Overcoming Rejection: Leah's Story, pt. 4
God's love is not performance-based! Leah tried to gain Jacob's love by works. The same way she used her flesh to try to gain love and failed, we must never try to do anything to earn God's love because it is unconditional. God does not love us because...He simply loves us. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but shall have everlasting life." John 3:16.
When we try to obtain love through fleshly measures, we fail to understand what love really is. Peformance-based love almost always ends in rejection because when the performance cannnot be maintained, neither does the love. When we make feeble attemtps to gain God's love we exhaust ourselves before we realize that God loves us all along. There is absolutley nothing we can do to earn or deserve our Father's love because it is His very nature. God is love.
Like Leah, we try to do things that are not required by God to obtain His love. We try to pray more, read our Bible more, or be more spiritual, but in the end swe are miserable because we can't keep doing those things because they spring from our flesh. Only that which is from the Holy Spirit is lasting. It's sorta like breathing. We don't have to think to breathe, we just do it. Serving God must be like this. We need not plan to do the things that we think will be more spiritual or pleasing to God, we simply do them because they are Spirit-breathed, becaused they are inspired by God. Then we can stop running around trying to do every new thing while wearing ourselves out.
Leah was operating out of a spirit of rejection. She knew she was unloved so she did everything she could to make Jacob love her. After repeated failures she put her faith and focus on God; then she found the love she desired. Leah overcame rejection by no longer focusing on Jacob as the love she didn't have. Instead she redirected her thoughts and attention to God and found what she had been looking for all along. Rejection stems from a desire to have what God does not intend for us to have. James 4:1-3 tells us, "From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts."
We often want what we can't and shouldn't have. The enemy uses rejection to make us feel inadequate, neglected, and downright pitiful. This produces a spirit of self-pity and low self-esteem. This begins the "woe is me" syndrome.
Christians must look upward and not inward. We must always put our faith in God and look to Him for everything we need, especially our unmet emotional needs. It has taken me a very long time to learn this invaluable lesson but praise God, I learned it. It was through much trial and error. I sought love in all the wrong places and I got burned badly. Relationship after relationship left me feeling rejected more and more. I had no idea I was jumping from the frying pan straight into the fire. I paid a high price for it. It almost cost me my life. Had not the Lord intervened, I was headed straight to the pit of hell on a fast, downward, and endless spiral. God rescued me and revealed His great love for me to me. Now I can boldly sing, "Jesus loves me, this I know." Not only does the Bible tell me so, but God has demonstrated His love for me in countless, unimaginable ways. Instead of focusing on the love I don't have, I am focusing on my One True Love, Jesus. As Leah stated, "Now I will praise the Lord."
