Chastisement?

Chastisement is hard. I seem to have a habit of getting into more than my share of trouble, so I know exactly how hard it can get.

Chastisement can be as simple as your parents giving you a reminder. Or it can be as big as God having to deal with you.

I’ve been both places. I’ve had my parents discipline me until they were almost ready to give up.

God had to deal with me when I wouldn’t listen to my parents…

It wasn’t fun. I was sick for almost 3 years straight. He also “took away” pretty much all of my friends.

But it was what I deserved, and it was what it took to get my life back on track.

Hebrews 12:5-8, says

And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children,

My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:

For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons;

for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?

But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.

Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous:

nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness

unto them which are exercised thereby.

Chastisement from the LORD means that we are really children of God. At times I have doubted my salvation. I would think “how could I have been saved and done that?”

Then God showed me these verses. A light bulb came on.

So that’s why I’ve been sick.

I’m glad that I was chastened! It means that I really was saved!

*Please do not misunderstand me. I DO NOT think that everyone who is sick is being chastised… Sometimes God uses sickness for other reasons: to help people grow, or perhaps to help someone else to get saved. Sickness was just what God used for me.