There is a side to our walk with Jesus Christ that provides rest and restoration. Jesus promises that anyone who comes to Him will experience His rest (Matthew 11:28), but there is another side that brings breaking and discipline. We can be assured that God brings this only to help us grow and mature for our good.
God portrays Himself as our Heavenly Father multiple times in scripture and He also affirms that He treats us the same way He commands earthly fathers to treat their children—with both love and discipline. The discipline of God, however, is never in the form of wrathful impatience but of loving kindness that we may not become small spoiled Christians but champions and warriors for Him.
God's discipline should not be something despised, although one must admit that we wish God didn't have to discipline us. Instead, we must change our outlook through the realization of what God has done for us in Christ; we are not disciplined out of hatred but out of loving grace that desires that we become better in every aspect of life.
Here are eight scriptures that show God as lovingly bringing discipline into our life so that we may grow in discipline as well.
"Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent" (NASB, Revelation 3:19). (Pexels)"It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?" (NASB, Hebrews 12:7). (Pexels)"Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him" (NASB, James 1:12). (Pexels)"For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." (NASB, 2 Corinthians 4:17–18). (Pixabay)"Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, "I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, Who leads you in the way you should go" (NASB, Isaiah 48:17). (Pexels)"For whom the LORD loves He reproves, Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights" (NASB, Proverbs 3:12). (Pixabay)"I know, O LORD, that Your judgments are righteous, And that in faithfulness You have afflicted me" (NASB, Psalm 119:75). (Pexels)"Behold, how happy is the man whom God reproves, So do not despise the discipline of the Almighty" (NASB, Job 5:17). (Pexels)
