". . .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
The key word here is "love". God doesn't chasten you, because He hates you. Just as when we were kids and were being disobedient, our parents punished us out of love. So God, Whose love is great for us, punishes us when we try to lead our own lives on our own strength. Through chastening, we will most likely find ourselves at a 'dead end road' and find no way to go except back to Who we wandered from: God. Through chastening, we realize our need for God and are reminded that we cannot live a life free from Him. Through chastening, we recognize that our sin is blocking us from having a complete relationship with the Savior and that we must repent in order to rebuild the bridge that separated us.
God never walks away from us. He never chooses to let us out of His hands. He never wants that sin to separate us from Himself. But when we let sin interfere, we ourselves are choosing to be separated from His love and care. We choose to walk away; and hence, why we sometimes don't sense God's presence with us any more.
God isn't always chastising us when life seems to do a back flip; but it's important to eliminate the possibility by examining our lives carefully. Such as when we partake of Communion. We should ask God to show us where we went wrong, and believe that He is faithful to point out the problem(s) that we need to ask forgiveness for and turn away from. He will never close the door in our face or walk away when we desire to repent from whatever sin has been plaguing us.
In a devotional book that I sometimes share stories with you, this one stood out as going along with this post topic very well. "As a professional stock-car racer, Darrell Waltrip was once proud of his image as 'the guy folks loved to hate'. When crowds booed, he'd just kick the dirt and smile. Then things began to change. He miraculously survived a Daytona 500 crash. He began to going to church with his wife, Stevie. He and Stevie began to try to have a family. Stevie, however, suffered four miscarriages. One day their pastor came to visit. He asked, 'Your car is sponsored by a beer company. Is that the image you want?' Darrell had never thought about it. He had always loved watching kids admire his car, but the more he thought about it, he discovered that he did care about his image. He thought, If Stevie's and my prayers were answered for a child, what kind of dad would I be? He remembered his pastor's admonition to 'walk the walk, not just talk the talk'. He didn't know what to do to convince the car owner to change sponsors, but amazingly, an opportunity opened for him to sign with a new racing team sponsored by a laundry detergent company! After much thought and more prayer, he switched teams. Two years later, daughter Jessica was born, and a few years later, daughter Sarah. In 1989, he won Daytona."
As we see in the above story, when Darrell changed his life around by advertising something better on his racing car and refusing to model pictures of beer around the track, God began to answer his and Stevie's prayer regarding their family. Sins truly do block our prayers with God. We cannot believe that God will listen to our cries for help, if we continue to allow the sin to remain in our lives.
God continues to encourage us to live a life pleasing to Him. As in the scene on the famous movie Facing the Giants, Grant pushed his player to do the death crawl across the whole field. Blindfolded, the play cried out in agony as he carried the "140 pound" player on his back to the end zone. Our Spiritual walks are the same. We carry around baggage and it feels that there is no hope in crossing this "field of life". We cry out to God for help, but He seems to be nowhere near us. God is asking us not to give up on Him; but to give up the sin that is separating us from Him. When we do so, we will find ourselves in the "end zone".
"In order to receive the direction from God, you must be able to receive the correction from God."
Sis in Christ,
Anna
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