Faith
I grew up in a home where love came at a price. If you behaved as expected, you were loved. If you got good grades, you were loved. If you followed the path your parent's choose for you, you were loved. Because of that, I learned at an early age that if you wanted people to like or love you you did what they wanted you to do. Needless to say, coupled with a my natural gifts for story telling and acting, I became a very proficient people pleaser.
And I lived as a people pleaser for a large portion of my life. It affected my friendships and love relationships, my choices concerning my future - career and jobs and dreams, my choices about smoking and drugs and drinking, and pretty much every other aspect of my life.
My life sucked.
I knew that their was something wrong, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Then when my father died things began to crack. The person I has strove to please almost all my life was gone. I became a ship without a rudder. Drifting here and there. Sailing into storms and troubled waters without a second thought. Before it was too late my wife stepped in and took over the roll my father had played in my life.
But a lot of the damage was done by that point. My Naval career was ruined. And I didn't have a lot of career prospects. Fortunately, my wife gave me a new person to focus my need to please others on, her, and we rebounded, slowly, to being pretty well off in worldly terms.
At that time, in worldly terms, I had it all. I had a great job. I was the King Of Anime in the Twin Cities Area. I was married. I owned my own home. Etc, etc. But I was really dead. My worth was determined by what other's thought of me. Which, more often than not, hinged on a what I had done for them lately.
The truth was, I had no real friends. I was drinking to much. I had grown to despise my wife's controlling of me. And I was slowly going down the road of pornography addiction, and heading for something worse.
Deep down I was hurting.
Deep down I was empty.
Deep down I was afraid I wouldn't measure up and everyone would reject me. Then Jesus came into my life, and I experienced unconditional love and grace for the first time in my life.
God's love. God's grace. It changed me.
I didn't happen all at once. But over the last few years, God's unconditional Love and Grace has fill the hole in my soul with self-worth. It has driven out the fear of rejection that gripped me and drove my life for so long. And it has brought meaning and direction back into my life.
Now I have to admit that now and then – but less so with each passing day – I fall back into the old pattern. That fear of rejection rears it's ugly head, and I find myself trying to please other, or losing site of His grace and trying to please God. This is disruptive and, sometimes, destructive, but it always ends up with me waking up to the truth. That God will never leave me, reject me, or forsake me; no matter how bad I mess things up.
So bottom line, perfect love drives out all fear (1 John 4:18) – including the fear of rejection. And even thought I have been rejected by and have rejected the world, I have found a love, in Jesus – the Christ, the very son of God – that is greater than the world (John 16:33).
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