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Why Does God Discipline Us?

Sep21

In my post The Longest Time Out Ever, I let Jeremiah show us how God exercised His right to severely discipline the Israelites.

Jeremiah makes a good case as to God being just in disciplining. He is holy. We are not. He tells us to obey. We don’t. Therefore, it is fair for Him to discipline us.

But that doesn’t explain why He disciplines us. Just because He can doesn’t mean He must. When He occasionally doesn’t discipline us even though we deserve it, we call that mercy. But if He never disciplines us when we deserve it, we call that terrible parenting. We will not grow. We’ll remain immature Christians, failing to impact the world with the love and truth of Jesus.

Surely, God disciplines us for the sake of His reputation – He can’t have no one take Him seriously because He never follows through with His punishments. And He can’t have people thinking He is okay with sin, undermining His holiness.

But the primary reason God disciplines us is for our benefit.

And our good buddy, Jeremiah, speaks to that as well.

God banishes the Israelites to Babylon for 70 years on account of their gross sin and unwillingness to repent. During that time, the Israelites begin to get it. They start to grasp the gravity of their idolatry. They weep. They repent. They seek forgiveness.

Discipline accomplishes its initial purpose. The Israelites feel the weight of their sin.

But that’s not the end all be all of repentance.

When their hearts turn from their sin and toward Him, God promises to, “…gather [the Israelites] from all the lands where I banish them in my furious anger and great wrath; I will bring them back to [Jerusalem] and let them live in safety. They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul,” (Jeremiah 32:37-41).

We see here the underlying purpose of discipline.

Yes, God wants us to stop doing sinful things. But much more so, He wants us to always live in close emotional proximity to Him. He wants our hearts! He wants our love. He wants us to trust Him. He wants relationship with us. He wants to be the single focus of our hearts.

No matter what He is disciplining you over, this is why He is disciplining you. He wants your heart. Give it to Him.

Related articles

The Longest Time Out Ever

Sep15

Once upon a time, Israel disobeyed God year after year after year. Like a patient parent, He warned them time and time again, “Please don’t do this. Choose to obey.” He took the time to explain to them they were headed toward destruction and pain. They wouldn’t listen.

Finally, God had to follow through and discipline them. Like the best parents, He had to go against every impulse of His Father heart and punish His children so they would learn to not be self-destructive anymore.

In Israel’s case, God allowed/orchestrated the capture of the Israelites by enemy nations. They were carried off to Babylon, where the Israelites were enslaved for 70 years.

This may sound harsh at first read, but keep in mind God had been warning Israel through prophets for YEARS they were heading toward this exact punishment. God didn’t mince words. He was as honest with Israel as I am when I tell my children beforehand that a certain behavior WILL result in a spanking.

Like the unruliest of children, like me, Israel tested those limits. And they got exactly what God told them they’d get.

While reaping what they had sown in Babylon, Jeremiah, who was still in Jerusalem, sent the exiled Israelites a letter. In it Jeremiah quoted the Lord telling the Israelites to, “Build houses and settle down… Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage… seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you in exile,” (Jeremiah 29:5-9).

When I am being disciplined by the Lord, the last thing I want to hear is, “Settle in; you’re going to be here awhile.” I much prefer to take my discipline quickly and get it over with.

Seventy years. The Israelites had FOUR GENERATIONS to sit and think about what they’d done wrong. That’s the longest time out ever. And yet, we can’t really get mad at God for going overboard - they were WARNED this was going to happen!

Imagine the self-loathing the Israelites felt. I can picture the Babylonians coming in, taking over, and marching the Israelites out of Jerusalem. I imagine the shocked men thinking, “This is really happening… God said things would happen this way, but we didn’t believe Him. We didn’t think He’d really go through with it, but here we are, being exiled. We have ANGERED God. We have angered GOD. Oh <expletive>!” Then the fear took over their bodies as the reality of the situation set in. It’s a wonder their legs were able to work at all.

I think a little fear was good for the Israelites. I know it’s good for me. I spend way too much time not having a healthy fear (awe, respect for) God. I need reality checks sometimes, and this was just such a reality check for the Israelites.

But lest that healthy fear turn into unhealthy fear (“God is scary”, “God doesn’t love us”, “God is spiteful”, etc.), God sends the Israelites a word of encouragement and reassurance once they arrive in Babylon. He says, “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to [Jerusalem]. For I know the plans I have for you… plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future,” (Jeremiah 29:10-11).

When this letter was read aloud to the Israelites, I imagine they wept at these words. When my children come out of time out, they look at me with one question in their eyes, “Do you still love me?” And just as God says to the Israelites here, I want nothing more than to tell my children, “YES! YES! Of course I still love you! There is nothing you can EVER do that would make me not love you.”

God goes on to say to the Israelites, “I am with you and will save you…I will discipline you but only with justice; I will not let you go entirely unpunished,: (Jeremiah 30:11).

Even when you and I are in “times of exile”, experiencing the just discipline of the Lord for our disobedience, GOD IS WITH US! AND HE WILL SAVE US!

It may be a longer season of discipline than we’d like, but He is near, and He is good. And that is enough to get us through. That is enough to get us through.

Are You Staggering?

Aug22

Sometimes life isn’t all roses.

We struggle to make sense of things. We are afflicted, both by self and by people and circumstances outside of ourselves. We don’t always (ever) understand why God allows or causes things to happen they way they do.

There’s an oft quoted verse in the Bible people lob out to those who are struggling because they don’t know what else to say. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are [God's] ways higher than your ways and [God's] thoughts than your thoughts,” (Isaiah 55:9).

While this verse is true, it’s not always comforting. “God is smarter than us, and sometimes we can’t understand what He’s doing or why.”

But sometimes we can.

Isaiah gives us some insight into why God allows (and even causes) strife in our lives.

English: A photo of a cup of coffee. Esperanto...

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Therefore hear this, you afflicted one, made drunk, but not with wine. This is what your Sovereign Lord says, your God, who defends his people: ‘See, I have taken out of your hand the cup that made you stagger; from that cup, the goblet of my wrath, you will never drink again,’” (Isaiah 55:21-22).

God is speaking to us afflicted ones. We have clouded thinking, not because we are intoxicated, but because of something we refuse to give up. Our affection for the contents of our “cups” are causing our affliction.

One of two things is happening.

We may have sin in our cup. We may not want to give up our pornography or our selfishness or our laziness. It’s comfortable. It’s us. It’s ours. And it is afflicting us.

On the other hand, the contents of our cups may not be the problem. Rather, how we feel toward the contents is what’s afflicting us. We may have our spouses, our kids, our jobs, our money, our egos, etc. in our cups – all perfectly good things. But we get into trouble because we value these things more than we value God. Or we despise these things God has given us as gifts. Or we abuse these things by using them for our own gain instead of the Lord’s glory.

Whether our contents or our attitudes toward the contents is the problem, either way, we are staggering. We are flailing about with sinful things or with sinful hearts, unable and/or unwilling to change. Our vision is blurred as though we are drunk. We are unable to see the Lord clearly.

So God, being our Father and Defender, steps in to help his drowning children. He does what we won’t do – He takes our cups.

Initially, we are like children whose parents confiscate a favorite toy. We are angry. We are hurt. We are indignant.

And God says, “I LOVE YOU! I can’t STAND seeing you hurt yourself with this cup! I don’t want you to be afflicted. I don’t want you to stagger. I don’t want to have to discipline you when you make these reckless choices. I am taking this cup from you so you will no longer be a detriment to yourself. You will never drink it again.”

Days pass. And we start to understand.

We come out of our stupor and begin to see, “That cup was no good for me. Thank You, Lord, for taking it from me when I didn’t have the power or the desire to give it to You.”

What’s in your cup? Is your cup more important to you than the Lord? Give it to Him before He takes it from you.

How to Best Respond to Correction

Aug17

We started time-out with our girls, ages 3 and 5, when they were 18 months old. At that age, they weren’t interested in my explanation as to why they were being disciplined. Their eyes roamed the room behind me, looking for the next toy they would play with, my words never entering their brains. They learned to wait until I was done speaking, say “Yes, ma’am,” and be on their way, having no idea what just happened.

They were focused on something else. A lot of times they were focused on getting back into whatever they had been in when they made the choice that had gotten them sent to toddler-jail in the first place.

It was as if they were thinking, “As soon as this lady is done talking, I am bolting for that doll I threw at my sister’s head. Doll. Doll. Doll. I wonder what will happen if I throw it again? I wonder if sister will squeal again. That was cool. Doll. Doll. Doll.”

And, sure enough, as soon as my monologue ended and I said, “Ok?”, that kid was out of the gate on a specific mission to possess as quickly as possible that toy she’d been eyeing.

By the time they were 2 years old, I had successfully trained the children to LOOK AT ME while I was speaking to them. (Kids… you have to teach them EVERYTHING.) I thought this eye contact would help them process what I was saying, tuck those little truths in their hearts, and blossom into joyfully obedient darlings.

But my oldest, who is a people-pleaser and rule-follower by nature, soon showed me otherwise. She mastered the eye-contact thing very quickly. And she also mastered the eyes-glaze-over-while-I-tune-you-out just as fast.

When I would correct her post-time-out, she’d look at me like we were having a staring contest. Intense. No blinking. Eyes as wide as possible. But it never took long for me to realize she was totally absent from our teachable moment, probably thinking about the toy she wanted instead of looking at it.

And, as soon as my monologue ended and I said, “Ok?”, that kid was out of the gate on a specific mission to  possess as quickly as possible that toy she’d been thinking about.

Needless to say, the “lessons” I wanted my kids to be learning from time-out weren’t sticking. We’d repeat time-out for the same offenses day after day after day. They weren’t being trained by the discipline.

Ah. Yes. The Bible told me this would happen.

Hebrews 12:11 reads, “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.”

Hmm. So it seems the author of Hebrews is telling us sometimes we endure discipline and aren’t trained by it. Like my kids.

What a waste! As someone who has been disciplined by the Lord A LOT lately, let me tell you, it angers me to no end to think that we sometimes endure the pain and difficulty of being disciplined and learn NOTHING.

“Oh, no,” I vow to myself, “I will NOT be going through the wringer for nothing!” I resolve to be trained by the discipline so I don’t have to be disciplined again later for the same expletive thing!

As my 3 year old says, “That is unasseptible.”

While discipline that gets through our thick heads produces righteousness and peace in our lives, we can infer that discipline which fails to penetrate hardened hearts produces the opposite – unrighteousness still exists because we haven’t changed our ways, and chaos abounds on account of our poor choices and the very pain of the discipline.

Chaos.

Yes, that aptly describes life with toddlers and preschoolers who are not being trained by parental discipline.

I don’t want chaos in my home. But, much more so, I don’t want chaos in my heart.

I don’t want to be focused on getting back to the sin that caused the Lord to discipline me in the first place while He tries in vain to change my heart. I want to be focused, instead, on what He is trying to teach me by instructing me to steer clear of the sin.

He never disciplines us for no reason. And He never disciplines us for no good reason. He is methodical, purposeful, and always has our best interest at heart. We can trust Him to improve us via the discipline. But we have to choose to trust Him.

If you are being disciplined by the Lord, resolve with me to be trained by it, for goodness’ sake. Don’t WASTE the pain! Learn from it, and bear the fruit of righteousness and peace.

A Little Change of Perspective Goes a Long Way

Jan10
With the Lights Out

Image via Wikipedia

Hi, my name is Kelly, and I am a rebel.

I’m sure this is true of all people to some degree or another, but I feel particularly prone to resist authority.

I blame my older brother.  He modeled rebellion well for me, for which he spent the better part of the 90′s grounded.  I also blame alternative rock stars.  Kurt Cobain, in particular.  He was my idol for 3 or 4 years, and his anti-authority attitude rubbed off on me.  Lastly, I blame my friends at the time, who were a lot more courageous than me in bucking any and all authority, but nonetheless inspired me to resist rules and rulers in the depths of my heart.

Oh, and I guess I blame myself, too…  If I HAVE to…  Personal responsibility, blah, blah, blah…

All that to say that I had many years of training in refusing to submit to authority.  But I was usually too scared to outwardly resist, so I just kept those disgruntled feelings stewing inside of me while I towed the line.  Then, afterward, I’d sit around with my rebel friends and talk about how stupid those rules were and how stupid those authority figures were for enforcing those rules.

Enter God.

He came into my life when I was 16.  And all of a sudden, THE Authority Figure desired my joyful compliance.  I had to be rewired.  I had to learn that He was trustworthy.  I had to learn that obeying Him was actually in my best interest as well as His.  I had to learn to follow Someone else’s rules, not so I could get into Heaven, but as a sign that I really do love God (John 14:15,24; 1 John 5:3).

To be honest, I have to relearn these things a lot.  It’s hard for me to not slip into the mindset that God is a demanding authoritarian whom I must obey or else run the risk of severe consequences.  I often forget that He is love, subconsciously transforming Him into a harsh Disciplinarian whose chief concern is that I obey Him simply because He says so.

THIS IS NOT AN ACCURATE VIEW OF GOD!

It totally misses His heart for me.

At the core of who God is, He LOVES me (John 16:27).  And if we don’t understand God’s desire for our obedience in the context of His love for us, we turn Him into something He isn’t – a tyrannical authority figure.

We must leave this faulty perspective behind and intentionally adopt this new one – this correct one.

Because God loves us, He wants what is best for us.

God tells us what to do because He knows better than we do what is best for us.

If we obey Him, we experience what is best for us.  God is overjoyed that we trusted Him and loved Him enough to obey Him.

If we do not obey Him, God is grieved.  He is angry and sad that we, His precious children, are experiencing less than the best.  And he is sad that we did not trust Him or love Him enough to obey Him.

More concisely, when we disobey the Lord, He is first and foremost heartbroken.  Anger may be His secondary response, but immense sadness is His first emotion.  He is sad for us.  He is hurt by us and our lack of trust in Him.

What’s my point?

This slight change of perspective ought to help us resist temptation much more easily.

Our previous line of thinking was this: I shouldn’t do ______ because the Bible tells me not to or because God will be mad at me.

Our previous reaction was this: Frankly, who cares?  I want to do what I want to do.  He can be mad if He wants, but I’ve got to take care of me.

Animosity and isolation, then, rule our hearts, distancing us from God emotionally and making Him the “enemy”.

But with this shift of perspective, our thinking becomes this: I don’t want to do ________ because I don’t want to make God sad.

Love becomes our motivation.  We feel like we are on the same team as God.  We love Him; He loves us; and we’re in this crazy life together.

This same change of perspective can be applied to relationships with other authority figures in our lives.  Bosses, parents, pastors, spouses.  When they ask us to do something we don’t want to do, we can choose to be angry and do what we want to do anyway.  Or we can change our perspective to one of love – I don’t want to hurt this person by selfishly disobeying.  Perhaps this will make it easier for us to submit in these relationships as well.

**Insert your own disclaimer here that we shouldn’t always obey everything someone tells us to do just because they are in a position of authority over us.  I don’t want to take the time to write such a disclaimer because that should be obvious. :) **

Being motivated by love to resist temptation to buck authority… that sounds like Jesus to me.

 

Discipline is a Blessing?

Dec26

I don’t often have never thought to myself, “I’m so thankful the Lord is using this event in my life to correct foolishness in my heart.  What a blessing!”

I’m just not a take-discipline-with-a-smile kinda girl.  I prefer to whine and complain like my two-year-old when she doesn’t get to have candy canes for breakfast.  I like to thrash and fight against the Disciplinarian instead, hoping to shirk Him off before any correction can be administered.

But Job’s friend, Eliphaz, offers a different take on discipline.

He says, “Blessed is the man whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty,” (Job 5:17).

Two ideas here.

“Blessed is the man whom God corrects.”  Correction is a good thing.  By definition, correction teaches me how to do something better than I am currently doing it.  Better for me.  Better for those affected by me.  Better for God.  Win-win-win.

When I remember that, I begin to see correction in the correct light – a beneficial light.

The second idea comes from “so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.”

That phrase tells me that it is possible to despise the discipline of the Almighty.  And my flesh only confirms that is true.

I have to intentionally guard against having a spirit that despises the often painful work the Lord does in my heart to mature me.

But why shouldn’t I despise God’s discipline?  It hurts!  It requires me to change.  I am totally justified in hating divine discipline…

Back to the first phrase.

I should not despise God’s discipline because correction is a blessing.  

Oh.  Yeah.  We already established that.

Lord, I know Your correction and discipline in my life are for my good.  Help me keep that perspective and cooperate with You as You make me more like Christ.