CHASTENING

Related Index Topics: Brokeness, Comfort, Correction, Forgiveness & Mercy, Repentance, Trials & Triumphs, Mistakes.

         1. Righteous punishment is a thousand light years away from revenge.

         2. If men refuse to be taught by precept they must be taught by punishment.

         3. By chastening, the Lord separates the sin that He hates from the sinner whom He loves.

         4. Let us learn to kiss the rod, & love it.

         5. The Lord does not measure out our afflictions according to our faults, but according to our strength, & looks not at what we deserve, but what we are able to bear.

         6. God's chastening originates in His Love.

         7. God delights not in the death of sinners, or the disquiet of the saints, but punishes with a kind of reluctance.

         8. God never afflicts us but when we give Him cause to do it. He does not dispense His frowns as He does His favours, from His mere good pleasure.

         9. Chastening is simultaneous wrath & mercy.

         10. The Lord can forgive & save, but He doesn't always heal you from the consequences & the chastisements & the punishments & the reaping of what you sowed, & there are plenty of examples of it in the Bible.

         11. Unlike David, whenever King Saul got caught in his sins he always said, "Honour me before the people, don't let them know. Tell God I'm sorry, but don't let the people know anything about it."--A proud man, afraid of the opinions of people. And it was the people & their opinions & his man-pleasing that caused most of his problems. King David, too, sinned against the Lord, mostly in his unkindness to someone else, & then lied about it & put up a hypocritical self-righteous front about it, but he finally got caught. But David immediately repented, & repented publicly, asked the Lord to forgive him, & the Lord did. "They have to know that I'm judging you." This is what God was saying, not in so many words, but in effect what God was saying to King David, that he was going to have to suffer publicly for his sins because he had offended God publicly & even offended his citizens publicly by his sins.

         12. So sometimes God has to let you continue to suffer for certain sins, even though saved & forgiven. Thank God there will come a time when He'll remember your sins against you no more. I've heard some preachers say, "God has blotted all the sins out & He doesn't even remember them any more, He doesn't even know you did'm!" He says, "I will remember them against you no more!" He remembers them, God knows everything, but He just doesn't hold it against you any more. He doesn't cause you to suffer for those sins any longer.

         13. So even Christians suffer for their sins, & sometimes it's sins that have so affected other people, that God has to let the other people know that you are being punished & have been punished for your sins, like He did David. The child he was praying so desperately for died, God took him, the kingdom that he wanted to retain nearly died, God took it away from him by his favourite son with the long beautiful hair, Absalom. His favourite son, the one that he wanted to be king, took it away from him. David himself had to flee with a handful of followers across the brook & into the wilderness. And it was only after much suffering & much repentance & much punishment & chastisement that he was allowed to return.--Dad

         14. God's punishing the so-called Christian World for their sins & their hypocrisy & unrighteousness! He always takes it out on His Own first, because they know more & they know better. You punish your own kids first, you don't start spanking the neighbour's kids. If your kids have been throwing rocks through the window, you punish yours first, & then you try to handle the neighbours' later. God always punishes His Own children first, then he turns around & slaughters their enemies!--Dad

         15. "But He chastens us for our profit that we might be partakers of His holiness." What is His holiness?--His kosherness! To be kosher, believe it or not, is to be clean, to be pure, to be righteous. In other words, through it He cleanses us, He purges us from the sins & impurities in our own hearts that cause all the trouble, & we're made clean, thank God!--Dad

         16. I would rather my father would give me a beating any day than to have sat down & had to hear one of his lectures for an hour or two. I much preferred him just to give me a good walloping so I could get it over with & get out & back to play again.

         17. I much preferred it than to sit there & listen to him talk & talk, two hours lecturing me about it, when all the other guys were out there having so much fun & I was having to sit & listen to this lecture. I would lots rather he'd just punish me & spank me & turn me loose, get it over with.

         18. To me that was the worst punishment of all, but I guess that's where I learned a lot. I probably learned even more from some of his sermons than some of the spankings. Back then I would rather have learned the hard way, get punished & get it over quick & get back at it again! To me the easiest way was the hardest way, to have to sit & listen to a lecture.--Dad

         19. God warns before He wounds.

         20. I wholeheartedly understand & believe that "the judgements of the Lord are true & righteous altogether, & more to be desired are they than gold." The Lord just doesn't let anything happen in our personal lives for no reason--it's for a reason & for our training in the way which we should go so we will not depart from it. How is it determined as to how "severe" the judgement should be? That depends on a lot of related factors such as the degree of ignorance, innocence, sin, damage, injury to others, who is hurt, duration, reparation, restitution, repentance, restoration, suffering etc. etc. that only you & God can judge!

         21. If you run around outside the tower of God's protection, the Devil will scorch you with his fire! If you don't stay close to the Lord & in His will, & obeying Him, the Lord will let the Devil touch you! Otherwise He won't let him touch a hair of your head if you're right where He wants you!--Unless He wants to show like He did with Job, what faith, what perseverance & what patience you've got!

         22. We must be sure the chastisement is in the right spirit with the meekness & the quietness of a tender & gentle & loving & contrite heart in all humility. We must be sure that we're in the right spirit as we correct those around us for their mistakes & their errors & their sins, even as God does us & as we would want others to do unto us for ours.--Loving & forgiving one another for Christ's sake, even as He hath forgiven us for our sins. As Jesus taught us to pray, "Forgive us for our iniquities as we forgive others for theirs." (Eph.4:32; Mt.6:12,14,15)

         23. In some cases God is a hard Man! I can be an old softy & a pushover sometimes, but I can get tough with you too, right? God's the same way, & we're to be like Him. He can be merciful, He can be forgiving, He can be loving, He can be patient & wait a long time for you to repent & do better, but finally, that's when God moves fast! If you don't repent & finally do what He wants you to do, & give your all to Jesus & serve & obey & please Him, especially if you get to the point where you're a poor testimony & a bad witness & a bad advertisement for God, He can--Bang!--Knock you out completely so that you are no longer a stumbling block & a bad testimony & bad example!

         24. "What do you mean, Dad? You mean after we're saved & filled with the Spirit, God's still going to judge us according to our works?--Send us to Hell?" No! Not to Hell, but He will judge you. A lot of the places where the Bible says "they shall be damned", it does not mean sent to Hell, contrary to what the church wants to make you think. It means you will be judged or punished severely, even killed, have this life taken away from you, even though you're saved!

         25. The Word says, "They which sin before all, rebuke before all, that others also may fear!" (ITim.5:20) If your sin is a private sin, God will forgive you without publicly embarrassing you. But if you have committed sins that everyone knows you're guilty of & you have sinned before all & it's been a sin that has hurt others & a sin which has hurt the faith of others & has been a bad testimony & caused others to stumble, God is going to have to punish you before all! He's going to have to humiliate you & punish you so that everybody that knew about your sin will know that God is dealing with you & God is punishing you.--To know that God is just as well as merciful, & He will not let you get away with it unless you repent & change & make it right with both God & man, & the congregation.

         26. You need to look on your failures from a positive viewpoint, that the Lord's not trying to crush you to the ground & let the Enemy walk all over you, but that He's actually honouring you by teaching you these lessons & by letting these things happen. You may feel bad, but you should thank the Lord, because it's wonderful that you can learn these lessons. It's even a blessing that we fall sometimes, because often we get our greatest victories out of seeming defeats!

         27. Usually the Lord first warns us that we're out of line! Now if we'd go socking our kids without even telling them what the rules are, how unjust & unfair that would be! I was in the habit of warning my kids two or three times with a final warning about the third time. I said, "If you do that again I'm then going to sock it to you without warning!" Then I would do it!

         28. Sometimes God has to do something drastic to get our attention if we're too distracted by other things, like the cares of this life, & we're not thinking about what we ought to be thinking about! We're too worried about this & that & the other & we get our minds off of trusting the Lord & on our burdens, instead of casting our burdens on Him & letting Him take care of them!

         29. I'll tell you, God has had to deal with me!--But it wasn't when I was really devoted & concentrating sincerely with all my heart on trying to do His will & obeying & trying to help others & trying to witness & win souls, & trying to get others to do the same!

         30. With all God's protection & hosts of Angels camped around us & a great cloud of witnesses & good spirits praying for us & watching us & helping us, how could the Devil possibly touch us unless we let him?--Or unless the Lord allows it as a testing & a trial to see just how much we want something, how determined we are, how much faith we have, how much knowledge of the Word we have, & how much we stand on the Word!

         31. God often afflicts or punishes you through your children in order to correct you. Because even when all other corrections fail, like sickness, accident, monetary problems, etc., sometimes He will allow the Enemy to attack you through the illness of your own children because He knows you love them so much & maybe He can get through to you through them!

         32. The best kind of so-called punishment should be chastening or child training, something that will teach you something & help you to learn the lesson, & help you never to make the same mistake again!

         33. Do you ever refuse to accept a chastening or correction because the one giving it doesn't have all his facts exactly right? When you do this, it's obvious that you're latching on to these minor inaccuracies in order to justify yourself! If you say, "Those details are not true, so therefore I refuse to accept your conclusions", it's because you don't want to accept the truth & you are trying to justify yourself.

         34. There's no such thing as an accident to a Christian. A Christian doesn't have accidents. If he's in a so-called "accident" it's because God permitted it or allowed it for some reason. If you're sick it's because God allows it for some reason, either to teach you a lesson or to spank you or both!--Or because you did something you shouldn't have & you got out of God's protection & you broke some of His rules & you suffered either the natural consequences or a direct chastening of the Lord.

         35. Discipline, like the bridle in the hand of a good rider, should exercise its influence without appearing to do so; should be ever active, both as a support & as a restraint, yet seem to lie easily in hand. It must always be ready to check or to pull up, as occasion may require; & only when the horse is a runaway should the action of the curb be perceptible.

         36. Permissiveness is not a policy; it is the abandonment of policy. And its apparent advantages are illusory.