“Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid.”
Discipline comes in three flavours.
1. Self-imposed Challenges. Example: You choose to workout at the gym.
2. Fair Consequences. Example: You speed, you get caught, you receive a fine.
3. Unjust Hardship. Example: Someone with authority over you acts badly and you pay an undeserved price.
No matter what flavour your discipline, if you eat it up, it will grow you. Just because you didn’t choose the arena and method of your hardship doesn’t mean it can’t do you any good. God-discipline is potentially even better than self-discipline.
Here are a few thoughts on how to get the most out of discipline.
Don’t refuse the ugly flavours.
All discipline has an unpleasant taste (Heb. 12:11). Even the stuff we choose, like practicing an instrument or saving up for a purchase. It has an initial pleasure price tag that we must be willing to pay. As you go down the list of flavours (from self-imposed to unjust hardship), the taste gets worse!
No one likes flavour two. Punishment is unpleasant and usually humiliating. If however I take it like a good medicine it can heal me. If I can learn, I can grow. If I can grow, I can improve and succeed in life.
The third flavour, unjust hardship, is putrid! It often tastes so bad that people cannot stomach it and they get no good from this form of discipline at all. This is understandable but disappointing. If you are able to plug your nose and swallow, this ugly, ugly flavour can yield some amazing benefit.
Why? Because all discipline has positive potential. Even the stuff you do not deserve, like copping an injustice. It can yield a good harvest of righteousness, peace, holiness, maturity and much more. You see it in people like Victor Frankel, Nelson Mandela or Helen Keller. And you see it in lesser known people if you look. (Heb 12:11, James 1:3-4)
Don’t confuse the different flavours.
Many people fail to distinguish between flavours two and three. They presume that hardship and punishment must be the same thing, especially if God is involved. This is NOT true.
Think of it this way. Hardship is like the wind. Wind blows pointlessly until you raise a sail in it and then you have the possibility of movement. Unjust hardship is the same. This pointless flood of pain becomes an opportunity for growth (and even blessing) when you open your heart to God and let him use it for good. Ask God to do something positive with your hardship. Be patient and wait for it. That’s what it means to love discipline. (Prov. 12:1)
To experience hardship as discipline (and not just pointless pain), you need to surrender control to God. Flavour number three operates much like flavour number one (but it tastes completely different!). God uses hardship the same way we do when we go to the gym and lift weights for example. God can discipline us without punishing us in the very same way that we can discipline ourselves without having done something wrong.
One reason people hate the discipline of God is they fail to understand God’s heart when justice is delayed. Discipline is how God expresses his love in the midst of a troubled world. He turns hardships into useful episodes in our maturing lives. These painful seasons are to our spiritual muscles what weights at the gym are to our physical muscles. God takes control, if we let him, and it is good.
Self-discipline is excellent. God-discipline is better. Don’t be put off by the taste. Get discipline, it's good!
Questions:
- How do you exercise self-discipline? What victories have you had? What failures?
- Do you accept that discipline is not always “punishment”? How are they different?
- Do you agree that all discipline has positive potential? Why?
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“He that cannot obey, cannot command.”
ReplyDeleteBenjamin Franklin quotes (American Statesman, Scientist, Philosopher, Printer, Writer and Inventor. 1706-1790)