No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:11, NIV)
I’m sorry, but you’re not going to like this devotion today.
Unless you like wind sprints.
Unless you like squats.
Unless you like hearing your old coach yell, “Quit lagging, you wimp!”
And you may not even like it then. You may be happy to pound a thousand range balls, a la Haotong Li at Harding Park on the day he took the lead at the PGA Championship. You may gladly wear out one spot beneath your feet on the practice green while you roll three-footers right through to dusk. But let someone suggest the necessity of spiritual training—the discipline that comes from the Lord—and you’ll rush to play couch potato with the rest of us.
Yes, if you don’t want to be told that God is working you over with good reason, you need to steer clear of Hebrews 12. It’s the chapter that tells us this is what good, good fathers really do. They discipline us out of love. They see better in us, and they call it out with hurdles and sparring and double days.
It may not be literal hell you’re passing through, but it’s the worst thing you can imagine in this world.
OK, maybe that’s enough imagery for one short piece like this. You get the idea. God, the most exceptional of all fathers, will attempt to use the challenges of this world to prepare us for the next one. He may even—depending on the details of his sovereignty—plant them right in our way, so we cannot go over, under, or around. Rather, we must go through these challenges to get to where he wants us to go.
Ron Kenoly, the longtime gospel singer, once spoke of a pastor who preached these words: “When you catch hell, don’t hold it! When you’re going through hell, don’t stop!”
Maybe you wouldn’t dare say that God’s discipline feels like hell. But remember how we’ve pretty much all wailed, in the middle of the night laid out in gut-wrenching sickness on the bathroom floor, “Lord, just take me now.” It may not be literal hell you’re passing through, but it’s the worst thing you can imagine in this world. And yet, here you are, emerged from the other side, saying in all earnestness, “Thank you, Jesus!”
Dear friend, I don’t know what God is walking you through right now. It may be financial hardship or family strife or a chemo fog like the one I have to tolerate every few weeks. Whether it’s a consequence of your own sin or foolishness, the product of someone else’s wrong actions against you, or a pain that is simply “the course of this world,” God has a reward in mind for you. It is “a harvest of righteousness and peace” once you have been trained by it.
So don’t stop in the midst of God’s training. Go on. There really is a landing spot, an “other side.” And the Lord isn’t just waiting for you there—he’s sustaining you every step of the way.
—
Jeff Hopper
September 15, 2020
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
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