A woman named Martha opened her home to (Jesus). She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”  Luke 10:38-42

Last time we saw how easy it is to fall into a sense of value-less-ness when our relationship with the Lord is not founded on our true identity in Him…the truth of His unconditional love for us, and His plan for our lives. Many sit on the sidelines (or don’t come to the game at all) because they haven’t got that foundation of identity in Jesus cleared up. It’s living out of rejection.

Another way rejection works is for people who have spiritual identity issues to become the star performer…they overcompensate (and you’ve probably seen this). They’re like Martha, trying to become all things to everyone and at the end of the day they’re so exhausted from meeting everyone else’s needs—they’ve been so kind to so many—that there’s nothing left and they become weary while doing good and lose heart (Gal 6:9).

This is what happens when we work hard, but we’re doing it out of a spirit of rejection, trying to drown our feelings of rejection in a sea of meeting needs, instead of loving people with the love of Jesus and living out His abundance within us (and that’s true rest-Mat 11:28).

True rest is not having to prove ourselves to anyone else—not even proving ourselves to ourselves—because we know in our hearts that we’re a child of God (1 Cor 4:3,4). True rest comes out of relationship. True rest sleeps through the storm because it knows who our Father is (Mk 4:38). True rest can leave the crowd in God’s hands and go up on a mountain alone to commune with our Father (Mat 14:23). And frankly, I don’t see that kind of rest as a common thing, even among Christians, to whom Jesus promised rest.

Understanding rejection is discovering what it is that we substitute for intimacy with Jesus. Because when all is said and done, we know we shouldn’t feel empty because we’re Christians, but we still do. We’re told that if we plug into a church we’ll belong—but we still feel rejected.

Rejection is a separator. When we feel rejection, we feel separated and that manifests itself in separation from others and separation from God. Separated people don’t feel close to God and often that really bothers them because they want to feel His presence. So they go the disciplines route: ‘I haven’t read the Bible enough’, ‘I haven’t prayed enough’, ‘I need to do this or to do that’, ‘I need to be at church meetings more often…’

Good things, but God doesn’t love us because we read our Bible. He loves us because He is love. So one way we deal with rejection is the high performance route. And the tagline that the enemy has put on us is ‘You have no value unless you perform for it.’

The trap in the church world is that people love to feel validated and fulfilled in their woundedness, so we give them a task to do and that becomes their identity, that becomes their only connection with God (or with others).

And so, serving in the church (which is often good) becomes a substitute for intimacy with God (which is always bad). And soon you have a whole church full of people who are busy doing stuff for God that He’s not all that impressed with (like Martha)—and it never seems to change the spiritual climate. Because He’s after hearts that long for relationship with Him (like Mary).

And that is the basis of our identity, our kindness, and our performance.