but I would be friendly to more and more people every school year. I would reach out to people, ask them questions about their lives with genuine interest, and would seek to show them the love, acceptance, and truth that God wanted them to experience.
To this day, I am still on a journey with God where I submit to His leadership and must allow His love to transform the way that I see and treat others and myself. The same God who healed me from allergies, debilitating social anxiety, rage, and other hindrances is the same God who is faithful to deliver me from all my fears and obstacles that would seek to hinder the love of my relationships with Him and others. His truth is continuing to make me free as I submit to His loving leadership and rejoice in all circumstances, no matter what obstacles come my way. (5)
For more information on starting a personal relationship with God, see “Did You Hear the News?”
Solomon, Charles R. The Ins and Outs of Rejection. Kindle.
https://www.bustle.com/p/9-surprising-changes-that-occur-in-the-body-when-you-get-rejected-17998006
For more information on my journey with congenital hypothyroidism, a condition where one symptom includes brain fog, see “The Humble Father” and “You Don’t Need to be Fixed. You Need to be Loved.”
There’s another uncanny parallel between my story and JP’s story, that the pastors whom God used at key points in our freedom journeys happen to be Ukrainian-Americans.
See John 8:31-32; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18; Romans 8:31-39; Habakkuk 3:17-19.
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