GOD’S
DISCIPLINE

WHEN I travel for a long period of time, I normally don’t do a good job of sticking with my exercise program. So when we return and I have to face the pain of getting back into my workout routine, I’m usually a little discouraged about that because I know what’s going to happen. I’m going to be hurting. My wife is going to have to help me put on my shirt the morning after. She’s going to have to help tie my tie. I’m going to be hurting because I took a break from lifting weights. But if I want to get on the right track again, there’s no way I can bypass that pain. There’s no way I can bypass that inconvenience. In order for me to get where I want to go because I took a break, I’ve got to pay the price.

We want to lay off of Christ and not pay the pain of getting back on track. It’s always going to be painful when you veer away from Christ and He has to get your attention to pull you back in. But God’s discipline is always to restore you.382

[Discipline, Love in; Sin, Consequences of; Trials, Value of]

Ps. 94:12; Prov. 3:11–12; Heb. 12:11

THE STORY is told about a little boy who was out in a pond. He had his little toy boat floating on the pond and the boat began to drift way out. He couldn’t get it. A man came by and saw the boat way out in the pond and he did something very interesting. He picked up stones and threw them on the other side of the boat. He threw them beyond where the boat was. The boy didn’t understand what the man was trying to do. The stones were causing quite a disturbance in the water. Something very interesting began to happen. As the man threw the stones out in the pond, they created ripples of water that moved backward toward where he and the boy were standing. Those ripples slowly pushed the boat back to shore.

That’s how God’s discipline is. When we wander away from Him in the “Sea of Sin” or the “Pond of Unrighteousness,” He throws the disturbing actions of His loving discipline in order to create a disturbance to push us back onshore. God wants to push us back to where we should never have wandered from in the first place.383

[Discipline, Love in]

Prov. 3:11–12; Heb. 12:11