LOVING CONSEQUENCES
“My son (or daughter), despise not the chastening of the LORD;
neither be weary of his correction:” Prov.3:11
We have heard many sayings. “God don’t like ugly” “God is
punishing me for….” “What goes around comes around”
and there are many more that point to belief that when we do
wrong, God punishes us for it. According to the text above
and there are many more that remind us that we have
a God; a father in heaven that disciplines us like a parent when we a
re disobedient. He does this because He loves us.(Rev.3:19)We
serve a loving God.
If He didn’t love us He would allow anything and everything and we’d
face no consequences for our actions, nor learn any lessons from our
mistakes. This is what many parents do today. As time goes on,
there is less and less discipline and what is happening? Kids are running
around senseless as parents look the other way. For us with God as our
parent, He doesn’t let anything just go unattended. Here is one example.
“Oh, I just gotta have that man. Even if he is married”. You get the man,
he marries you and you end up with one trial after another in your marriage.
You wonder why all the drama. Finally it ends in divorce.
Look at Adam and Eve. They disobeyed. The next thing we know one son killed another.
This is the consequence to sin..to disobedience. How devastating. Can you imagine this
happening in your family? And this was just the beginning. All through Bible history;
story upon story, God’s people were chastened for their disobedience.(Gen 4.)
King David stole a man’s wife and then had him killed. You think he could just get away
with that and go on with life just because He was God’s servant. No! They lost their first
baby. (2 Sam.12:9-14) And home life from then on was quite challenging. One son raped
a daughter, another son totally rebelled and tried to take his job as King to name a few
challenges. Eli, a top leader in the church was punished greatly for not disciplining his
sons. He allowed his sons to disrespect God’s house. His sons were killed for this.(1
Sam.2:12-17; 3:11-18; 4:11.)
We can be a born again loving Christian. Praying all the time. But think about it. What
decisions have we made in our life that was clearly ungodly and disobedient to God’s
word? What are we doing in our lives that are clearly not in line with a Christian
lifestyle? After we have those pictures in mind, let’s look at the trials we are facing. Do
they match up to the bad decisions? This is God showing us that He never had this plan
for us but because we chose it anyway, He loves so much that He is allowing
circumstances to take place to fix us. Discipline, chastening, whatever you want to call it,
He will do it for our own good because He loves us. And it won’t come to an end until
we repent and surrender and for some we may have to remain in rough situations until He
comes again. All because of our choices. The good news is that some of us won’t be
savable unless we went through the storms in the first place.
God knows what to do with us, for us, to save us. God is so good that after He chastens us, He sends a blessing. In Adam and Eve’s case, He gave them a son to replace Abel. His name was Seth. And guess what. God promised Adam that He would send His son Jesus to save them from their sins. Through Seth’s family line came Jesus. (Luke 3:23-38) May God be praised. I am thankful that I have a loving parent in heaven that does not look the other way when I do wrong but instead as He sits high and looks low He makes sure that I learn lessons from my mistakes and blesses me too, because He loves me so. (Psalm 89:31-33)
R. Denise Johnson