It Seems So Strange

I only remember two spankings when growing up, one from my mom and one from my dad.  Thinking about that, I am certain of two things:

• I got more spankings than that!
• I got less than I deserved!

I remember with each of them, I was told, “I spanked you because I love you.”  I doubt that I believed my parents´ declarations at the time, but I do now. I've been the dad who spanked his sons, and each time I experienced the truth that it hurt me far more than it did them. 

That is not a cliché nor a platitude to make me feel better.  It was true then, and when I think back on it, it is true now. It hurt me to spank them, but I did it because I knew that a little sting to their rambunctious posteriors was better than the other consequences they would experience in life if they kept doing particular behaviors.

God does the same with those of us who are His sons and daughters through faith in Jesus Christ.  Read what the Holy Spirit says in the book of Hebrews.

Hebrews 12:6-7  For whom the Lord loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives.”  7 If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? 

Hebrews 12:10-11  For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. 11 Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Many Christians have yielded to the thinking of our unredeemed culture and reject this truth.  When something bad happens to a person, they are quick to tell the hurting, “God did not do this.”  Sometimes that statement is true. Sometimes it is not.
The truth is 

1. • Sometimes God sends or allows bad things in our lives to chasten us and encourage us to repent.
   • Sometimes He sends or allows bad things in our lives for other reasons that are unrelated to chastening.

When bad things happen, the believer ought always to quickly ask, is there something in my life for which I need to repent and for which God is chastening me?  If so, the solution is easy. We repent and confess our sin to the Lord, and …

1 John 1:9 (NKJV)  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 

Here is another dimension of that truth:

1. • Sometimes the same event may be chastening for one person but have another purpose for a different person.

God may allow the pandemic to burden my life to bring me to a place of repentance of sin, but have an altogether different purpose for you.  
Of one thing we can both be confident, strange as it seems; whatever God´s purpose, He allows what He does in our lives because He dearly, dearly loves us!