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Discipline: Painful, But Necessary

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hldude

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“Discipline: Painful, But Necessary”
By Zach Wood
Hebrews 12:11 NIV
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

All of us have come from different upbringing backgrounds as far as how we were disciplined. Every family does it differently for sure. Some of us experienced some pretty harsh circumstances when it came to being disciplined for things we did wrong. Others experienced less drastic and more reasonable punishments. There are so many different ways to discipline and most of us have experienced our fair share as we grew up.

I remember being disciplined when I was young. Whether it be my mom, dad, grandparent, aunt, uncle, a teacher or someone else who was in authority over me at any given time, I remember unpleasant times of being told I was doing something wrong and having to suffer a consequence for it. I often remember pleading often, “Please don’t do it! I promise I’ll never do it again!” I think I remember those words coming out of my mouth often. That pleading didn’t get me very far because the person giving out the punishment knew I needed to learn.

“Learn” is the key word here. We all want to learn, but sometimes we really learn best through our times of discipline. We all remember a time or times when we learned a very hard lesson and it was painful to experience, whether we were spanked, grounded from going somewhere or had something taken away from us. I remember times when I was disciplined and did not like it at all, but looking back later on, I was very appreciative someone took the opportunity to set me straight and give me a hard lesson.

God loves us very much, and because He does so, He also gives us hard lessons of discipline at times. We often plead with God, but He knows that so much good and learning will come from the discipline. We will learn and often those times are when we learn the most. When Paul received his “thorn” in the flesh, he pleaded for God to take it away. But God said “No” and said His grace was sufficient.

We don’t like to hear that. We want God take to take away our problems and our pain so often. We want to learn and grow, but we want it without the pain of discipline and punishment. It doesn’t work that way. Parents discipline to train children and God disciplines to also train us. It’s inevitable and for our own good. God wants to strengthen us to become better followers and to develop our faith more.

God’s discipline helps to build our character.
 
I know this is a huge reason why many people are secretly unbelievers. They despise God for his discipline. I have never ever despised God for what has happened in my life. He does discipline me, lots. Example: When I get irritated cause things aren't going how I had planned.........it gets way worse. But if I go with the flow, then I am rewarded.
 
I know this is a huge reason why many people are secretly unbelievers. They despise God for his discipline. I have never ever despised God for what has happened in my life. He does discipline me, lots. Example: When I get irritated cause things aren't going how I had planned.........it gets way worse. But if I go with the flow, then I am rewarded.
It's not that they are "secretly" unbelievers.,they just know.
 
“Discipline: Painful, But Necessary”
By Zach Wood
Hebrews 12:11 NIV
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

All of us have come from different upbringing backgrounds as far as how we were disciplined. Every family does it differently for sure. Some of us experienced some pretty harsh circumstances when it came to being disciplined for things we did wrong. Others experienced less drastic and more reasonable punishments. There are so many different ways to discipline and most of us have experienced our fair share as we grew up.

I remember being disciplined when I was young. Whether it be my mom, dad, grandparent, aunt, uncle, a teacher or someone else who was in authority over me at any given time, I remember unpleasant times of being told I was doing something wrong and having to suffer a consequence for it. I often remember pleading often, “Please don’t do it! I promise I’ll never do it again!” I think I remember those words coming out of my mouth often. That pleading didn’t get me very far because the person giving out the punishment knew I needed to learn.

“Learn” is the key word here. We all want to learn, but sometimes we really learn best through our times of discipline. We all remember a time or times when we learned a very hard lesson and it was painful to experience, whether we were spanked, grounded from going somewhere or had something taken away from us. I remember times when I was disciplined and did not like it at all, but looking back later on, I was very appreciative someone took the opportunity to set me straight and give me a hard lesson.

God loves us very much, and because He does so, He also gives us hard lessons of discipline at times. We often plead with God, but He knows that so much good and learning will come from the discipline. We will learn and often those times are when we learn the most. When Paul received his “thorn” in the flesh, he pleaded for God to take it away. But God said “No” and said His grace was sufficient.

We don’t like to hear that. We want God take to take away our problems and our pain so often. We want to learn and grow, but we want it without the pain of discipline and punishment. It doesn’t work that way. Parents discipline to train children and God disciplines to also train us. It’s inevitable and for our own good. God wants to strengthen us to become better followers and to develop our faith more.

God’s discipline helps to build our character.
In regard to chastisement from a parent, there needs to be substantial balance of love and affection. Otherwise, the mind of the child is bent to fear and discouragement - at least that's my experience. Looking back on my attitude before I was a follower of Christ, I hated my father and wanted nothing to do with him or anything he stood for, including God. I felt that if God was like him, I wanted nothing to do with Him. The only motive I had for doing right was threats.

Yet, God met me where I was. He got me to submit by the threat of hell-fire. Without even knowing the scripture, this statement of Jesus became real to me at that time: "Do not fear him who can destroy the body only, and afterward can do nothing to you, but fear Him who can destroy both your body and soul in hell."

It was then about 16 years later that I began to believe that God loved me (not in a general sense, but me specifically). Up until that time the word love was just a word that had little meaning. I simply didn't believe it until then, and I began to believe only because God spoke to me about it in answer to a prayer I prayed 7 years earlier.

I get the idea that in God's view, endurance of faith in Christ is much more important than us feeling like He loves us. So some people are chastised a lot longer than they believe they could take. Sometimes we can say that if we knew what we were ordained to go through, we'd say "I'd rather not," and do all we could to get out of it.

One thing about faith in God is that since our parents can't love us perfectly, we must overcome our skewed understanding of love to believe that the love expressed by God in the Bible is the perfect love that He actually has toward us. This takes endurance of faith in the God who revealed His love in the scripture.
 
One thing for sure is that God doesn't take any nonsense from anybody! I was just reading a story in the OT about how man (I forgot his name, but it was some kind of name that I couldn't pronounce) disobeyed Him and wound up being mauled to death by a lion.
 
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