Good morning!
Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father calm our hearts and minds in the face of His loving discipline and rebuke. It feels odd to say, Father, but I don't like it when you correct me. I don't like it when you allow me to experience the bad consequences for my bad attitudes and actions. But you do this because you love us and long for us to be closer to you. Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit within us, help us to embrace you as you take anything that is between us, and rip it out. Destroy in us whatever keeps us from being close to you. In my thinkings, sayings, and doings, bring me close to you Father. Amen.
Your Morning Song: "Made to Love" by TobyMac
Your Morning Scripture: Proverbs 3:11-12
My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline,
and do not resent his rebuke,
because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
as a father the son he delights in.
...
The world around us is very much like a song stuck in your head, and one bite of cake more than you should have. The world sings the song of self, "please yourself, worship your self, seek to satisfy yourself." And over and over and over this repeats, sickly sweet, when that one bite of cake too many leaves you feeling gross.
And if we seek first and only to satisfy ourselves, to please ourselves, we will grow less and less satisfied. Our efforts turning over poorly in our hearts and minds until we are left desperate and starving for something that is good and that will last.
And so when God comes to us, as a good, good Father, and calls out a challenge to our selfish living, how will we react? When God rebukes us and disciplines us, how will we respond? When God allows us to experience the consequences of our selfish actions and heart-deep error, how will we reply?
Too many of us, myself often included, react to God's discipline as if He has done something wrong to us. We treat God's discipline as offensive, crying out, "how dare you!?" and "I thought you loved me!?"
Do you know who God disciplines? Do you know who God disciplines, by His Spirit within us, through the Word He gave us, in the name of the Son He sent to come and claim us?
Those that He loves.
God challenges us, corrects us, calls us out, and demands true repentance, because He loves us.
It is wrong to think that God is just going to try to make you feel good. It is wrong to act like God should make everything easy for us. It is wrong to say that God should only let our version of "good things" happen to us.
Often times our version of "good" is not what God calls good.
God's good, for us, in our every day lives, is intimacy with us.
God wants to be close to you. He wants to speak to you when you pray and read and sing. He wants to hear from you as you pray and read and sing. He wants to be close to you as you are close to His other children, when you read and pray and sing and eat and laugh and do.
God wants to be close to you. And He will call out a warning, a loving challenge to His children if something stands between He and them, He and us.
Is there something between you and God that He is trying to remove because He loves you? Is there a habit of self-worship, of selfishness, of sin, that is choking away your intimacy with God?
God is coming and has now come, and will continue to call out His longing to be close to you. His good for you is His presence with you, on His terms, not yours. God's good for you, is your growth in wisdom and maturity. Not your comfort. Not your ease. Not your pleasure. We so often and so easily get this backwards. And we wonder why our walk with the Lord seems both sickly sweet and boringly repetitious.
Let's get real with our God, who disciplines us, calls us out, challenges us, because He loves us. God wants more of you, not less.
He delights in any effort you make to seek Him, to treasure Him, to obey Him, to rest in Him, to trust Him.
May we be a people who actively work, with God, to remove anything that stands between us and Him. May we be a people who rejoice that God would help us to get this done. Even if His help, His loving discipline, is hard sometimes.
It is good! He is good!
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