Discipline: Painful, But Necessary

“Discipline: Painful, But Necessary”

By Zach Wood

Hebrews 12:11 NIV

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.

All of us have come from different upbringing backgrounds as far as how we were disciplined.  Every family does it differently for sure.  Some of us experienced some pretty harsh circumstances when it came to being disciplined for things we did wrong.  Others experienced less drastic and more reasonable punishments.  There are so many different ways to discipline and most of us have experienced our fair share as we grew up. 

I remember being disciplined when I was young.  Whether it be my mom, dad, grandparent, aunt, uncle, a teacher or someone else who was in authority over me at any given time, I remember unpleasant times of being told I was doing something wrong and having to suffer a consequence for it.  I often remember pleading often, “Please don’t do it!  I promise I’ll never do it again!”  I think I remember those words coming out of my mouth often.  That pleading didn’t get me very far because the person giving out the punishment knew I needed to learn.

“Learn” is the key word here.  We all want to learn, but sometimes we really learn best through our times of discipline.  We all remember a time or times when we learned a very hard lesson and it was painful to experience, whether we were spanked, grounded from going somewhere or had something taken away from us.  I remember times when I was disciplined and did not like it at all, but looking back later on, I was very appreciative someone took the opportunity to set me straight and give me a hard lesson.

God loves us very much, and because He does so, He also gives us hard lessons of discipline at times.  We often plead with God, but He knows that so much good and learning will come from the discipline.  We will learn and often those times are when we learn the most.  When Paul received his “thorn” in the flesh, he pleaded for God to take it away.  But God said “No” and said His grace was sufficient. 

We don’t like to hear that.  We want God take to take away our problems and our pain so often.  We want to learn and grow, but we want it without the pain of discipline and punishment.  It doesn’t work that way.  Parents discipline to train children and God disciplines to also train us.  It’s inevitable and for our own good.  God wants to strengthen us to become better followers and to develop our faith more. 

God’s discipline helps to build our character.