June 17, 2012
Hebrews 12:5-6 – “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 He receives.”
In this verse, there are 3 degrees of intervention. God’s discipline is very personal. What motivates one of us may not even get another’s attention.
God starts with a rebuke (v.5). He warns us when we are going astray. I can remember many times when I heard Him calling… warning… and I didn’t listen. That didn’t get my attention. I went to jail for a few hours… got bailed out. I got a kidney infection and was bedridden for 3 days… still didn’t work. I overdosed on acid and ended up in the emergency room… still went about my way and got high as soon as I got back to my hotel room. A simple rebuke just wasn’t enough for me.
The next degree of discipline is chastening (v.6). Here God increases our level of discomfort in order to get us to stop our harmful behavior. I experienced extreme emotional turmoil. I was depressed and paranoid. Nothing ever went right and someone was always out to get me. God allowed me to feel this way so I would turn back to Him. But I never connected my stressful circumstances to the sinful lifestyle I was living. It was never my fault… always others inflicting pain on me.
So because I persisted on rebelling, God had to increase my level of discipline once again. Now He is scourging me (v.6). God had to resort to severe trauma to get my attention! I wasn’t going to stop. So He had to physically stop me. And this finally got my attention. God loves me so much that He was not going to give up on me. He was going to discipline me until I got it.
I’ve always been a little hard headed. Okay… “little” might be an understatement, but this is my blog… I’ll tell it how I want!
I just never recognized my problems as discipline from the Lord. But I am so thankful for the Lord’s rebuke, chastening and scourging. I wouldn’t be who I am today without it.
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