God Disciplines Those He Loves

When Paige and I realized that conceiving children wouldn’t be as easy for us as it is for most people, one of my first reactions was to inquire of God: “Why?”  I wondered to myself and to God in prayers, “If God is the Creator of life and has called the gift of children a good and blessed thing (Psalm 127:3-5), then why would He withhold that tremendously good thing from my wife and me?”

As the days and weeks passed by, and the question of “Why?” kept me curious, this verse from Hebrews 12:6-7 continually came to mind: “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons.”

Maybe withholding the gift of physical offspring was God’s way of disciplining me for old patterns of sin that I had yet to put to death or for holding on to idols in my life. Clearly God’s Spirit was working through His Word to affect me personally. And the effect--while it hurt beyond anything I had experienced before--was spiritually beneficial.

On the one hand, the thought of God disciplining me caused me to seriously self-examine. I began to pay more attention to my thoughts, words, and actions to find and quit the wrong. Conversely, I began doing the good things that I had neglected, namely spending more time with the Lord. During those times I now asked God to show me the remaining areas of sin in my life that I might repent and be made clean. My prayer echoed the psalmist: “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23-24).

On the other hand there was a strange comfort at the thought of God’s discipline. I knew that if God didn’t love me, then He wouldn’t discipline me, like a father who cares nothing for his own children. But in Revelation 3:19 I read God saying, “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.” It’s as if He was speaking directly into my heart. Not only was God telling me that He loved me like a father loves his children and disciplines them, but He was showing me how to respond to the discipline: through humility and repentance. Prior to my salvation, God could have left me alone and allow me to live and die in my own sinful filth (Romans 1:28). But He didn’t. He loved me enough that He sent His only Son to die in my place and thereby secure my place as a child of the eternal Father. And even still, as a child of the Almighty, when I stray like a disobedient son, God runs after me, disciplines me, and reminds me that nothing can separate me from His powerful love.

“Blessed is the man whom you discipline, O Lord, and whom you teach out of your law. Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word” (Psalm 94:12, 67).

~David