Joyce Meyer - Defying a Culture of Rejection - Part 1

Ginger Stache: Welcome. We're so glad you're here with us today. How do you handle rejection? Rejection can be incredibly painful. We all want to be accepted and when we are not, it can take us down some very difficult roads. And it's universal. All of us will face it at one time or another. So, for these next two days, Joyce, Erin Cluley, Lisa Bevere, and I are going to share our own experiences with rejection and give you some different ways to handle it. This discussion from our talk it out podcast is insightful and practical. I hope you really enjoy it.

Ginger Stache: Hi everyone. Are you ready to talk it out? This is gonna be a really good episode. We are here to talk through the real things of life with our girlfriends and we don't hold anything back. We are so glad that you are here with us. I'm Ginger Stache with Erin Cluley, Joyce Meyer.

Joyce Meyer: Oh yeah.

Ginger Stache: Yay, Joyce.

Joyce Meyer: No. Thank you for letting me come.

Ginger Stache: And our special friend, Lisa Bevere is here with us, once again.

Joyce Meyer: Yay, Lisa!

Ginger Stache: Lisa, we had so much fun last time. Thank you for being, thank you for, you know, not leaving. Thank you for staying here.

Lisa Bevere: No, like I just planted on the sofa.

Erin Cluley: Can't get her off of it.

Ginger Stache: Yes, thanks for being on our beautiful pink couch.

Joyce Meyer: I really like your shirt.

Lisa Bevere: Thank you.

Joyce Meyer: I like animal print stuff.

Lisa Bevere: Thank you. There you go.

Ginger Stache: See, I like this affirmation. This is all good, because...

Joyce Meyer: Let's just build each other up.

Ginger Stache: Yes, exactly.

Joyce Meyer: Let's take one minute and build each other up before we start the show. What do you like about me, Erin?

Ginger Stache: I love that you start with something for you.

Joyce Meyer: What do you like about me?

Erin Cluley: That, I like that about you, so much. You tell me what it is. You tell it like it is.

Joyce Meyer: I love you because you're just such a hard worker and you try so hard, but I'm trying to get you not to try so hard.

Erin Cluley: You are, you're getting better at it, I'm almost there.

Ginger Stache: That's really nice.

Joyce Meyer: Yeah, thank you.

Ginger Stache: What do you wanna say nice about me?

Joyce Meyer: Well, I just think you're wonderful. I don't know what I would do without you. I would be crazy if I didn't have you working for me.

Erin Cluley: We'd all be crazy without her.

Joyce Meyer: Yeah.

Ginger Stache: Well, I love you all, I just think you're fabulous.

Joyce Meyer: Yeah, right? And Lisa's just so cool.

Ginger Stache: Yes.

Joyce Meyer: Isn't it great to have Lisa with us?

Erin Cluley: Yes.

Ginger Stache: And you've always been so kind.

Lisa Bevere: Oh, good.

Ginger Stache: I love that. You're comfortable and you're anointed and inspired, but you're also just kind and easy to be around.

Joyce Meyer: You're easy to have. What do you like about me?

Lisa Bevere: Yeah, I was gonna say, I love that you know how to ask for what you need.

Erin Cluley: Yes.

Joyce Meyer: Good.

Lisa Bevere: I think a lot of people don't have permission or clarity on those kind of things. And you knew what you needed to do to actually ask for what you needed to fulfill what God called on you. And I love that you pioneered when everybody resisted you.

Joyce Meyer: Thank you, I love you for loving me. Now let's start the show.

Lisa Bevere: And Ginger, I love that you're nice.

Joyce Meyer: We've just shown everybody how to have friends.

Ginger Stache: Yeah, this is glorious. What a wonderful example.

Joyce Meyer: If you make people feel good, they will love you. They may not remember what you said to them, but they will always remember how you made them feel.

Erin Cluley: So true.

Ginger Stache: Yeah, which is a great example, because today we are talking through what it is to live in this culture of rejection, how to deal with rejection. And the fact that it's not if you will have to face it, it's when and how you will do it. So, we're gonna be talking about that today and hopefully giving people a whole lot of very practical ways to handle it. We just really are in a place where rejection is rampant. It's everywhere. What are your thoughts just about rejection and culture, in general, before we get into some of the specifics on ways that we face rejection and how we kind of deal with it.

Joyce Meyer: Well, you know, one of the things that I discovered coming up in ministry as a woman, and you know, when God promotes you, he promotes you, I believe, in stages and degrees. So, like, I taught home Bible studies five years, and of course, when I went into ministry, I was rejected by my friends and family, and the church I was in: I got asked to leave my church. So, in order to go ahead and do what God wanted me to do, I had to get beyond that rejection.

Then, after those five years, I went to work at a church in St. Louis. And I was ordained there. My pastor ordained me after a while. And then I got some more rejection from that from people who didn't believe a woman should be ordained. And then after five years there, God called me to take my ministry, "Go north, south, east, and west". Once again, I experienced a lot of rejection. "You're just full of yourself. You're full of pride. You're", you know, "Full of ambition. You shouldn't be doing this. You should be content where you're at," and blah, blah, blah.

And so, I found that when I went on television, every time that God tried to promote me, it took me a while to realize what was going on, I got some kind of major rejection. And it didn't come from out here from people I didn't care. It came from people that meant a lot to me that I cared what they thought. So, I just wanna tell you, if you wanna do what God wants you to do and live your life the way you feel that you're supposed to live it, you will have to confront and deal with rejection and get to the point where you really know that you don't have to have those people in order to live your life and be happy.

Erin Cluley: That's good.

Ginger Stache: Yeah, that's really important, especially when it is people that you care about. I mean, that's the hardest. It's hard from anybody actually, but it's very hard when it's people that you thought were your friends, the people that you thought had your back, and you're caught off guard, you're surprised.

Joyce Meyer: I just really wanted people to know how the devil uses it. And that it is a tool of the devil to keep you from going forward. Haven't you found that, Lisa?

Lisa Bevere: Absolutely, and I would agree with you that every single time you try to take territory...

Joyce Meyer: Right.

Lisa Bevere: You will get questioned.

Joyce Meyer: Right.

Lisa Bevere: I remember when I wrote my first book. Of course, it was a very different time. And now everybody's like, "Just wrote the first page". You know, "Signed the contract". I was like hiding it.

Joyce Meyer: Yeah.

Lisa Bevere: I did not, I thought, I was hearing so much from the enemy, like, "What do you have to say? Why would anybody read..."?

Joyce Meyer: "Who do you think you are"?

Lisa Bevere: "Who do", exactly. And yet, just moving beyond that. And yet, as you were talking, Joyce, I thought about how it said that Jesus came to his own and they did not receive him.

Ginger Stache: Yeah.

Joyce Meyer: They hated him without a cause.

Lisa Bevere: Without a cause. There was complete rejection. And the rejection of his own opened the door to us all. And so, God will actually use rejection to open a bigger door. So, every time you said, "Okay, man, I wish they would have seen this. I wish they would..."

Joyce Meyer: But you have to move past it.

Lisa Bevere: You have to keep going past it because if not, you're trapped by the fear of man. And the fear of man is a snare, and you'll just keep going in the same circle. And so, you have to say, "I'm gonna keep moving forward with this". When I wrote my very first book, I remember I wanted to bring some of my family into some of the truth. And they were like, "You can't just say that. That just", and I remember, I was like, "But they're not", my own people! My own people are saying, this isn't right! "Who do I go to"? And God said, "I'm calling you out into a life of faith. You cannot drag them in. You go where I tell you to go". And it's an act of obedience. And every time I felt any kind of promotion, you have to choose between obeying the fear of man or trembling in the fear of God.

Joyce Meyer: I heard a preacher saying, I really liked it. He said, "At every bus stop, somebody gets off".

Lisa Bevere: Wow, wow.

Joyce Meyer: And I thought that was so good. You know, it's like you...

Ginger Stache: It is. Yeah, that's deep.

Joyce Meyer: You know, you're like...

Erin Cluley: Yeah, I'm still thinking about it.

Joyce Meyer: People, I mean, there are people that I thought would be with me forever that...

Lisa Bevere: Got off on the second bus stop.

Joyce Meyer: Yeah.

Lisa Bevere: But then people get on too.

Joyce Meyer: But then people get on.

Lisa Bevere: And they're waiting, if you had gotten off the bus...

Joyce Meyer: People get off, and people get on, and they're waiting. And to be honest, sometimes people are just for a season. A lot of times, they're just for a season. And we have to not feel rejected because somebody doesn't wanna stay with us forever. We have to be confident enough to let people go and to bless them in their going if that's what they wanna to do. We've had a lot of people leave over the years and a lot of people that have stayed 20 and 30 years. But, you know, sometimes people leave, they just don't have anything against you, they just wanna go do something else, and we just bless them. I'm not gonna get into that, you know, "Well, why are you leaving"? And "I'm mad because you're leaving". And I know it's hard for pastors when somebody leaves their church. And some pastors feel so rejected when somebody leaves. You need to bless 'em when they go. And it's interesting how many times people will leave. And if you let them leave the right way, they'll end up coming back.

Ginger Stache: Yeah. Well, here's the thing too. When you begin to sense rejection, when you begin to really experience it in your life, it sinks into you, and you begin to see rejection everywhere. So, sometimes, we accept rejection that is not even that.

Joyce Meyer: That's right.

Ginger Stache: It's like you said, it's people just who need to move on, who God is calling to something else. But we take it, because our heart has been wounded, it seeps into those cracks of the wound, and we see rejection everywhere we look.

Erin Cluley: You wear like a lens of rejection.

Ginger Stache: Exactly.

Erin Cluley: That's how you see everything.

Ginger Stache: Exactly, yeah.

Joyce Meyer: When you have a root of rejection in your life. You take so many things as rejection that aren't, and I've got a great story to tell about that. Dave, I was out playing golf with him one day, and he was really playing bad. And so, I kept putting my hand on his shoulder, patting him, and you know, and he pushed it away, and he said, "Don't do that".

Lisa Bevere: "Don't patronize me".

Joyce Meyer: And I felt so rejected and hurt. And God told me later, he said, "Don't get mad at him because you're trying to give him what you need, instead of finding out what he needs". And another thing that I discovered was, Dave and I just seemed like we couldn't talk about anything without fighting. And God finally showed me that if Dave didn't agree with me, I felt rejected. And he said, "You have to understand that just because somebody rejects your opinion or your idea, doesn't mean they're rejecting you". To me, I think that's a big point. Because a lot of people, if you don't agree with everything say, and do, and think, and want, then you're rejecting them. And I've told people, like, we've got a lot of creative people here, and creative people can be real protective of what they've created.

Ginger Stache: Nuh-uh.

Lisa Bevere: They're very sensitive.

Erin Cluley: I don't know what she's talking about. Not talking about us.

Joyce Meyer: You know, I've tried to tell, I don't have to deal with it anymore. But when I used to have to deal with, you know, correcting somebody or telling 'em, "That's not really gonna work". You know, "You're gonna", they get all bent out of shape. And I tried to tell people, you know, it's not, "Direction is not correction. And I didn't hire you to do what you like, I hired you to do what I like," you know? And so just, you know, "If you can't give me what I like without getting upset, then it's not gonna work," so.

Ginger Stache: Yeah, well, I think too, there's so much comfort in realizing that Jesus understood all of this. He faced so much rejection.

Joyce Meyer: Constantly.

Ginger Stache: He had to, you know, in very different ways than we do.

Joyce Meyer: Imagine, betrayed.

Ginger Stache: Oh, my goodness, so much!

Joyce Meyer: Denied.

Ginger Stache: We're gonna start with Joyce sharing just a little bit of a teaching on how much...

Joyce Meyer: Oh, I thought we had started.

Ginger Stache: Okay, we're gonna jump in here in the middle, with a little bit of teaching about how much Jesus really understands what it is that you're feeling.

Joyce Meyer: Jesus' family did not understand him. His brothers basically were ashamed to be associated with him. They were like, "Well at least if you're gonna go around saying all these things, how 'bout doing a few miracles"? Yeah. My family didn't understand. I mean, my immediate family did, but not Dave's family, not my extended family. Nobody understood. And you know what? I believe that one of the greatest, one of the number one tools that satan uses to keep people from fulfilling the call of God on their life is rejection. There's no pain that's any worse than rejection. We just crave and want acceptance.

So, I love Ephesians that says that we are "Made acceptable in the beloved". God accepts you today. He loves you. Let's look at Isaiah 53, verse 4. I had not looked at this for a long time, and I opened this up this morning and looked at this, and I thought, "Wow, that scripture, my"! Now keeping in mind that everything Jesus did, he did it for us. He bore it for us. He took our place. This is a powerful scripture. Isaiah 53:3, "He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness: and like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we did not appreciate his worth or have any esteem for him".

Wow. He gets us. And he bore all those things for us so in him we could go through those things and not be destroyed by them. Did you hear me? We don't necessarily get to avoid all those things, but the truth is the Bible says that when people reject me, in effect they're rejecting Christ because he's the one who sent me. See, I don't know if you know it or not, but God thinks you're a pretty cool person and he loves to hang out with you. He never gets tired of seeing your face.

Ginger Stache: I love that reassurance. First of all, that we are understood, that he gets us, he knows what we're going through, but he also is the one that we can always count on to never reject us, to never turn his back on us. All those things that we're feeling, we can give to him. And he understands it.

Joyce Meyer: There's a scripture in Luke 10:16 that says, "If they reject you, they've rejected me".

Ginger Stache: Right.

Joyce Meyer: So.

Ginger Stache: So, let's talk about some specific things that bring up rejection in people. Like we said, everybody has to deal with it, whether it's something that has been something maybe that happened when you were really young and it comes back time after time when other people do something. Like you were talking about, actually, Joyce, with if Dave would disagree with you, it would come back to that rejection.

Joyce Meyer: Everything felt like, if I was not getting overt acceptance, like really aggressive acceptance, then I automatically took it as rejection, because what God showed me is "You have a root of rejection in your life". And it got started in my childhood from the sexual abuse and from my mom not protecting me and, you know, just growing up feeling weird my whole life because I had to hide all this and couldn't have any friends. And so, I had a root. And, you know, it's why sometimes people, they keep trying to clip off the fruit of their bad behavior, but they never get to the root of what the problem really is, so it just pops up somewhere else. And let's just give a real basic definition of rejection so people get it. "To be cast aside, to be thrown away as having no value".

Erin Cluley: And that's our greatest fear, I think, that that's gonna happen. "You're gonna tell me, I'm not good enough and I don't belong, wherever it is that I would like to be".

Joyce Meyer: And it turns into, like Lisa said, the fear of man. And I was thinking about Saul because I've been reading 1 Samuel. And he disobeyed God and lost his ministry because he was told not to do something until the prophet got there, until Samuel got there. And he went ahead and did it anyway because he said "The people were scattering".

Lisa Bevere: Yeah, he felt compelled.

Joyce Meyer: "And I was afraid of the people".

Lisa Bevere: Well, I loved what you said earlier in the day where you said, "God didn't raise children to never hear the word, 'no'".

Joyce Meyer: Yeah.

Lisa Bevere: I mean, like there is "Noes".

Joyce Meyer: Right.

Lisa Bevere: And like, I've heard people say, "Rejection is redirection". Sometimes. Sometimes, it's a test to see whether you'll continue to stand.

Joyce Meyer: Right.

Lisa Bevere: You know, like if you had redirected every time you were rejected, that would have been a problem. You would have course corrected 50 times and maybe not be helping the people that you're helping right now. And I do think that there's just so much going on right now where people are actually way more open to clarity. I think the waters are so muddy that when you have a clarion call, people are like, "Thank you". The gossip thing I thought was, I was a pastor's wife, and so people, the prayer gossip. You know...

Lisa Bevere: "I'm not..."

Joyce Meyer: "I'm only telling you this so you can pray".

Lisa Bevere: Yeah, and then, God actually showed me, even though I would not answer them back in turn, God was like, "You're participating by listening". And so, he said, "Every time you participate through listening, you gotta call them back and say, 'will you forgive me for...'"

Joyce Meyer: For listening.

Lisa Bevere: And they're like, "Oh, you didn't say anything". And I'm like, "But I participated". So, even with that sometimes, just repenting for our portion is huge, you know, or sharing. So, I was like, "Listen, I've really been struggling with..." A, b and c. I had a wwf wrestler that lived down the street from me.

Ginger Stache: How fun, yeah.

Lisa Bevere: Well, and he was just kind of like the one they beat up, you know, like he was trying to get in, he was just always getting beat up.

Ginger Stache: He was practicing out in his yard.

Lisa Bevere: Yeah, exactly. And his wife would tell him, "Don't talk to them. Those are Bible thumpers down the street".

Joyce Meyer: Bible thumpers.

Lisa Bevere: "Those are the Bible thumpers". And so, and like, he's six, four, and then my husband, I'd be like, "Don't stand near him. You look really small". He's a massive guy. And I knew that she was like this... With us. And we both had babies at the same time. And I remember, I just hadn't seen her. So, I didn't even know her name. So, I just wrote a little note and I just said, "God is in control". Just a little flower and a note and dropped it off. Her mom answered the door and it's like, "I'm the Bible thumper". And I just like handed it off. And do you know...? Just kindness, it ended up opening the door where she started walking down. And I just remember the Holy Spirit saying, "Just stand where you are and open up your arms". And she fell into my arms. And she said, "That little note that 'God is in control' is what kept me alive". And I'm still friends with her to this day. And her husband's still wrestling.

Erin Cluley: That's amazing.

Joyce Meyer: Kindness is really, like random acts of kindness, especially, people cannot understand. I have had some amazing experiences with doing things for people that I don't know, you know, for no reason that they can figure out. And then when they finally get around to asking me, telling them, "Well," you know, "God's done a lot for me, and I felt like he wanted me to bless you, let you know that you're loved". And people are just like, "Wow, you're the kindest person I've ever met". And people in the world need kindness. There's so much harshness out there. And can you imagine, Lisa? I tell people this all the time, "If every Christian would get out in the world and act like one, it would change the world".

Lisa Bevere: Because kindness is not endorsement. Kindness is opening to repentance. Kindness is what drew me to the heart of God. And so, I think Christians are like, "If I'm kind, I'm endorsing". No, if you're kind, you're acting like God, because God shows his kindness. He rains down his goodness on the just and the unjust. And so, I'm 100% in agreement with you.

Joyce Meyer: It's the kindness of God that brings people to repentance. And I agree, you can be kind, but then...

Lisa Bevere: Without compromising.

Joyce Meyer: Without agreeing.

Ginger Stache: Yeah.

Joyce Meyer: You know.

Ginger Stache: You know, there are a lot of dangers too with when we felt rejection. Because one of the things that we often will try to do is protect our hearts. And so, in doing that, you know, that's when we have that attitude like "You can't reject me because I'm gonna reject you first".

Lisa Bevere: Sabotage

Ginger Stache: Yeah. And then, we end up with so much more than we were ever ending up with.

Joyce Meyer: We have walls to protect ourselves.

Ginger Stache: Exactly. And that can be so dangerous. And then the other thing is we tend to try to protect ourselves from rejection by pride. Like, if I can try to puff myself up, then people won't reject me because I'll seem better than I really am. And that is really when we face more rejection, because people can see right through who we really are. And so, pride is never the thing that protects us. It truly is only the kindness that you're talking about, the love that only comes through God in a complete acceptance in who I am in Christ, no matter what somebody else does to me. Because that rejection is real sometimes. You know, it hurts. So, what are some of the areas that you guys have dealt with, with rejection or felt rejected?

Erin Cluley: I mean, I was just thinking it really is a daily battle, I think, because you can...

Joyce Meyer: You get rejected every day, here?

Erin Cluley: All the time. All the time, Joyce. Let's talk about it. No, I think it's that lens of seeing things through rejection. It can easily creep in. And so, if like, if I'm in a meeting and I say, I have an idea, and someone doesn't like it, I can feel myself say, "Oh, well, they must think I'm an idiot," or "I'm not smart enough, so I don't belong here". So, I have to quickly say, "No, that's just a different opinion. It's okay that we don't go with my idea, that you're not rejecting me as a person". Even at home. I mean, it's just like you were saying, too, mike cannot agree with my opinion, that doesn't mean he rejects me as a person. That means he doesn't like my idea. So, I think it's a daily paying attention to those things, so, it doesn't like root inside of your heart and cause bitterness.

Joyce Meyer: You know, the more confidence you have, the better you feel about yourself, not in a haughty, prideful way, the less you will think you're being rejected.

Erin Cluley: Oh, absolutely.

Joyce Meyer: So, it really has a lot to do, the devil can't do that to you as much if you know who you are in Christ.