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Sometimes we need a new name. God changed the names of some significant people in the Bible: Abram and Saul and Jacob and Simon, to name a few. He changed their names because he was setting them in a new direction, changing more than their names. He was changing their attitudes, their priorities, their characters. And you know, I think God probably wants to change our names sometimes, too.
We’ve talked about changing your name from Bitter to Joyful, from Anxious to Peaceful, from Discouraged to Delivered. Here’s another name that needs to be changed:
Is your name Rejected?
Have people hurt you and disappointed you? So many have experienced significant rejection from parents, from siblings, from mates, from children, from friends, from employers. Sometimes those rejections are blatant, sometimes subtle, but in every case they are painful.
If you’ve been living with the name of Rejected lately—or maybe for many years—God really wants you to know that you are Accepted. Your new name is Accepted. When we become new creations in Christ, we are accepted in Christ Jesus, the Beloved, and nothing can ever separate us from Jesus and his love for us.
I think of a woman who experienced subtle rejection from her mother all her life, as her mother almost daily told her that she was an unplanned and unwanted child. She reminded her over and over again that her birth had greatly complicated her mother’s life and made her unhappy. It was the kind of rejection that wasn’t obvious to others, but it was there all the time. But when she came to know the love of Jesus and realized that she was truly accepted in him, it was life-changing for her. She lived her remaining years basking in the glow that Jesus loved and accepted her, and she’s with him now, no doubt still basking in that love
Psalm 66:20: Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me!
1 Peter 2:4-5: As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
If you’ve been living with the name Rejected, God wants to call you Accepted, starting now!