How many have been misunderstood a few times? It's a life experience! Come on, get used to it! Sometimes, God actually cranks it up a notch, and you've got all of it happening all at once! It's like nobody understands you; and now you're all alone - nobody even wants to talk to you. The phone that rang, and the texts that came, have all stopped. Now you are a reject!
That’s like a teenager's terror of being a reject. No matter what happens, I've got to not be a reject! I have to fit in! I must be accepted! No, you don't! You just need to go deeper into God. You need to obtain your identity, and your acceptance, through your connection to God - because it makes you secure, so then if people don't understand you, it's not a problem. If they reject you, it's not a problem. You're secure within, from the praise of people, or the criticism of people.
How on earth is God going to put that into your life? Think about it! Will we have an altar call, so you come up, and we can pray for understanding? No, no, no, it doesn't work like that! God sets up opportunities for you to be rejected, and misunderstood, to give you a chance to learn how to handle those things. You need to be the man (or woman) that God wants you to be! You should be saying: BRING IT ON GOD! Rather than… they don't like me - nobody spoke to me.
Well, did you speak to anyone? When you've got this issue of needing to be understood, or this issue of rejection, what you're doing is you're placing a demand on people, that they must come through for me. You - it's your job to understand me! It's your job to care for me! Listen, that's disempowering yourself! It’s not their job to do anything like that! It's your job to learn how to face rejection, and misunderstanding.
The one that really gets people is injustice... The message of injustice: it's not fair! I've heard my kids say that, many times. It's not fair! How many have said that? That's the message of injustice, when we're treated unfairly.
David had just gone out and defeated the major enemy that Israel had - and now they're rejecting him! That's not fair! He's gone out to war, fought a battle, and he comes back to the king… Oh, you should really understand me now, that I've got a king inside me, and you should really, really love me, and embrace me? Instead of that, Saul picks up a spear, and says: I'm going to stick that little boy!
Maybe people don't throw spears at you, but they do hurl words, and words can be like spears. They're like arrows, the Bible says, that come into you, and hurt you. How many of us can identify with being misunderstood, rejected and felt unwanted… and the injustice – it hasn’t been fair, how I've been treated? Is there anyone exempt from that? It’s part of life; and it's a part of life that you must experience, in order to grow, as a man or woman of God - and God is watching in that season, what you do.
The first thing that David did - the moment this thing came, and he realised that he was going to lose his life, if he stayed where he did. It’s what you might call a dysfunctional, abusive, environment, and he did the thing that all people should do in that situation – leave! He fled from it! God does not expect you to stay in an environment that is destructive to your potential in life. You need to position yourself in a place where you can grow, and move forward; so sometimes, we need to flee out of things. Sometimes, you've got to say no. If you're in a group, or in a crowd, sometimes they can be like dogs. They just turn on one, and bite, and devour, and put them down. If you're in that, you've got to get out of that crowd. That's not good for your health! There are times when you need to move away from situations.