This week I have enjoyed sharing a daily devotional that I originally wrote for Lifeway’s “Open Windows” devotional guide. I hope you have been encouraged in your faith by these short meditations!
Proverbs 3:12, “For the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.”
I remember it like it was yesterday. The offering plate came down my row and my 5-year-old fist held tightly onto the quarter in my pocket that my parents had given me to put into the offering. My older brother saw it all happen and reported it to my parents the second we got into the car after church. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I realize now that it was because he loved me that my father disciplined me when I got home. The next Sunday, I understood that giving was an act of worship and threw the quarter in the offering plate when it went by. Correction had done its work.
If my father had known about me holding onto the quarter and yet done nothing, that passivity would not have been an act of love. Leaving me in my selfishness may have made me more susceptible to greed later in life.
Adults don’t like discipline any more than kids, yet we are all corrected by our Heavenly Father for our own good. God always knows the discipline we need.
God’s correction in our lives through friends, family, pastors, and the prompting of the Holy Spirit is evidence of His love for us. Our Father’s correction is a sign of His delight in us.
Father, thank You for not leaving me in my sin but using Your discipline to conform me more to Jesus’ image.
He Must Become Greater 