God's Discipline

Hebrews 12:1-13

This particular passage of Scripture has been keen this morning in encouraging me when I find myself in the midst of God's discipline. I often times find myself particularly downtrodden over sin in my life. As well I should be to a certain extent. There needs to be sense that sin is terribly offensive in the midst of God's holiness. Then when God's discipline hits as it should, I grow weary not from the discipline but from the guilt contrived from the discipline. I find it much easier to wallow in guilt than find delight in discipline. This is exactly what the writer of Hebrews is warning against. I believe that this writer knows that when we wallow in guilt we render ourselves ineffective. Our focus in those times is on the wrong object. Any time that we spend more time thinking of ourselves rather than Christ we find ourselves in the wrong boat. Guilt is one weapon used by the enemy to cause us to think more of ourselves than God. The writer of Hebrews here says that those who are disciplined by God should find great delight in it. The discipline itself may not be pleasing but the God's desire behind it is greatly comforting. He tells us that, "God is treating us as sons." What a marvelous thought. We are indeed the children of God. We know from other Scripture passages that God does all the He does for His glory and in so doing bestows a greater love on us than we ever thought possible because we find our highest delight in Jesus. The same is true of discipline. If we find ourselves in the throws of God's discipline we should rejoice first of because we are His children.(v7) Secondly we should rejoice because we know that God is going to use this situation to bring about His glory therefore filling us with ultimate joy. He is indeed giving us Himself. What a marvelous truth. The reason God's disciplines us is for our joy. He knows that whatever we attempted to find pleasure in that was rebelling against His holiness will only leave us empty and longing for more. Therefore, He chastises us in order that we would see the truth the He Himself is our highest delight. There is nothing in the created world that can even compare to the delight found in the person of Christ. (Psalm 73:25) Therefore, we should rejoice in discipline because it is God's way of guiding us to ultimate joy by showing us that nothing can take the place of Jesus in supplying infinite joy.

DAW