Evangelist Joshua Orekhie Ministries

EJOM DAILY DEVOTIONAL:

October 24, 2026

REJECTION MAKES YOU STRONGER

OPENING SCRIPTURES

Psalm 27:10 (KJV): “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.”

1 Peter 2:4 (KJV): “To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious,”

Romans 8:31 (KJV): “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”

MEMORY VERSE

Psalm 118:22 (KJV): “The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.”

PRAISE AND WORSHIP

Sing any of your favourite songs.

Rejection Makes You Stronger – EJOM DAILY DEVOTIONAL: October 24, 2026

Beloved, rejection is one of the most painful experiences in life. It does not only hurt the body; it wounds the soul. And the deepest rejection often comes from the people you love, trust, respect or depend upon.

Sometimes the very people you are closest to are the ones who will turn their backs on you. The hand you held is the same hand that pushes you away. The door you thought would always be open to you is the same door that is shut in your face.

You may have been rejected in a relationship. You gave your heart, your time and your love, and one day the person simply walked away. You may have been denied an employment opportunity you were qualified for, and somebody with less ability was chosen ahead of you.

You may have been abandoned by friends who used to call you every day, and now they do not even reply your messages. You may have been excluded from a group you desperately wanted to belong to, and every time they gathered, your name was not on the list.

Rejection can leave you feeling disappointed, pained, embarrassed, lonely and uncertain about your worth. It makes you start asking questions you never asked before. What is wrong with me? Why do people always leave? Why am I never chosen? Am I not good enough?

But I want you to hear this. Being rejected does not mean you are worthless. The fact that people have rejected you does not mean God has abandoned you. Men may close their doors, but heaven has not closed its own. Your story is not over just because somebody walked out of it.

You may have been rejected so many times that you have started to believe you are under a curse. Everywhere you go, it is the same story. The interview goes well, and then the company calls someone else. The business or ministry looks promising, and then it suddenly ends.

You join a group, and before long you notice that they are avoiding you, they stopped talking to you. You are feeling bad about what you are experiencing. You left that same group to another group still the same outcome.

Beloved, let us be honest with ourselves. Sometimes people reject us because of our own attitude. It is not every rejection that comes from the village or from the enemy.

Some people are rejected because they are proud, harsh, rude, quarrelsome, unreliable or difficult to relate with. Some people talk too much, gossip too much, complain too much or argue too much.

Some people are always angry, always offended and always fighting. And after a while, people simply begin to avoid them. The Bible says, “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly” (Proverbs 18:24).

If everybody around you keeps leaving, before you blame witches, take a look in the mirror. Ask the Holy Spirit, “Lord, is there something in me that is pushing people away?” Ask a trusted friend to tell you the truth. Humility will save you years of unnecessary rejection.

If your rejection is coming from your character, the good news is that character can change. Allow the Holy Spirit to work on you. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22–23).

As the fruit of the Spirit grows in you, the doors that were shut because of your attitude will begin to open.

Some people are rejected not because they are bad, or wicked but because they are different and unique. There is something on them that others cannot simply understand or cannot stand.

Their anointing provokes envy, hatred, rejection and separation from others. Their gift exposes the hidden jealousy of others. Their light makes people in darkness uncomfortable.

Joseph’s brothers did not hate him because he stole from them. They hated him because of his dreams and his coat. “And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words” (Genesis37:8).

Saul did not reject David because David did anything wrong. David played music for him and fought his battles. Saul rejected him because the women sang, “Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7).

When Isaac began to prosper in Gerar, so much that he became very great, the Philistines envied him and filled his wells with earth. Then Abimelech said to him, “Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we” (Genesis 26:16). Isaac was sent away because of his blessing.

Jesus said, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you… but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:18–19).

Many people are rejected because of where they come from. Their family is poor, their parents are not known, their village is not respected, their tribe is looked down upon, or there is something about their birth that people use against them.

Jephthah was rejected because his mother was a harlot. His brothers said, “Thou shalt not inherit in our father’s house; for thou art the son of a strange woman” (Judges 11:2). He did nothing wrong; he was punished for his background.

When Philip told Nathanael about Jesus, Nathanael asked, “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46). Jesus Himself was looked down upon because of the town He grew up in.

Gideon said to the angel, “My family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house” (Judges 6:15). He had rejected himself because of his background before anyone else did.

Beloved, your background is not your boundary. God is not limited by your surname, your village or your family history. When you give your life to Christ, you receive a new identity.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The God who raised Jephthah from the land of Tob and made Gideon a mighty man of valour can lift you from your background into your destiny.

Beloved, if you are being rejected because of the grace upon your life, do not apologise for your anointing. Do not dim your light to make others comfortable and happy. Do not bury your gift so that people will accept you and relate with you.

Isaac did not stop digging wells; he moved on and kept digging until he found Rehoboth, and he said, “For now the LORD hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land” (Genesis 26:22). Keep digging. God will make room for you and connect you to a better person.

Beloved, rejection can come through several means. It does not always come from the same source, and it does not always mean the same thing.

If you want to overcome rejection, you must first understand where it is coming from, because the cure depends on the cause. Some rejection requires prayer, some requires repentance, some requires patience, and some simply requires you to move on

Some people are rejected because of how they look or because of a condition they are passing through. Leah was compared to her sister, and the Bible says, “Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favoured” (Genesis 29:17). Leah lived in the shadow of her sister’s beauty.

Mephibosheth was lame in both feet, and he saw himself so lowly that when King David called him, he said, “What is thy servant, that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am?” (2 Samuel 9:8).

Zacchaeus could not see Jesus because “he was little of stature” (Luke 19:3), and the crowd would not make way for him. Those with sickness, disability, poverty, childlessness, singleness at a certain age, or any visible struggle often face silent rejection.

But beloved, God does not see as man sees. “For man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). The same Leah who was not admired became the mother of Judah.

The same Mephibosheth who called himself a dead dog ate continually at the king’s table. The same Zacchaeus the crowd blocked was the one Jesus stopped for, looked up at, called by name and visited in his house. God sees you, and your condition is not your conclusion.

Some people are rejected because of their past mistakes. They have repented, they have changed, they have given their lives to Christ, but people still remember who they used to be.

When Saul of Tarsus was converted and came to Jerusalem to join the disciples, the Bible says, “they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple” (Acts 9:26). They remembered him as the persecutor. They could not believe God had changed him.

John Mark left Paul and Barnabas in the middle of a missionary journey, and when Barnabas wanted to take him again, Paul refused. Mark was rejected because of his past failure. The woman at the well was avoided by her community because of her history. She came to draw water at noon, when nobody else would be there.

Beloved, if you have truly repented, God does not hold your past against you. “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). People may take time to trust you again, and that is understandable.

Do not fight them. Keep walking in your new life, and let your fruit speak for you. Barnabas stood for Saul, and Saul became Paul the apostle. Barnabas gave Mark a second chance, and years later Paul said, “Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry” (2 Timothy 4:11). The people who rejected you because of your past will one day testify about your future.

Some people are rejected because they stand for God. They refuse to join in corruption at the office, so they are being excluded. They refuse to compromise in a relationship or in the deal, so they are rejected. They refuse to drink, cheat, lie or follow the crowd, so they are mocked and pushed aside.

Joseph refused to sleep with Potiphar’s wife, and he ended up in prison. Daniel refused to stop praying, and he was thrown into the lions’ den. The three Hebrew boys refused to bow, and they were thrown into the fiery furnace. Jeremiah spoke the truth, and he was thrown into a dungeon.

The Bible says, “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12). And Jesus said, “Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven” (Luke 6:22–23).

Beloved, if you are being rejected because of your righteousness, wear it as a badge of honour. Do not feel bad or compromise to be accepted. The prison led Joseph to the palace. The lions’ den led Daniel to greater promotion. The fire brought the Son of God into the furnace with the Hebrew boys. When you are rejected for righteousness, God will reward you openly.

Some people are rejected because somebody told lies about them. Before they even arrive, their name has already been spoiled. People they have never offended are already avoiding them because of what they heard.

Potiphar’s wife lied against Joseph, and Potiphar believed her without hearing Joseph’s side. David cried, “For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue. They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause” (Psalm 109:2–3).

Beloved, when lies have caused your rejection, do not waste all your energy defending yourself. Commit your case to God. “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn” (Isaiah 54:17). God will vindicate you. In time, the truth will come out, and the same people who believed the lies will see the hand of God upon your life.

Some people are rejected because they are considered too young, too old or simply because they are a woman. When God called Jeremiah, he said, “Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child” (Jeremiah 1:6). But God said, “Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee” (Jeremiah 1:7). Paul encouraged Timothy, “Let no man despise thy youth” (1 Timothy 4:12).

The daughters of Zelophehad were about to be excluded from their father’s inheritance because they were women. But they went before Moses and pleaded their case, and God Himself said, “The daughters of Zelophehad speak right” (Numbers 27:7). God gave them their inheritance.

Beloved, God is not limited by your age or your gender. If He has called you, He will equip you, and He will defend your place.

Beloved, I will not deceive you. There are times when rejection has a spiritual root. The Bible speaks of people who are hated without a cause (Psalm 69:4). There are evil marks the enemy places on people so that helpers avoid them and favour runs away from them.

As a deliverance minister, I have seen many people set free from this kind of bondage through prayer. But I must also tell you the truth: not every rejection is a curse.

Some rejection is simply people being people. Some rejection is God closing a wrong door. And some rejection is God preparing you for something greater. Do not label every closed door as witchcraft, and do not ignore it when the Holy Spirit tells you it is spiritual.

Take it to God in prayer, and let Him show you the source. Whatever the source, hear this: rejection is not God’s final verdict over your life. The psalmist declared, “When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up” (Psalm 27:10).

Even if the closest people in your life turn away, God steps in. He said through the prophet Isaiah, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee” (Isaiah 49:15).

Your mother may forget you, your friends may forget you, your employer may forget you, your lover may forget you, but God will not forget you. You are “accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:6). Men may reject you, but heaven has accepted you.

Beloved, rejection is so powerful that if you do not handle it well, it will destroy you from the inside. Some people have allowed rejection to defeat them. It has destroyed their confidence and damaged their trust in God.

They become bitter and frustrated. They withdraw from people. They stop trying. They abandon the dreams God gave them, because they are afraid of being rejected again.

Some people even begin to hate themselves. They look in the mirror and say, “If everybody is rejecting me, maybe I am the problem. Maybe I am ugly. Maybe I am not intelligent. Maybe I am not lovable. Maybe because I don’t have money” And little by little, the enemy uses rejection to convince them that they are nothing.

Rejection can make a gifted person look like they have nothing to offer. I have seen people who can sing, preach, design, teach, build and lead, but because they have been rejected so many times, they no longer believe they have anything inside them.

Rejection reduces them to nothing in their own eyes. They hide their gifts, sit at the back and wait for life to pass them by. That is exactly what the devil wants. He uses rejection to bury talents, silence voices and kill destinies.

But I have come to tell you this morning that you are not what rejection says you are. You are what God says you are. When you feel like the whole world is against you and nobody loves you, remember this: God still loves you.

“Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3). His love does not depend on your performance, your appearance or your popularity. His love is everlasting.

Beloved, if anyone understands rejection, it is Jesus. The Bible says, “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11).

His own townspeople in Nazareth were offended at Him and said, “Is not this the carpenter?” (Mark 6:3). They knew His family, so they could not see His glory.

Jesus said, “A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house” (Mark 6:4). His own brothers did not believe in Him.

One of His disciples betrayed Him. Another denied Him three times. The rest ran away. The crowd that shouted “Hosanna” later shouted “Crucify Him.” And on the cross He cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

So when you bring your rejection to Jesus, you are not bringing it to a stranger.

You are bringing it to Someone who has walked that road. And look at what God did with the rejected Son: “The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner” (Psalm 118:22).

The One the builders threw away became the most important stone in the whole building.

Beloved, the people who refused you are not the final judges of your value. You may be the stone the builders refused, but God is about to make you the head of the cornerstone

Sometimes the people who reject you today simply do not recognise what God has placed inside you. Human beings judge according to what they can see now, but God sees the complete picture of your life.

People look at your current condition, but God looks at your future. People judge your beginning, but God already knows your ending.

When Samuel came to the house of Jesse to anoint a king, Jesse brought out his sons one by one. Eliab came first, tall and impressive. Samuel was sure this must be the one.

But God said, “Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

Seven sons passed before Samuel, and God rejected all of them. Then Samuel asked, “Are here all thy children?” And Jesse answered, “There remaineth yet the youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the sheep” (1 Samuel 16:11).

Imagine that. The prophet of God was in the house, the most important ceremony in the family was taking place, and nobody thought it necessary to call David. His own father left him in the field.

They did not consider him worthy to be in the room. But Samuel said, “Send and fetch him: for we will not sit down till he come hither.”

Beloved, the oil refused to flow until David arrived. The whole ceremony was put on hold for the boy they had overlooked. And when David came in, God said, “Arise, anoint him: for this is he” (1 Samuel 16:12).

Hear me: what belongs to you will not permanently settle upon another person’s head. They may leave you in the field, but when your appointed time comes, heaven will stop everything until you arrive.

God knows how to call you from the very place where others abandoned you. The field where they left you is the same field where God is preparing you.

Being overlooked by people does not mean something is wrong with your body, your face, your family background or your destiny. You are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). You are a wonderful person.

Do not allow anyone to decide your mood or define your worth. Rise up, lift your head and be happy, because the God who sees you has not finished with you.

Beloved, the Bible is full of people who were rejected by men but seen by God. Leah was the unloved wife. Jacob worked for Rachel, wanted Rachel and loved Rachel. Leah was the one he did not choose.

But the Bible says, “And when the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb” (Genesis 29:31). God saw what Jacob ignored. And out of Leah came Judah, the tribe of kings, from whom came David and eventually Jesus Christ.

The rejected woman became the mother of the royal line. When Judah was born, Leah stopped trying to win her husband’s love and said, “Now will I praise the LORD” (Genesis 29:35). That is when her story changed.

Hagar was thrown out of Abraham’s house and found herself alone in the wilderness. But the angel of the Lord found her, and she gave God a name: “Thou God seest me” (Genesis 16:13).

Somebody reading this needs to know that God sees you. He sees your tears at night. He sees you sitting alone. He sees every time you were left out.

Jephthah was rejected by his own brothers because his mother was a harlot. They drove him out and said, “Thou shalt not inherit in our father’s house; for thou art the son of a strange woman” (Judges 11:2).

He went away to the land of Tob. But when war came and Israel needed a deliverer, the same elders who rejected him came looking for him.

Jephthah asked them, “Did not ye hate me, and expel me out of my father’s house? and why are ye come unto me now when ye are in distress?” (Judges 11:7). The rejected son became the captain and judge of Israel.

Beloved, the people who rejected you may one day come looking for you. The door that was shut in your face will one day open with your name on it. God has a way of turning rejection into promotion.

Joseph was rejected by his own brothers. They hated him for his dreams. They hated him because their father loved him. They stripped him of his coat of many colours, threw him into a pit and later sold him into slavery for twenty pieces of silver. He entered Egypt as a rejected young man, without a family, without a name and without a future.

But hear me: the pit did not cancel his dream. Slavery did not destroy his gift. Prison did not remove the favour of God from his life. The Bible says, “But the LORD was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy” (Genesis 39:21).

They took his coat, but they could not take his calling. They took his freedom, but they could not take his favour. Every place of rejection became part of Joseph’s training. In Potiphar’s house, he learned administration and how to manage a great household.

In the prison, he developed leadership, learned to handle people under pressure and grew in the gift of interpreting dreams. When he finally stood in Pharaoh’s palace, every one of those painful experiences became useful.

What looked like a painful delay was secretly preparing him for national responsibility.

The psalmist explains it beautifully: “He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant: Whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron: Until the time that his word came: the word of the LORD tried him” (Psalm 105:17–19).

Notice it: He sent a man. Joseph thought he was sold; heaven says he was sent. His brothers thought they were getting rid of him; God was positioning him.

And when Joseph became governor, he named his first son Manasseh, “For God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house” (Genesis 41:51). He named his second son Ephraim, “For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction” (Genesis 41:52).

Beloved, God will make you forget the pain of rejection, and He will make you fruitful in the very land where you were afflicted. Years later, when his brothers stood before him trembling, Joseph said, “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Genesis 50:20).

Your rejection is not wasted. God is using it to bring something to pass.

Beloved, at other times God Himself may permit rejection to redirect you, develop you and prepare you for something greater. Not every closed door is an attack; some closed doors are protection.

Some relationships ended because God saw what you could not see. Some jobs you did not get were jobs that would have destroyed you. Some groups excluded you because God did not want you to be shaped by their spirit.

When Paul and Silas tried to preach in Asia, they “were forbidden of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 16:6). They tried to go into Bithynia, “but the Spirit suffered them not” (Acts 16:7).

Two doors were shut. But that night Paul saw a vision of a man of Macedonia saying, “Come over into Macedonia, and help us” (Acts 16:9). The closed doors were leading them to the open door of Europe.

So do not fight every rejection. Some of them are God’s way of saying, “Not here, my child. I have a better place for you.” “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). All things, including the rejections.

Beloved, rejection can make you stronger, wiser and more strategic in life, but only if you allow it to push you towards God instead of driving you into bitterness. Pain can become a prison, or it can become a classroom.

The same experience that destroys one person can build another. The difference is how you respond. The Bible warns us to look diligently “lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled” (Hebrews 12:15).

Bitterness is a poison you drink hoping the other person will die. It will not hurt those who rejected you; it will only destroy you. So release them. Forgive them.

Jesus prayed on the cross for those who rejected Him, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Pick a lesson from that rejection and move on.

Ask yourself, “What can I learn from this? Is there something God wants me to correct? Is there something God is protecting me from? Is there a new direction God is showing me?” Learn the lesson, and then let it go.

The fact that a person stopped talking to you or chatting with you does not mean you are a devil. Some people were only meant for a season. When Jesus sent out His disciples, He told them that if a place would not receive them, they should shake off the dust of their feet and move on (Matthew 10:14).

He did not tell them to sit at the door crying. He told them to move on. You can spend your whole life trying to prove your value to people who have already decided to misunderstand you, or you can invest that energy in becoming the person God has called you to be.

Stop knocking on doors God has closed. Stop begging for a seat at tables where you are not valued. Move on with your life and connect with people who value and appreciate your worth.

Beloved, do not bury your gift because people rejected you. “A man’s gift maketh room for him, and bringeth him before great men” (Proverbs 18:16). The same gift they ignored is the gift God will use to bring you before kings.

Joseph’s gift of interpreting dreams was what caused his brothers to hate him, but the same gift took him from the prison to the palace. David’s skill with the harp and the sling was ignored at home, but the same skill brought him before King Saul and made him the champion over Goliath.

Keep developing your gift. Keep sharpening your skill. Keep serving faithfully even where nobody notices you. David was faithful with sheep in the field before he was trusted with the throne. When your appointed time comes, heaven will send for you, and you will be ready.

Beloved, I must tell you this one also, because a true preacher must not hide anything. There is a kind of rejection that comes from rejecting God.

When King Saul disobeyed the clear instruction of God, Samuel said to him, “Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king” (1 Samuel 15:23).

WISDOM FOR TODAY

Do not waste your life trying to convince people who have already decided not to see your value. The same energy you spend begging for acceptance can build the future that will one day speak for you. When God is ready to lift you, the people who ignored you will not be consulted.