When you’re being bullied, it can feel like your world is shutting down. Abusers have a way of making you feel as if there’s no escape. They make you doubt yourself, your view of reality, and your hope. Faith may not remove bullying, but it can give you solid reasons for hope when everything around you tells you to despair.
Job’s example can help. He describes the brutal reality of personal rejection:
“My relatives have failed me, my close friends have forgotten me.” (Job 19:14)
“My breath is strange to my wife, and I am a stench to the children of my own mother.” (Job 19:17)
“All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me.” (Job 19:19)
It’s clear that Job understands the kinds of rejection that we face in this life. Consider how his faith helped to sustain him in his darkest days.
1. Put your hope in the Judge who offers final justification
Like many victims of abuse, Job couldn’t do anything to change the minds of the people who bullied him. With only their opinions against his own, he might have lost his mind or sunk into depression. Instead, he trusted in God’s assessment of his situation. In Job 16:19, he says, “Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high.” If people’s voices are crushing you, you need a louder and truer voice to counteract them. Job trusts in God to provide that.
Can you see how it would change your perspective on people’s condemnation and judgment if you believed that there’s a God who sees you and loves you? When His words and His approval become your focus, the other voices in your life begin to lose their power.
2. Put your hope in the Redeemer who will stand up for you
Another statement of hope that Job gives us is in Job 19:25. It says, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.” A redeemer was a close relative who stepped in when family members could not help themselves—buying back lost property, freeing relatives from slavery, or defending their rights. Even when everyone stood against him, Job believed that God would act as His Redeemer.
The people who should be our redeemers often aren’t willing to pay the price. Job’s hope was that God would. Later in Scripture, God promised that He would send a Redeemer to his people (Isaiah 59:20). Those promises were realized in Jesus (Ephesians 1:7). He gave his life to redeem us. He stood up for us when no one else could. And so when we face those times when it feels like everything and everyone is against us, we can rest our hope in Him.
3. Put your hope in the God who will welcome you into His presence
As you dig into the details of Job’s ordeal, it’s hard to imagine greater suffering. He endured it by clinging to a belief that he would one day meet God and be welcomed by Him. In Job 19:26-27, he says, “And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”
Job was supported by a future hope that was slim on the details. God hadn’t yet revealed how it would work. Clarity came with Jesus Christ. In John 11:25, He promised, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” Revelation 21:4 further adds, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
You can put up with a lot of rejection if you’re going home to someone who loves you. You can even deal with a lot of pain if you’re going home to someone who’ll comfort you. If you’ve put your trust in Jesus, that’s the homecoming that can fuel your hope. Make that your hope. Make God’s Words loud in your life. Believe that God’s on your side even when the circumstances don’t go your way. And reject the voices that would drown you in judgment or despair.
In awe of Him,
Paul
