The Present Power of God's Discipline

God’s Discipline Proves His Love.

The Takeoff

Story about my own experience with human to human discipline vs God’s discipline - beginning of In school Suspension with Mrs Potraits

The Principle

the principle here is easy to understand for those of us who have children but maybe a little more difficult for those of us who are children. Discipline, Correction, even punishment from God reveals both the heart of the Father and the human who is being disciplined.

God’s Discipline Proves His love.

Chat Question: Who in your life loved you enough to say or do something corrective out of love for you?

Who loved you enough to discipline you?

The Problem

Discipline has a History - The Problem is not all things called discipline in your life are what I’m actually talking about today. Biblical discipline from God is intended to grow fruit of peaceful righteousness in the life of the one being discipled. But if you’re world is anything like mine, you’ve probably experienced some very broken selfish versions of discipline, correction and punishment that weren’t given with the intent for you to grow.

Human beings have jacked up what discipline, correction and punishment look like within their human relationships so much that when we think of God’s discipline we fear that His correction of us will just be the bigger, stronger, louder version of the crazy thing we’ve seen from other humans. Our endurance of discipline from God and subsequent growth is directly related to our ability to release God to be our ultimate Father and realize that every other disciplinarian (including ourselves) is a shadow of the true Kings work.

According to Scripture, God’s discipline is always for your good and His glory. This means that at the end of the day, His intent is for you to be able to occupy His holiness (v10)

some of us have experienced inappropriate correction and so when we consider God correcting us

Discipline requires authority - Another problem is that we just simply want to be the Lords of our own lives. We believe that the only discipline, correction or punishment in our lives should be the type that begins and ends with my own self-directed, justifying or deprecating will. In other words, I want to BE the lord of my own life and in so doing refuse to submit to the discipline of another. So we keep a tight grip on the authority in our lives and the whole while grow more and more exhausted trying to keep the whole thing together.

Discipline is Painful -

THE Person

Hebrews 12:1–3 LEB

1 Therefore, since we also have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, putting aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us, let us run with patient endurance the race that has been set before us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the originator and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 For consider the one who endured such hostility by sinners against himself, so that you will not grow weary in your souls and give up.

v1b FIX our eyes on …

THE Person who heals our history as the originator of our faith

THE Person who perfects our faith in divine authority and sits and the right hand of God.

THE Person who endured the crushing pain of the full punishment for all sin for all time

Like a runner with eyes on the finish line we refocus ourselves on THE Person Jesus Christ who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross