If you don't correct your children, you don't love them. If you love them, you will be quick to discipline them. Proverbs 13:24
My mom and dad were very disciplined parents not only in the way that they raised us but also in their personal lives. It was one of the many things I admired about them. They both worked their bodies, brains, finances, and spirituality. I knew that their behavior stemmed from an inward disciplining of themselves by an outside source of pain, suffering, correction, and hard knocks. They trained us to become disciplined adults, and this would come about by giving us what we needed, not what we always wanted.
Disciplining our children is a difficult task, but we do it for a myriad of reasons: We want them to think before they act, make better choices in the future, learn that bad decisions may come with unpleasant consequences, and most importantly, we hope to give our children all the tools they need to to become reliable adults. Rehabilitation is the motive of each of these reasons. Good parents who love their children, do not inflict punishment for the sheer purpose of a sentence alone, a sadistic need to have pain inflicted for no reason or improved outcome whatsoever. That would be ridiculously wrong.
So if God corrects us because He loves us, is He expecting a positive outcome, or is He only wanting to inflict pain? I recently made a list of all the miracles Jesus performed when He was here on earth. Each miracle was for reconciliation and rehabilitation of His children. He healed the lame, helped the blind to see, fed the hungry, and cleansed the lepers. He always provided life, healing, food, and faith. The list goes on and on. The only miracles of destruction were the unfruitful fig tree and the swine.
Do we serve a patient, good God, or do we consistently live in fear of a God who might want to discard us because we are not worth rehabilitation? God’s discipline is born out of His great love for us. He doesn’t inflict pain for the pleasure of pain, but renewal, restoration, resurgence, and recovery. An ugly jagged rock can become a smooth pebble, a work of art but only after the process of spending some time in a tumbler. We might spend some time in a tumbler of discipline, but God, in His love, is producing His piece of art in us.
Thank you, Lord, for loving me enough to discipline me. Amen.
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