August 22, 2018
God knows what He's doing with His children. He is perfect in His applications of both love and truth, pain and healing, discipline and compassion.
This is why we should embrace His reproof when it comes. His timing is perfect and His endgame is completely right in every intent. Job, a man who went through the most intense difficulties, but still under the sovereign hand of God, saw this.
“Behold, how happy is the man whom God reproves, so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. For He inflicts pain, and gives relief; He wounds, and His hands also heal. (Job 5:17-18)
Hebrews tells us that every father trains his children and that if you are not receiving such discipline, then you are no child of God's. Although it is painful and hard at times, afterward it will yield the ""peaceful fruit of righteousness"" (Hebrews 12:11).
We must remember that God is seeking to raise up men and women who will rule and reign with Him for eternity. Every rough edge must be knocked off and formed into His likeness if we are to be prepared for the glorious work for which we were designed.
C.S. Lewis says this so well in ""Mere Christianity.""
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
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