Monday 26 Jun 2017

June 26: Hebrews 12:3-7

Key Verse: Hebrews 12:7
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?

Devotion:
How many times have you been (or were you) told “just wait 'till your father gets home”, or “Go wait outside the headmaster’s office”? Once I heard those words, I knew that I was in big trouble for the things I had done and needed to try and sort something out before my dad did come home! When we see we have done wrong, we often need a bit of chastisement so the gravity of what we have done wrong sinks in! If we are not punished, we forget about what it was we did do wrong and probably will therefore do it again sometime in the future. But once we have received some sort of punishment, we tend to remember and hopefully don't go there again!

Sometimes when we do get punished, we think we are being punished too much or that we are receiving punishment over and above that which is required. Why do we think that way? Well, it is often because we cannot see how our “little” sin has caused so much of a problem. We think the punishment should not be worth more than the sin. Yet making the punishment worth so much more than the sin will most likely stop us from going anywhere near the sin again – as long as we are willing to learn from it! If we are simply going to complain about how much we get punished, we are not going to learn from the punishment. Instead we will build up a resistance against any punishment in our minds!

Being willing to learn and not to be discouraged by our chastisement is a step we all have to learn. How quickly we learn will be based on how much we are willing to let authority into our lives. We need never be discouraged by any chastisement God lays down because His will for us to learn is perfect – we are flawed in our ways!

Points to Ponder:
Do you accept punishment?

Do you listen when God talks or do you wait for it to go wrong?