by Audrey Bauman

Proverbs 3: 11 – 14   (NLT)

“My child, don’t reject the Lord’s discipline,
     and don’t be upset when he corrects you.
¹² For the Lord corrects those he loves,
     just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights.

¹³ Joyful is the person who finds wisdom,
     the one who gains understanding.
¹⁴ For wisdom is more profitable than silver,
     and her wages are better than gold.”

As parents, punishment is something we struggle with. We want our children to make good choices, and we encourage them to think before they act.  Punishment doesn’t have to be spanking (more a last choice of desperation), but it can mean time outs, taking the consequences, taking away privileges, or sometimes even just talking with our kids to figure out what went wrong, and how to avoid that situation another time. But, after reading these verses, I want to put a question to you.  Has God ever disciplined you, and if so, how?

I love verse 12.  God corrects us because he loves us; in fact, he delights in us.  Over the years, I thought a lot about my own dad and how he disciplined us.  One thing all four of us kids knew was that our dad loved us totally, and we knew that he was delighted to be our dad, and he even thought we were the most amazing kids he had ever met. I can so clearly remember his most effective way of disciplining me.  He had a look in his eyes when I did something wrong that made me want to crawl away and hide.  He didn’t have to say anything – it was just this look that said he couldn’t believe I would do such a thing, being the wonderful person I was. 

I think discipline is helping someone to rethink a situation when they are about to make an unwise decision.  It’s about helping a person develop self-discipline. It’s about gaining experience that will help in the future, as well as learning from mistakes. So when I read “don’t reject the Lord’s discipline”, it tells me not to reject what God tells me in His Word.  When He gives me advice for living, I should pay attention and follow what He says.  

Sometimes God sends things my way that make me slow down – kind of a ‘time-out’.   I find I get so easily caught up in being busy.  When I’m running from place to place with a full calendar, I don’t spend time with Him.   My adrenalin comes from all the things I’m doing; my energy is not coming from God.  So, at times in my life, I’ve found myself in a situation where I can’t run around like crazy.  

An example of that occurred when my first two kids were young and I decided that I was going to take up running.  My husband was working crazy hours, I was really involved in a church ministry, and I was teaching piano lessons in my home.  Now I’m not saying that running is bad – running and later fast walking has been really beneficial for me – but there was a time when I was becoming more impatient and quick to anger because I was just too busy.  So one day while I was running, I twisted my foot and managed to somehow break a bone in my foot.  Having a cast on my foot from my toes to my knee really slowed me down, and during that time, I re-evaluated my life and got some priorities straightened out.   I think that’s an example of God’s discipline.  He sent something my way to help me make the corrections that needed to be made.

God’s discipline in my life has often been more of a sense of unease and things just not going well. One of the questions we used to ask our students in the alternative education system was, “How is this working for you?”  That has been more of my experience with God.  I hear that small whisper when things are not going well, and then I realize that I’ve been shoving God aside and ignoring what He wants.

So I think we can welcome God’s discipline. In fact, Proverbs says, “Joyful is the person who finds wisdom, the one who gains understanding.”  Sometimes discipline is uncomfortable, but it does bring good results.

Our song for today is Trust in You by Lauren Daigle.