God, Father’s Wound, Rejection Mindset, & Identity

Satan loves to use the rejection mindset to prevent us from experiencing God’s love and subsequently a bold relationship with Him, by attacking our identity.

Our identity in Christ is that we are God’s children, perfectly loved by a perfect Abba Father. Because of justification, God will eternally love, totally forgive, and completely accept us, despite all our sins and imperfections. Because we will never be condemned or rejected, we can have a confident relationship with God and no longer have to be hypervigilant or hypersensitive to rejection.

When we have such a relationship with God and fully believe in our identity, including our ability to do all things through Christ, we can be a bright light for Jesus through our God-given dreams.

Stronghold Definition

“A stronghold is a satanic lie, a generational mindset, or a human wounding that you listened to long enough, believed strong enough, and owned deep enough that it has become part of your identity, and it has fortified itself in you and dictates your thoughts, beliefs, actions, and reactions. It is an unholy filter through which all thoughts pass; a stronghold is anything that has a strong hold on you.” (Pastor Steve Berger)

The Enemy’s Agenda Behind Strongholds

“From the moment you inhaled your first breath, there has been a very real Enemy surrounding you with lies about who you are. He hates you and the idea that you would ever discover your purpose. He works to confuse you, or at the very least confuse you, so you don’t discover what is true about you.

Here’s what you must know: the Enemy’s greatest threat is children of God knowing who they are. He knows how powerful your life is and how important your choices are, so he is on a mission to make sure you don’t find out as well.

He knows you are not unloved. He just wants you to think you are.

He knows you are not purposeless. He just wants you to think you are.

To be clear, the Enemy cannot change who we are. He doesn’t have that kind of power. His best plan is to make you doubt who we are. He knows that if we discover who we really are, we will start to live it out confidently. And the children of God living out their purpose poses the greatest threat to his plan. This is what he’s afraid of.” (Hosanna Wong,, You Are More Than You’ve Been Told)

Stronghold: Rejection Mindset

A rejection mindset results as a person “consistently perceives, anticipates, and overreacts to social exclusion or disapproval”. From the father’s wound, where an individual experienced rejection wounds from experiencing rejection from their earthly father during childhood, a rejection mindset forms to protect themselves from future rejection, leading to hypersensitivity and hypervigilance in relationships, even when there is no legitimate threat of experiencing rejection.

Because of the rejection mindset, many Christians with a father’s wound fear “God is a rejecting and condemning father, just as their unloving earthly father was to them; therefore, God cannot be trusted.” Satan uses our fears of experiencing rejection and condemnation to deter us from being a light for Jesus by attacking our identity and subsequently preventing us from fully experiencing the Father’s love. Not receiving His love fully curbs our abiding in the Spirit, which is essential to receiving Christ’s power to do all things, including fulfilling our purpose. When we don’t trust God’s goodness, we may struggle to trust God’s deliverance from adversity, which can make it difficult to achieve our purpose.

Believe in the truth of your identity, not the lies of your father’s wound

Those who struggle with a rejection mindset are likely to have a misplaced identity. Your identity in Christ is not based upon performance, but that you are God’s child, perfectly loved by God.

“Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God” (1 John 3:1)

GOD’S TRUE VIEW OF YOU: In Christ . . .

1. I AM COMPLETELY ACCEPTED!

“You have been CHOSEN by God himself!” 1 Peter 2:9 (LB)

• BECAUSE GOD CHOSE ME BEFORE EVERYTHING!

“He chose us in him before the creation of the world, to be holy and blameless in his sight by his love.” Ephesians 1:4

• BECAUSE JESUS MADE ME ACCEPTABLE!

“Jesus treated us much better than we deserve. He made us acceptable to God and gave us the hope of eternal life.” Titus 3:7 (CEV)

2. I AM EXTREMELY VALUABLE!

“You are a HOLY nation, a people BELONGING to God!” 1 Peter 2:9

“You are a people holy to the Lord your God . . . his treasured possession.” Deuteronomy 7:6 (NIV)

God says: “You are precious to me.” Isaiah 43:4 (TEV)

• BECAUSE GOD IS MY FATHER!

“Look at the birds . . . God feeds them and you are far more valuable to Him than any birds!” Luke 12:24

• BECAUSE JESUS GAVE HIS LIFE FOR ME!

“You have been bought and paid for by Christ, so you belong to him . . .” 1 Corinthians 7:23 (LB)

3. I AM ETERNALLY LOVED!

“Once you were not a people, but now you are the peopleof God.” 1 Peter 2:10

“I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.” Jeremiah 31:3 (NLT)

• BECAUSE GOD IS LOVE!

“God’s love is eternal and his faithfulness lasts forever.” Psalm 100:5 (TEV)

4. I AM TOTALLY FORGIVEN!

“At one time you did not know God’s mercy, but now you have received his mercy.” 1 Peter 2:10b (TEV)

“There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1

• BECAUSE IT IS GOD’S NATURE TO FORGIVE

“I am the God who forgives your sins, and I do this because of who I am. I will not hold your sins against you.” Isaiah 43:25 (TEV)

• BECAUSE JESUS PAID FOR MY SINS

“For by the blood of Christ we are set free, that is, our sins are forgiven. How great is the grace of God!” Ephesians 1:7 (TEV)

5. I AM FULLY CAPABLE!

“You are royal priests . . . chosen to tell about the wonderful acts of God, who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” 1 Peter 2:9 (NCV)

“The capacity we have comes from God; it is he who made us capable of serving the new covenant . . .”2 Corinthians 3:5b-6 (TEV)

• BECAUSE CHRIST LIVES IN ME

“I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:13

(This is Rick Warren’s produced material I found on the Internet)

Because of justification, every Christian is always eternally loved, totally forgiven, and completely accepted by God. Since Christ’s life was the payment for our adoption, we are extremely valuable. We are fully capable through Christ to do everything our purpose requires. That is how God views all His children. When rejection tells us otherwise, we must take captive those thoughts and replace those lies with truth.

Justification: “God Will Never Condemn His Children”

“Justification is the sovereign act of God whereby He declares righteous the believing sinner while he or she is still in a sinning state”. (Chuck Swindoll)

Justification is the forgiveness of sins: After we commit a sin, God must decide how He views the transgression. Justification states: “God declares us righteous while we are still in a sinning state.” This means the Judge will always declare the Christian “righteous”, in spite of any and all sins committed.

God is a holy God who cannot simply dismiss sin. He doesn’t just “ignore” our transgression each time we commit it; the Judge does the same thing every time we sin: God remembers that Jesus paid the penalty for that sin, determines that Christ’s payment on the cross is sufficient payment for the transgression, and chooses to pardon the sinner.

Justification is the gift of righteousness: God also chooses to impute (put in its place) righteousness (and right standing between God and the Christian) into the “moral account ledger” every time the Christian sins. Rather than just refusing to impute our sins to our “account’, God’s grace also places “Christ’s perfect record of obedience” to our “account.” Years after we committed that sin, God will look in His record books of our good and bad behavior, and He will not find that behavior recorded. In God’s eyes, when we sin, it’s almost as if we never committed it, as He chooses not to remember it.

Justification is God’s Acceptance of Christ Given to the Sinner: Because we are always forgiven, and God chooses to forget our sin and not put them into His record books, there is no reason for God to condemn or reject us, in spite of any or all of our transgressions. “Nothing can ever separate us from God’s love” (Romans 8:38-39)

Grace isn’t a license to sin, but we shouldn’t fear condemnation or rejection when we sin either. As Professor Joe Rigney once said, “We need to know sin is in our hearts, and we need to feel the ugliness of it, but then we must also remember that Jesus covers all of it.”

“O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me” (Psalm 139:1), Still You Love Me

God knows everything about you. He completely examines your heart. Everything bad about you, He knows. Still, He chose to love you anyway. So much so that our omniscient God chose His Son to die for you. Adopting you as His child was always His desire.

God is Love, and He is perfect in all ways; therefore, He is perfect love. God’s love is unchanging, unconditional, and eternal; based upon who He is and not what we have done. His love can never be earned; it is always freely given, regardless of sins.

Omniscient God knew every flaw, fault, imperfection, and sin of yours before you were born. Nevertheless, He chose Christ to die for you, so you can become His beloved child, so He can totally accept and love you every day! You are indeed valuable to Him!

Living Free from Rejection

Jesus faced enormous rejection as a man during his life. Still, Jesus experienced freedom from rejection, realizing that “His value, identity, worth, and purpose rested in His relationship with Father God, not in man.” In Luke 3:21-22, God validated Christ’s identity: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well pleased”.

Through justification, we receive the same identity and validation of acceptance and worth from Abba Father that Jesus received from Him. When we firmly know our identity in our hearts, that we are perfectly loved by Father God, we don’t have to fear experiencing the sting of rejection. We should daily listen to the “voice of Abba Father”, not the “voice of your imperfect earthly father”.

To fully overcome the stronghold of rejection, your spirit inside you must fully believe you are completely accepted, loved, and appreciated by God, contrary to what your father’s wound and rejection mindset told you in the past. You must challenge old beliefs learned from the experiences of your earthly father in what they portray about your Heavenly Father, and choose to believe in the truth that God is a perfect father, demonstrated by His grace, while we were enemies to Him. God had His Son die so we can become His children.

“When the rejection lens gets taken off, a whole new vision opens up. We become free to let our true identities shine through authentically, with less drama and little torment. We become free to love without any conditions or toxic attachments. In addition, the greatest gift of being free from rejection is that we can truly live as ourselves” (Mark DeJesus).

“When a rejection mindset is recognized and healed, we can enter a whole new world of freedom.” (Mark DeJesus).

The Enemy uses the rejection mindset and the father’s wound, hoping to separate us from God’s love and to make us believe we have nothing valuable to offer to this world through our purpose. But, when you believe in the truth of your identity and that God is a perfect Father, then His perfect love will cast out your fears of rejection, and when we also believe “we can do all things through Christ, we can become “more than conquerors through Christ”, including over our rejection mindset and father’s wound, and be a bright light for Jesus through our God-given dreams.

Sources:

https://kingdomwinds.com/sermon-mind-wars-the-stronghold-of-rejection

https://gracethrufaith.com/topical-studies/spiritual-life/5-things-you-should-know-about-how-god-sees-you