Comfortable Discipline

"In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood."

~Hebrews 12:4~

 

 

 

No kidding.

I sometimes think I have hardly broken a sweat.

 

This is just a shortish blog I wanted to write to acknowledge a lesson (at least partially) learned today.

Listen. The writer to the Hebrews uses this passage (that the previous verse is lifted from) to encourage his readers to persevere in the midst of hardship and affliction. Consider Jesus, he says, who endured so much before receiving his prize, that you yourselves will not 'grow weary and lose heart'.

"Hang in there!" basically.

And then he flips everything on it's head.

This hardship you are facing, the hardship that you may be tempted to view as evidence of God's abandonment?

Nah.

 

That is a sign of his love for you! Endure it as a discipline, because we all know that a loving Father disciplines his children, and that is what this is. A discipline. that is why you are being allowed to go through this. Because he LOVES you.

Yeah. Sure.

For starters, the culture in which this understanding of loving discipline is assumed, is far from one I recognise in my own life.

I have received loving discipline from my parents. Of course I have. But my parents were children of their generation, and the mostly permissive liberal society in which I have lived my life, had an affect on the kind of discipline I received. And it's consistency.

When we think of discipline, we are tempted to think of punishment. But punishment is only a small tool in the tool box of discipline. Discipline is training. It shares roots with the word 'disciple'. There is always a purpose to it. It is an evidence of God's love because he wants to equip us to be able to face whatever will come our way, and to grow up into righteousness.

In lyrics that pay a direct reference  to Psalm 24, "Love rescue me" a song written and sung by Bob Dylan and Bono, we hear the words,

 

"I have cursed Thy rod and staff,

They No longer comfort me,

Love rescue me"

 

 

And I get it. I really do. It's a heart cry for mercy. It is a soul pleading for comfort of an altogether more tender kind.

But I can't help but be drawn to this idea that it is based on a misconception. That is okay because the song does not attempt to teach theology but to convey an emotion. But David understands, as a Shepherd himself, that these instruments of correction are really the tools of protection, that these tools of remedy are also tools of rescue.

I have heard Jewish people joking about how being the chosen people, they wish God would have chosen someone else. And we can kind of understand why. If discipline is the expression of love, sometimes we wish he would go and love someone else.

He doesn't let us off easy, that's for sure.

But he cares enough to keep working on us.

This daily crucifixion stuff is really tough. Seriously tough.But ,as the writer reminds the Hebrews, 'You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.'

 

That may not be true of some, but it is certainly true of me.

Today God allowed me to face some of the consequences of my own sinful impatience.

 

Yeah. I got caught speeding.

It may cost me more money than I can afford.

But it is a lesson I cannot afford not to learn.

This costly lesson, is far less expensive than my not learning it.


Some years ago He drew my very specific attention to some verses in Galatians, where he told me not to sow to the sinful nature, but rather to sow to the Spirit.

Those who sow to the sinful nature, as I had done today, will reap from that nature destruction. Destruction of my finances, in this case.

 

And he reminded me, that what he wanted for me was to sow to the Spirit.

It is not a reluctant act of restraint that is to take the place of my intended sin.

And it is not bottled up fuming resentment.
I do not merely acquiesce to do 'The right thing'.

 

No. I am to Sow to the Spirit.

That is an act of worship, love and devotion.

What greater thing can there be than to sow to the Holy spirit of loving Father God?

What at first seems like an act  of sacrifice, becomes and act of loving worshipful devotion to the one who loves me to the uttermost.

This kind of discipline is invaluable.

And from it, we reap everlasting life!

And more than that, the writer to the Hebrews tell us, that although No discipline is pleasant initially, for those who have been trained by it....well, they produce a harvest of righteousness and peace.

Yeah. God disciplines those he loves.

In the end I was rejoicing over this discipline, and in his love expressed to me in it. And it is painful. I can't afford the money, and I feel naturally angry towards myself for my stupidity. But I am pleased that it happened, if I can truly learn this lesson.

 

I will joyfully sow to the spirit.


And I will patiently await my harvest.

Thy rod and thy staff,
They comfort me still.

Crisis of Faith

The Christian author and humourist Adrian Plass once defined a Christian Speaker as someone 'Whose problems only exist in the past tense'. On reading this I immediately identified. I am a speaker as well as a writer, but no distinction is necessary between the two. It is suffice to say, I believe, that there is often a desire when communicating a message (whatever medium is used to present it) to come across as someone who has, at least in part, got it together. That is sort of implicit in the idea that we consider ourselves and our words worthy of some of your attention.

That is not to say that showing some vulnerability is not a part of that, as Mr Plass hinted at. We are happy to speak of weakness. Indeed, if you have heard my sermons then you will know that my weakness is a recurring theme.... Illustrations of this however seem to often exist only  in those types that say 'This is a lesson I have learned'.

Very conscious of this, I often now try and own on-going weaknesses in both my blogs and my sermons. But that isn't to say that I am not selective....both in what I reveal.....and in how much I reveal.

This preamble is really just to bring you to this point. This is a blog in which I will speak about an ongoing issue for which I definitely do not have answers. I am in the middle of this right now, but part of me is hoping that, in the writing, I will perhaps resolve some of those things as I write.

Allow me to tell you of an incident that occurred during my children's last weekend visit with me. My youngest son is a simmering cauldron of unspent energy right now. He is only 9 and he almost cant sit still at present. So on the Sunday in question he had grown bored with the lethargy of his old man and announces that he is off to the garden to play football.

I continue with whatever lazy activity I am indulged in and breathe a sigh of relief that he is at least occupied. But then I am interrupted by my niece (who lives with me) saying that My boy is crying and wants me to go to him.

I go out into the garden and find Noah rolling on the grass, clutching his knee and clearly in pain. I ask him what happened and if he is okay, to which he says he tripped over and hurt his knee on the edge of a concrete paving slab on the pathway.

And then he says something which I don't quite catch at first, so I ask him to repeat it.

"It didn't work Daddy!"
"Uhm, what didn't work?"
"I prayed and it didn't work!", He says.
"Oh?!"
"And now I have doubts" He looks very sternly at me.
"Right, I see", I say rather pathetically.
"Serious doubts!"

And a little later, once indoors, the discussion continues along the lines of 'Why, if God can do anything, won't he answer my prayers?'. And then , in response to my rather inadequate answer, "why would God allow any suffering?" And "why would he create a world where bad things happen?" And so we get into free will and everything, which is ironic, as I don't technically believe in free will myself (or at least my viewpoint on this is influenced by Calvinist thinking) but it seems like the best way to meet his avalanching scepticism. And all the while I am offering him answers.....I am conscious that they are answers I have chosen to settle for, because I can never know completely. There are apparent contradictions and tensions which I hold gingerly. But how do I explain mystery and paradox to a very black and white nine year old. And I am even fighting doubt in myself as I try to explain it.

My nine year old, when he was an eight year old, had a very visceral and tangible experience of God at Soul survivor, two summers ago. He has always astounded me with his spiritual interest and perceptive questions....and on occasion his answers too. But now, gone were his memories of the feeling he had experienced at Soul Survivor. Forgotten was the certainty the he expressed when wide eyed and breathless he had announced to me that summer night, "It's real, Daddy. It's really real!"
But I knew what was in his mind. It wasn't that he was thinking 'God exists and he is a different God to the one I thought him to be'. The doubt I sensed was about God's very existence at all, because (and I can only assume here) He knew God to be all loving and all powerful. So that his 'failure' to answer this call for help may well indicate that this God simply does not exist.

And there are many others on this planet who have come to that exact conclusion.

I do my best to address it, and I even chuckle to myself. It is a moment of identification. He hurts his knee.....and his entire belief system crumbles and dissolves in a matter of minutes. This seems to be a microcosm  that, for many an adult, contains the elements of the unravelling of many a faith in a time of crisis.  And I think, in that moment, 'There must be a blog in this'.

Now, as for Noah's knee? Well, there is a happy ending to this tale. After all my theologising and explaining.....and seeing that this explanation (the one I haven't really given you!) wasn't really cutting the euphemistic mustard with him, I felt a 'twinge' of what I call the 'Holy Spirit'. Ok, it was the Holy Spirit, by my best gifts of discernment. And that twinge was telling me to pray again. And all my better instincts were telling me not to set God up for further failure. What if, in his sovereignty he refuses again to convince my son of his love by relieving him of his pain? God does that quite a lot in my experience. If I was God I would go about all over the place proving the living daylights out of my existence and love. But I am most certainly not God.

So I pray a prayer of half hearted faith but with some authority, it feels. And ask that Noah's knee will get better, and within an hour he would forget that it had even been hurt. I move on quickly, being careful not to ask how he feels. We have come to a theological stalemate but the discussion seems to have completed itself. So after I pray I send him on his way, still looking rather doubtful.

About ten minutes later the boy who could hardly walk and was hobbling around....was jumping up and down on the trampoline without any discomfort at all.

And of course some of the things I should have said to him came flooding back, about perseverance in prayer, and  praying according to your faith.

And I do laugh a little at myself, and the doubt I was masking while trying to solve his dilemma. How easily we forget when the trials come. And I think I have got it. that God is teaching me not to lose it over what appears to be a minor blip but to hold fast to the eternal things like his Love and his Promise.

And I think about how I can use this illustration to write a blog to encourage others (as well as myself) to not panic at the waves and wind, but to trust the apparently sleeping Jesus, who is, I am reassured, in the boat with me.

And then, a few days later, I get a phone call, and it's one I have been dreading for a while.....and all my good intentions to stand fast whatever the storm, dissolve before my very eyes.

God has a sense of humour. Of that I have very little doubt.

I will tell you all about that phone call in my next blog and of my on-going crisis of faith.