“And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.” Hebrews 12:5-6
“Chasteneth”? “Scourgeth”? Those don’t sound like pleasant experiences, and, in today’s age of “gentle” parenting strategies, they don’t sound like parental love to our ears, but God is love, and according to the Bible those He loves he chastens, or in other words, corrects. We might not find the process enjoyable. In fact if you read the rest of Hebrews Chapter 12, you see that this process is often uncomfortable, but what we must remember is that our Heavenly Father knows best. When He brings correction through the agency of the Holy Spirit, it is for our benefit in the end. He desires a better life for us, and most often that better life is only realized when we correct course and get on His better path for us.
Friends, our God is a good, good Father. He loves His children and has given us His Holy Spirit as a guide to lead us into better pasture and still waters. Part of the Holy Spirit’s role in our lives is to be our Corrector, our Holy Conviction of wrong so that we can follow the best and most blessed path for our lives. Now, this idea of correction, conviction, and repentance gets a bad rap in our culture. We think of it with negative feelings. We often associate these ideas with the displeasure, even wrath, of God and severe punishment to come. It is true that God is both good and severe. He is a God of justice and just judgment. There is a wrath to come, and when we sin, we do displease Him, but the point of correction is to avoid potential punishment. The conviction that the Holy Spirit provides is to lead us to repentance that will free us from the wrath of God we may have very well deserved!
With that in mind, can you see what a tremendous gift the chastening of the Lord through the Holy Spirit is? It serves us as an early warning system. The Holy Spirit lets us know when we are heading into self-inflicted trouble and tries to steer us away from that danger ahead. He is like the wise father, older brother or genuine friend who knows just a bit better than us through hard-earned experience and advises us not to go there, do that, or say what we wanted to say. Having a Holy Corrector is a blessing, not an inconvenience or a burden. It’s good to have someone who cares enough about us to tell us the hard truth and help keep us in bounds.
Brothers and sisters, we need mind renewal in this area. Correction from God isn’t a negative thing. Conviction should be welcomed in our lives. It’s a safety system, and if we choose to listen to it, God can save us from so much of this world’s hurt. Proverbs 13:18 relays the potential blessing of listening to the correction of the Lord, and the end result of closing our ears to His warnings as well. There it states, “Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth instruction: but he that regardeth reproof shall be honoured.” What’s more, II Timothy 2:24-26 reveals the power of heeding God’s correction. It explains that if we repent when God deals with our hearts concerning wrong, we free ourselves from the trap Satan has set for us, and escape the damage he had planned for our lives.
So, correction, conviction, repentance—these are all gifts from God. Gifts that are given to us through the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. If we heed His warnings, we can have great confidence towards God by sensing His love and care for us (I John 3:18-24), thus sparking our faith in Him to greater heights!
Greg Crum is the pastor of Calvary Temple in Lovely.