To Encourage You

Hebrews 12:5-7 “And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?  ’My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.’ It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?”

Do you understand that if you are a believer, you are one of Christ’s disciples?  Jesus’ disciples weren’t just the 12 apostles.  Often the Bible seems to use the words interchangeably: apostle and disciple. But they don’t mean the same thing. The 12 apostles (which means “one sent out as a delegate”) had a very unique mission in the world. Their teaching would become the foundation upon which the Church would be established. However, for them to teach others, they first had to be taught themselves. That’s why they were also called “disciples,” which means, “a learner, a pupil.” But again, it was not just the 12 apostles that are Christ’s disciples. Any believer, any child of God, is, likewise, Christ’s disciple. 

Think of it. We who know Him are being taught by the greatest Teacher, by far, that ever lived. I love when we read of those who were being taught by Him that “they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22).  So, do you want to be astonished by this same teaching? You can be, but you must be willing to be taught in His way.  We don’t inherently know what we need to know – and we don’t know how best to be taught it.  But He does.  And so, we come to the verses above from Hebrews 12 which tell us about one of the ways that He does this. It is by reproof. It is by hardship. It is by the trials, the difficulties that He sovereignly allows to touch our lives.  And so, how do we learn in this way? It is by realizing that in our hardships God is actually treating us as His sons and daughters.  It’s because He loves us that we are facing the things in life that we do. That includes whatever hardship may be in our life right now.

But to actually learn the lessons He intends for us, the verses above tell us to realize two very important things. One is that we aren’t to “regard lightly the discipline of the Lord.” In other words, we aren’t to think that what is happening in our lives is just happenstance. We aren’t to see it as “just one of those things,” an irritation, a thing that we would just as soon avoid. No, we are to see this very thing as a means of teaching by our Lord. He’s teaching us something that is most important for us.  He’s in this thing, whatever it is, in a very intimate and real way.

But then, a second admonition: don’t be “weary when reproved by him.”  Don’t give up. Don’t throw in the towel. Don’t resort to frustration, anger, or despair. Rather, to learn from this greatest Teacher, the Bible calls us to “endure.” It is “for discipline” that we must do this. The lesson is learned, slowly but surely, in God’s own time, as we hold on until the end.  It’s so often in such trials that the teaching from God’s Word that we might have in our head is driven down deep into our heart. And it’s in that process that the astonishment with which those who heard Jesus’ words spoken to them on earth can likewise astonish us as He speaks to us from heaven.  It is as God fixes His truths deep in our heart that we are equipped to resist the temptation to sin.  And it is as we learn to really believe what He has taught us that we are equipped to teach His wonderful truth to others. 

May God help us who call ourselves Christ’s disciples to learn with patience the lessons He is teaching us in His way and in His time.  May we remember to “not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” May our great Teacher continually give us the patience to learn.