Raising children is a challenge. Some families let their children go anywhere, do anything. Others are fearful and overprotective. I know one family that will not allow their two-year old a blanket for fear she will smother herself in bed.
Discipline is the most challenging. Some parents will not spank their children because they think it is cruel. Others are more like drill sergeants, or worse and beat their children. Still others pay no attention to the rude and destructive behavior of their children. I once read that if children do not learn obedience from parents, their school is the next instructor. If they don’t learn it there, the next teachers will be policemen. This is sad, but often true.
Today I’m reading in Deuteronomy about God’s promises of blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. I thought about the words in Hebrews 12 about chastening, and that God does this because He loves us and wants the best for us. This is like a loving parent who rebukes a child for bad behavior, not to be mean but to guide the child for his or her own good.
Turning to today’s devotional in God is Enough I was surprised at the title, “Chastening but Loving.” It began with a definition from Webster’s Dictionary, “To chasten means . . . to inflict pain upon anyone in order to purify from errors or faults.”
Hebrews 12:5-11 begins with, “My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.”
No wonder people become confused about the value of following Christ. According to this and other Bible passages, God inflicts pain on His people but doesn’t do anything to those who are not His children (at least not right away). For disobedience, we get the swat and those who do not follow the Lord get nothing. Does that make sense?
No wonder God inspired David to write in Psalm 37, “Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity.” He wanted us to know this principle: God chastens His own people, but the fate of those who are not His people will become evident later.
Hebrews 12 goes on, “Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”
God disciplines me so I will be like Jesus. He is not mean. His hand, heavy at times, is on me that I will learn and profit from His guidance. Sometimes the only way I will listen is by experiencing pain, difficult trials, and even calamities.
It isn’t that those without Christ have easy lives. At the least, God might use disasters to get their attention, but for me those disasters have a good purpose. He uses them to strengthen me, and to bring out Christlike qualities that prove or verify that I do belong to Him. He also sustains me and proves that He is my God, the One who gives me all that I need in good times and in bad.
The discipline of God has to be confusing for some who might thing being a Christian solves all problems, or that God forgives our sin so therefore winks at what we do. It must be confusing for those who observe Christians suffering pain and trials and non-Christians experiencing success and happiness.
Another aspect of this perplexity is that I have on my prayer list people who profess to know Christ, but live as if He is not important. They seem happy and successful. God says He chastens those He loves, those who belong to Him. If these people really are His, why are they not experiencing His chastening and correction?
God’s answer is in Deuteronomy. He says that those who will not serve Him will serve their enemies (28:48). Eventually, those enemies will rob them of all that they care about including their prosperity, and scatter them among the nations where they will find no rest. When they are at the bottom, and it takes some a long time to get there, then they will remember the words of the Lord. Deuteronomy 30:2-3 says, “(and when) you return to the Lord your God and obey His voice, according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, that the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you.”
Even when their lives appeared lost to God, He was using all that happened to eventually bring them to a place of repentance and returning, but first they had to find out (the hard way) that all those things that lured them from God were not as good as they appeared. They had to learn that turning their back on Him was foolish.
I don’t like being chastened, but the Bible is right; God does it because He loves me. I don’t like watching others being chastened, but have to remember that He loves them too. I also have to remember that those who claim to be Christians but appear to be merrily going their own way are also included in this loving process. God knows how to raise His family to maturity and I need to trust Him to use methods that work.
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