731 Discipline As Children Part 1 - Hebrews 12:5-7

What does the discipline of children have to do with our relationship with God? Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again today on the Follower of One podcast. We're chugging through Hebrews 12, and today I wanna read Hebrews 12:5-7. I'm reading from the New Living Translation, partly because there are fewer words to have to explain. It's kind of weird the way the different translations work, but here it is in the New Living Translation. "And have you forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you as His children? He said, my child, don't make light of the Lord's discipline and don't give up when He corrects you, for the Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes each one He accepts as His child. As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as His children." We'll stop in the middle of verse seven for today and pick this up again tomorrow. 

In this first passage in verses five and six, the author of Hebrews is quoting Proverbs. This is Proverbs 3:11-12. "My child doesn't make light of the Lord's discipline and don't give up when he corrects you. For the Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes each one He accepts as His child."  The way we discipline our children is an illustration of how God guides us and raises us.

Imagine what we do with our children, from when they're born to when they're old enough to go out on their own as part of what God is doing in our lives right now. God is working in our lives to turn us into the people that we will be for eternity. I'm fascinated by this idea.  It's way outside of what I can imagine or conceive, but it's a challenge because He says in this verse seven, "as you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as His children." In the ESV it says " it is for discipline that you have to endure." in the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible, it says "Endure suffering as a discipline. God is dealing with you as sons." 

God is dealing with us as His children and the suffering that we experience and the challenges that we face and the troubles that we face are all opportunities for us to grow or not. We can choose to treat these as discipline, or we can choose to choose a different attitude, and then we have to struggle with it like I'm struggling with this sentence. We are called to be God's people and everything that happens to us comes through some filter, and that's hard for me to say because, in the grand scheme of things, many things haven't happened to me. I have experienced some difficulties, but not much, and so I can't speak for you and your difficulties or anyone else, but I want to quote the Bible here and I want to say that we have this opportunity. We can choose to endure suffering as discipline as an opportunity for God to deal with us and to turn us into the people He wants us to be. Romans 8:28 is a very famous verse that says that God causes all things to work together for good. Many of us have endured many difficulties in our lives, and we have this promise and I want to believe enough about God to hang onto that promise.

That means that I can go into my workplace today, I can face the things that I face today, and try and be a blessing to the people around me, because I trust that God has my back. I want to encourage us today. Let's be people who live like God has our back. Let's remember that the disciplines that we face, that are the suffering that we face we can treat that as discipline and opportunity. We're gonna pick this up again tomorrow because I wanna talk a little bit more about how this relates to the way that we discipline our children. Today, let's remember as Marketplace Christians, whatever we face, we can choose to believe in God and therefore act accordingly, or we can choose not to. It's up to us.

Today, please choose to glorify God in every interaction that you have with the people that you work with. It will matter. It does matter, and God can make it count forever. Thanks very much for being a Marketplace Minister.