Today’s scripture:
Hebrews 12:11
It’s really hard to equate joy with pain. We just aren’t wired that way.
In human minds, joy equals happiness, but as we talked about a few days ago,
that’s not always true. Sometimes, we have to find joy in the pain … joy through the pain.
God sometimes uses the pain in our lives to chasten us. Chasten is synonymous with discipline,
and indeed, we all have times when He needs to discipline us for wrong
behavior. We need to be reminded that we’re heading the wrong direction.
And that discipline isn’t fun. Discipline rarely is.
So the writer of Hebrews is absolutely right when he says that “no chastening
seems to be joyful for the present …”
So where does the joy come in? When we realize that God will use that
chastening, that discipline, to “yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness …”
We become more like Christ when we rid ourselves of sin, and often, that comes
through God’s discipline.
Are you feeling “chastened” right now? Ask the Lord to reveal areas of sin that
need to be confessed and find joy in becoming more like Christ.
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