By Ron Yates

“Listen, my sons, to a father’s instruction; pay attention and gain understanding.” – PROVERBS 4:1 (NIV)

When we don’t listen to God’s instructions and we go off and do our own thing, we’re setting ourselves up for failure.  I’ve done that, but hopefully less now…and hopefully I’ve learned some things along the way.  God’s instruction and His correction is important in our life.

“My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent His rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those He loves, as a father the son he delights in.” – PROVERBS 3:11-12

“Because the Lord disciplines those He loves, as a father the son he delights.”

If God’s trying to correct you, it’s because He loves you.  A father who just lets his children go off and do whatever is not loving them.  A father that just lets you run off a cliff or drive crazy – do whatever – is a father that doesn’t care about you.

When we think about correction and discipline, we think that God’s just up in Heaven just waiting to beat us over the head with something.  Some of us have wanted to do that with our kids, that we’re ready to just beat them…human nature.  But I love my kids…that’s why they don’t get beat.  I but do correct them.   Correcting somebody is not fun – it’s needful – because you can dishearten somebody by doing it; you can kill their spirit if you don’t handle it the right way.  (Thank God He handles it the right way every time!)

“The word in Scripture that confirms your genesis in God addresses you as sons.  ‘My son, do not undervalue the loving instruction of the Lord; neither become despondent when you are corrected.’  For every instruction is inspired by His love, even as a father would teach his sons with affection, though it might seem harsh at the time.  Embrace correction.  His instruction confirms your true sonship (just as a father would take natural responsibility for the education of his children). – Hebrews 2:5-7 (Mirror Bible)

God addresses us as sons, not just as creation.  God doesn’t love the trees and the creatures on the earth like He loves you.  The trees and creatures are His creation; but Jesus didn’t die for all the creatures of the earth, though they’re going to benefit from His death.  We’ve been made the righteousness of God now, and Romans 8:19 tells us that “creation eagerly waits with anticipation for God’s sons to be revealed.”

We need to see ourselves in the light of who we are – what God says about us.  The reason why He corrects us is because He’s got a plan for us and it’s a good plan…He wants to establish us in that plan.

That scripture talks about not becoming despondent.  Do you know how you can get despondent when you’re being corrected?  It can happen if you don’t realize the one that is correcting you loves you.  We know that God loves us because He demonstrated that by sending His Son Jesus (Romans 5:8).

Also realize, God’s correction confirms your true sonship.

God’s correction confirms your true sonship.

I don’t get upset when God deals with me about something because almost every time He’s corrected me, He’s revealed who I am and it was opposite of how I was acting.

In the last blog, I talked about my daughter who had problems with her grades.  To encourage her, I told her what she was, not what she was doing or what she was getting.  I told her, “You’re an A-B girl, not a C-D girl.”  It didn’t look like she was an A-B girl, think or feel that way about herself, but I believed that to be true about her and that’s what I said about her, “calling things that be not as those they were.”

I was correcting her; I was redirecting her.  I was turning away from what she thought about herself to what I thought about her so she could start to think that way about herself.

The worst thing I could have done would have been to say, “Well, you’re going to have to improve that” and walk away because I wouldn’t have given her the tools and mindset to improve.”  But because I told her more, she started seeing something different about herself.

I love my kids.  My desire is for every one of them in their life to be successful.  How much more does our Heavenly Father desire for us to be successful in life?  (But that’s in the next blog.)

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