Bible Studies

THE OUTCOMES OF DISCIPLINE

by Luella Campbell
04/15/15
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THE OUTCOMES OF DISCIPLINE

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. Therefore, strengthen you feeble arms and weak knees. "Make level paths for your feet," so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord (Heb. 12: 11-14).

We hate discipline, don't we? As children, we needed it because, left to ourselves we would have become monsters. In whatever way our parents disciplined us, as much as we did not enjoy the pain, we reaped the benefit of being saved from our self-destructive behaviour.

We don't always recognise God's discipline. When we suffer, we think He is being unfair or uncaring, or that He is punishing us for some or other wrong we have done. The hardships and suffering we endure have puzzled God's saints for as long as sin has been in the world. There is no chapter in the Bible that sets out the answer for us but, as we read, we can glean answers from the way God dealt with His people in the past.

The Israelites were a wayward bunch. If ever there was a group of rebels, the Bible points to them. Their history is peppered with the evidences of their stubborn resistance to God's ways which He lovingly revealed to them in His covenant. No other nation on earth had the pledge of His presence and favour on them as they had, and yet they threw it away and persisted in their senseless idolatry because they wanted to.

Time and again, when God's patience with them ran out, He handed them over to their enemies to be overrun and destroyed. He always had a few who were faithful to Him and yet, who suffered with the guilty ones. Unlike the wicked people on earth who were destroyed in the global flood, God never wiped Israel out because of His promise to Abraham. Although they were eventually scattered across the earth after the Romans overran their land in 70 AD, they remained a people until God called them back in 1948.

But what about us? Why do we have to go through trials and suffering? We don't worship idols like they did. Really? Think of the many things we have in our lives that replace God. Why does God hate idols? For two reasons, I believe.

Firstly, because He is jealous for us. He is the source of everything good. When we replace Him in our lives with anything less than He is, we lose out. When we follow the devil's lies we are robbed of the unity He wants us to have with Him so that we can know, enjoy and glorify Him. He is passionate about us and, only in union with Him can we experience everything He made us to be and everything He promised us.

Secondly, God knows that we will become like the thing we worship. Whatever replaces Him in our affections will pull us towards it. In Israel's day, the idols they worshipped represented the worst of human wickedness, and they practised every form of ungodliness in the name of their gods.

Hardships drive us back to God. We know, instinctively, that whatever we hold on to in place of God cannot help us in our time of need. We forget Him when life is easy; we cling to Him when we are in trouble. God does not send trouble - He allows it to call us back to Him.

But, unlike the Israelites, we shouldn't wait for trouble to pull us back to God. Instead, "strengthen you feeble arms and weak knees." Let's allow our hardships to teach us the lesson of faithfulness and trust. Children who have learned to submit and obey their parents no longer need discipline. Only the stubborn ones do.

When we submit to God's discipline by living with Him in the centre of our lives and trusting Him in everything instead of whining and moaning about every little discomfort, we learn to hate what He hates and love what He loves. That's what holiness is. Sin is everything that contradicts who He is. Holiness is everything that affirms His character as the true and perfect God. That's who we are already in His sight, perfect in Christ, but it's also what we are moving towards if we desire to live with Him forever.

Through Jesus the writer affirmed that we have already been made perfect. Now God is making us holy - and discipline through hardships and suffering is His method. Submit, and you will live. Resist and you will die because, without holiness, no one with see the Lord.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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