Spanked By God

1 January, 2022

Happy New Year ! Fresh start to the new year and we will look into the first few verses of Hebrews 12. In the previous episode we saw that there was a large cloud of witnesses before us who  through faith had  achieved great things. Here it emphasises on the importance of looking to none but Jesus and running our race well.

Hebrews 12 :4
You have not yet resisted bloodshed, striving against sin.

The author of Hebrews is reminding  the believers  they have yet to shed their blood for their faith  Many may have lost possessions or property for the same so he is encouraging the believers  to stand steadfast till the very end and not fall into sin.
 
Hebrews 12 :5-11
 5 And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons:
“My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord,
Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him;
6 For whom the Lord loves He chastens,
And scourges every son whom He receives.”
7 If You endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? 8 But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. 9 Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, (that we may be partakers of His holiness. 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.

Verse 5 says have you all forgotten what is written in  

Proverbs 3 :11-12 
My son,do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke,
12 Because the Lord disciplines those he loves,  as a father the son he delights in.

Jesus can discipline us and scourge his children just like an earthly parent does to his or her children. We should pick and choose verses in the Bible.  If  we do that we may backslide. 

The above is an example of a verse that is   repeated to show how important it is to never ignore biblical teachings as Jesus loves to discipline his children.  We  may not all go through the same phase or situation at  all times. In certain seasons there  may be a lot more trials and hardship. Jesus uses these periods not as a punishment phase  but as a disciplinary period to correct and train his children to be better individuals. Jesus allows us to endure hardship to discipline us.

This can be a perfect new year message that the coming year may bring forth a lot of trials and hardship but never despair, take it as a challenge to be trained by Jesus to correct you and make you perfect. God is considering you as his precious child. This discipline shows the father-child relationship being active. This disciplining often happens even while reading the word of God. 

At our  young age we get spanked by our earthly parents to correct us. Similarly our Spiritual father our God spanks us with all hardships so we can endure it and get trained and be moulded  into a righteous person. There is no perfect father in the world but our God is the only perfect father. He never disciplines his children for the wrong reasons. No discipline is enjoyable at the time but painful.  For example while in school, college, military etc . However the result is a harvest of righteousness. 

Whenever God gives us a disciplinary period to endure hardship, take it as a training phase as a parent discipline his own child out of pure love for it is his full responsibility to train and coach us to be perfect.

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