You may not like Gods discipline. But God will discipline everyone He loves. God is love. God disciplines us because He loves us as His children. To truly know love, you need to know God. Love without discipline has produced this generation, a world consumed with an all-consuming self-love, full of hypocrisy and dissimulation.
Link to: Verses Wisdom of Discipline
God Disciplines Us Because He Loves Us
God will use various methods of discipline. He may use trouble at work, hardship at home, or tribulation in your life or in the life of someone close to you.
Paul had many difficult situations in life 2 Corinthians 11:23–29. God may allow us to experience loss, as David did 2 Samuel 12:13–18. God may send physical illness or even death, as the church of Corinth learned 1 Corinthians 11:17–22, 30–32. Other times, God allows the natural consequences of our sin to run their course. We’re forgiven, “so that we won’t be condemned with the world” 1 Corinthians 11:32.
Why God Disciplines Us?
He is a good Father who wants what’s best for His children. God is transforming His born again children into being like Jesus Romans 8:29. As we learn of Jesus and grow in the spirit, we will slip and fall like any child. As a good Father, He will discipline us. When He does, it’s most important that we receive it wisely Proverbs 3:11-12. God will not be through with His work in you until you are called home. As long as we are in these bodies, we are never too old to receive chastisement from the Lord. No child will reach his or her full potential without training and discipline. The violinist would never have reached the concert hall without discipline. The athlete would never have excelled in any sport without discipline.
When we endure God’s discipline, it will produce holiness and maturity: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” James 1:2–4. The Lord continues to work with us, as a potter does the clay, and His discipline is for our good and His glory.
Love Your Brother
When you love God first, then your neighbor means you will righteously and lovingly pursue the wellbeing of another. Allowing your brother or friend to continue in sin without making him aware of his error or, if necessary, rebuking him. Not correcting him isn’t love for him or God. God rebukes His children who sin, and as His children, we are to do likewise.
Jesus warns us He will “chasten and punish those He loves, unless we repent” Revelations 3:19. None of us has reached perfection and God sees all believers as His children, regardless of position or age. God loves His born again children who are called by grace and He justified in Christ Jesus. We are both chastened and loved by Him. That is the nature of God’s love for us. “If God has not chastised you for something, then you are not a son of God”. If we endure the rebuking and repent, then you are being treated as a son Hebrews 12:6-8.
God has filled the scriptures with words of wisdom and discipline. A disciplined person is a person who practices wisdom. Here are a few of my favorite verses about the importance of discipline.
Wisdom of Discipline
Revelations 3:19 Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. Therefore, be zealous and repent.
Proverbs 3:11-12 My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be weary of His correction; for whom the Lord loves, He corrects, even as a father, the son in whom he delights.
Proverbs 12:1Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is foolish.
Hebrews 12:11 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.
Proverbs 29:17 Correct your son, and he will give you rest; yes, he will give delight to your soul.
Proverbs 10:17 He who keeps instruction is in the way of life, But he who refuses correction goes astray.