King David had many children. His parenting styles with different children led to mixed results. One wonders if his own guilt over his previous failures paralyzed him and prevented him from correcting his children’s mistakes. It is hard to find great examples of parenting in the families described in scripture. There was no perfect family then or now. But we do have a perfect Father who disciplines us in love to make us holy. Will we receive his discipline? Message based on 1 Kings 1:5-10 and Hebrews 12:3-11.
Quotes:
Duane Brooks: God disciplines us out of love, and when we love our children we will discipline them for the purpose of formation and education; not for the purpose of punishment.
John Perkins wrote in his book Let Justice Roll Down about how his own father spanked him before he deserted him. “I knew daddy was going away without me. But I still didn’t turn back. So once more he came back and whupped me a last time.” He never understood why his dad left that day, but he wrote, “Even when he punished me for following him that afternoon, he was admitting we had some sort of relationship.”
Zig Ziglar: A child who is not disciplined in love by his little world—meaning, the child's parents—will be disciplined without love by the big world.
Duane Brooks: We are tempted to think: if God loved me he would not let me go through this. What if the pain in our lives is proof that God does love us, that he is working to redeem what he has allowed. We submit to his discipline.
Chrysostom: The very thing that makes us feel deserted actually gives us confidence that we have not been deserted.
Duane Brooks: Discipline ... is to strengthen and restore, not condemn or destroy.
Eugene Peterson : Suffering is not evidence of God’s absence, but of God’s presence, and it is in our experience of being broken that God does his surest and most characteristic salvation work. There is a way to accept, embrace, and deal with suffering that results in a better life, not a worse one, and more of the experience of God, not less. God is working out his salvation in our lives the way he has always worked it out—at the place of brokenness, at the cross of Jesus, and at the very place where we take up our cross.
Duane Brooks: Our heavenly father disciplines us for our good so that we may share in his holiness. Discipline is never pleasant, but God’s discipline is purposeful.
C. S. Lewis: Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a sleeping world. God whispers to us in our pleasures, He speaks to us in our conscience, and He shouts to us in our pain.
Tom Landry: The job of a coach is to make men do what they don’t want to do, in order to be what they’ve always wanted to be!
Ajith Fernando: In the Western church, there seems to be a lot of reflection on how to avoid suffering and on what to do when we hurt. The "good life," comfort, convenience, and a painless life have become necessities that people view as basic rights. One of the results of this attitude is a severe restriction of spiritual growth, for God intends us to grow through trials.
A W Tozer: People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith.We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.
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