It is more appealing and less stressful to find our mission in life by simply listening to God and hearkening unto His voice. Some of the ways He speaks to us as mentioned before are through the Bible, through His Spirit, His Ministers, our family members, friends, and even through strangers that He brought across our paths. He also speaks to us through dreams and visions.
Unfortunately, some individuals will not adhere to God’s will because they’re either not aware of those basic resources for finding out His purpose, misguided, or simply disobedient, afraid or indecisive. God is then left to utilize another alternative. He has to use what I’ll call His secret agent: rejection.
Please don’t take that out of context. God does not hurt you to help you. He heals your hurt and uses it to help you. Satan is the one who loves to see you hurt, miserable, and disenchanted. He is the one who abused you. He’s the culprit behind every form of pain and suffering (John 10:10). He’s the one who loves to see you wallow in a low self-esteem, anguish, guilt, and regret. He condemns you. He makes you feel that you are good for nothing and that you’ll not amount to anything.
He manifests His hatred for you through individuals, some of whom might be, or might have been, church folks, your coworkers, friends, spouse, significant other, or family members. The devil carries out his schemes against you through some of your builders—individuals who were supposed to build you up, but they knocked you down, stepped on and over you, and left you for dead. They rejected you.
Notwithstanding, through their dismissal, God delivered you out of their lives so that he can treat the pain they inflicted on you and give you a “treat.” Out of ignorance, fear, lack of faith, or no fault of your own, you got involved with the wrong folks. But, through things not working out with them, God worked you out of their lives so that you can undertake His work.
I mentioned that I believe that rejection is God’s secret agent. For the sake of clarity, I believe rejection, in itself, is the devil’s agent. However, the secret is that God gets it to work in our best interest.
If you’ve watched spy movies or programs on television about law enforcement trying to apprehend a suspect or a criminal organization, you’ll notice that a prominent tactic that the investigators use is to try to catch a member of the organization and get him to snitch on his employer. The same holds true in movies about international espionage. A terrorist group sends a spy to gather intelligence about a country’s defense and technology to use the information to attack and destroy the country. Oftentimes, the targeted nation’s intelligence agency is already aware of the imminent attack and the spy. Either, they capture the spy and get him to spill the beans on the terrorist organization, or they just monitor the spy by bugging the individual’s hideout, vehicle, and belongings. In so doing, they are tracking the terrorist’s activities, gathering intelligence about who the spy works for, and how the enemy is planning to attack their country.
That way, they are not only protecting themselves, but also counteracting what their enemy is trying to do to them. Sometimes, unfortunately, the targeted country was attacked but able to apprehend the suspect and, through him, gather information that helps them arrest and prosecute the culprits as well as prevent and diffuse other attacks.
Similarly, rejection is God’s snitch. It is the bad guy that God uses for a good purpose. Rejection was the devil’s agent, but the secret is that God exploited it as Satan’s traitor. In other words, what the devil assigned to bring you down, God reassigns to bring you up. What the devil designed to make you bitter, God redesigns to make you better.
God uses rejection like 007. Bible scholars have revealed that the number “7” is God’s number of perfection or completion. To complete simply means to finish or get the job done. When all else has failed to help you find and fulfill your purpose, God employs 007 to get the job done! The job is to get you to accomplish God’s plan for your life.
1. O. J. Toks, Rejected for a Purpose (Paoli, PA: Elevator Group Faith, 2010), 18-20.